Klarinet Archive - Posting 000198.txt from 1998/09

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Short barrels
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 16:58:01 -0400

On Sun, 6 Sep 1998, Roger Garrett wrote:

> My initial post in response to Gary's statement was that I don't believe
> there is a raising pitch standard in European orchestras.....they have
> played at 445-447 for over 30 or 40 years that we can document by
> recordings.

I don't think anything at all can be proven by the pitch levels at which
recordings play. You would have to know the pitch at which the music was
first played, whether the speed of the tape recorder which recorded it
matched the speed of the one which played it back for producing the master
disk, and whether your own turntable turns at exactly 33 1/3 rpm, or
whatever speed was intended by the record's engineer. Sometimes even
fairly expensive turntables and tape decks are notoriously mis-adjusted
with regard to the speed at which they rotate or move the tape past the
playback head.

If the suggestion is that the older recordings of European orchestras
normally play back at higher pitches than those of American orchestras, I
rather doubt it, and in any event, I can't see how that could be taken as
proof of anything concerning the pitch at which the music was originally
played. For all of my life in music, I have heard people complain about
turntables turning too fast, thereby making the music sharper than it was
when it was recorded, without regard to the geography of the orchestra
involved.

I have a turntable with a speed/pitch adjustment, but don't often use it.
It just takes too much time to get out a tuner and try to adjust the speed
in order to make the orchestra play at the proper pitch level, even
assuming you can determine what that pitch level is. And, in the case of
many records, if you get the pitch adjusted for the beginning of the
music, it will be out of tune again by the end.

Ed Lacy
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Dr. Edwin Lacy University of Evansville
Professor of Music 1800 Lincoln Avenue
Evansville, IN 47722
el2@-----.edu (812)479-2754
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