Klarinet Archive - Posting 000237.txt from 1998/09

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Short barrels
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 21:02:11 -0400

At 05:30 PM 9/7/98 -0500, Ed Lacy wrote:
>Quoting from "The Acoustical Foundations of Music" by John Backus,
>first edition, published in 1969 by W. W. Norton, pp. 131 - 33:
>
>"Over the years the frequency of the standard A has gone up. [from
>Handel's A@-----.5, for example] The reason for this rise is still not
>established. It appears that those instruments, such as the strings, that
>can tune to any pitch gain an advantage in "brightness" if they are tuned
>sharp with respect to those instruments, such as the woodwinds, that must
>be built to a fixed standard of pitch. Whatever the reason, toward the
>end of the nineteenth century the standard A had gone as high as 455
>cycles per second in England and even up to 461 cycles per second in the
>United States. At one period in England there were even two different
>standards of pitch in use, and the instruments that could be used for one
>pitch could not be used for the other."
>
>"A change in the standard of pitch imposes considerable difficulties on
>musicians and particularly on the manufacturers of musical instruments, so
>a fixed standard is essential. Various attempts were made to establish a
>standard, and finally in 1953 in International Standards Organization
>[meeting in Switzerland, as I understand it - EL] recommended the adoption
>of A-440 as the standard frequency throughout the world."....
>
Thanks for the researched support. I was pretty sure of the basic facts,
but you have nailed the specifics. I knew I was not totally out to lunch
on this.

Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
Essexville, MI 48732 http://members.wbs.net/homepages/z/o/o/zoot14.html
ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.

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