Klarinet Archive - Posting 000435.txt from 1998/09

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Pitch standards
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 12:24:10 -0400

Any organist will confirm Dan Leeson's comment:
>>Change the material, the frequency, or the temperature, and you affect the
pitch.>>
That's a very serious problem on large pipe organs, particularly in old
buildings without modern heating and cooling systems, where the temperature
and humidity fluctuate a great deal, not only seasonally but hourly, and
depending on how many people are in the room with the organ. Even a tracker
(mechanical action) pipe organ may contain as many as 7,000 pipes. (Electro-
pneumatic organs often contain a great many more--over 10,000 pipes in the
Aeolian- Skinners in the Washington National Cathedral and in the Mormon
Tabernacle in Salt Lake City--and let's not even talk about the monstrosity of
a Midmer-Losch in Atlantic City, with more than 30,000 pipes!) Those pipes
are spread out all over the place, with some of them up near the ceiling,
while others stand on the lowest section of the floor or even rise up from a
basement. The size of the pipes in one organ may range from less than an inch
long to 64 feet. They're made of wood, or tin, or a mixture of lead and tin,
or brass, or ... whatever. One of my uncles is a recently-retired pro
organist. He says that keeping all those pipes tuned for seasonal
fluctuations on some of those big old monsters is a nightmare. For practical
purposes, there's no way to correct hour-to-hour fluctuations, with the result
that some especially finicky stops go unused because they only play in tune
on, say, Thursdays in January at 3 p.m.. Clarinets should be grateful that
all we need to do is lip up, lip down, change fingerings, pull out or change
to a shorter barrel. On an organ, fixing a major pitch problem involves
scaffolding, a serious tool kit and heavy lifting.

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The horror! The horror!"
--H. P. Lovecraft
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