Klarinet Archive - Posting 000284.txt from 1998/09

From: Dodgshun family <dodgshun@-----.nz>
Subj: Re: [kl] Short barrels
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 02:26:12 -0400

At 05:30 PM 7/09/98 -0500, you wrote:
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."

Recently we had a Swiss clarinettist out here playing principal in the
ChchSO. He had to buy a new pair of clarinets because the ones he'd brought
from home were unusable here. I suspect this was because his "home"
orchestra played higher than A@-----. He went
back to Switzerland before I had a chance to ask him, but it's something
I've been wondering about. I don't know what his original clarinets were
(possibly German system - does this make a difference to pitch?), but he
bought R13s for use here. Someone got a very nice pair at a fantastic price
when he sold them on before moving back.

We had a discussion about playing higher in the youth orchestra here a
couple of years ago - we were doing a season of the Nutcracker during a hot
summer, and the pit was small and crowded (a band pit made to hold maximum
of 25 people is not good to squash an orchestra of 50 into, especially with
a large percussion department!). All the wind and brass players were all
for it, but we got talked out of it by the strings. It's never come up
again - seems that over here A@-----.

Anna

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