Klarinet Archive - Posting 000562.txt from 1998/11

From: David Renaud <studiorenaud@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] =?iso-8859-1?Q?R=E9f=2E?= : Re: [kl] Concert A pitch, again
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 17:18:13 -0500

I am a Registered Piano Technician as well as clarinetist, living on the
Quebec,
Ontario border. I am often asked specificly to tune to A442 at a concert hall
in Quebec,
whenever an artist is coming from Montreal, but to A440 for artists from the
Ontario
side.
Rebuilt a 1927 grand with "Universal Standard Pitch A435" embossed on the
plate.
When I play ochestra parts along with CD,s of European orchestras I sometimes
have to lower the pitch on my adat as much as 20 cents(Berlin recordings are
bad for that)
This would put the pitch up above A445.
???
Has pitch gone up over time because of building larger and larger, dryer and
dryer, concert
halls with less wood, more padding, to suck up those high fequencies, resulting
in the need
to project more highs into the hall??.

Alan.Woodcock@-----.net wrote:

> At 08:36 PM 11/13/98 -0800, Bill Edinger wrote:
> > Also, there was a recent survey on the Flute List which listed the
> >pitch of respondents' instruments (among other things). Almost half had
> >instruments that were designed for A442, with a slim majority at A440.
> >Any idea how most clarinets stack up here?
>
> Vandoren advertise special mouthpieces (with the -13 suffix : M13 etc) "for
> American players who play at A@-----. Which
> implies that others, don't.
> Violins tend to push up the pitch to sound more brilliant. Others must
> follow suit. Certainly this happened at the last concert of our local
> orchestra, when I was asked to play sharper although a surreptitiously
> hidden tuning meter showed that I was bang on A@-----. (But I would not take
> our local orchestra as a reference for correct practice.)
> The note given out by the oboe is of no value as the oboist seems able to
> make the A as sharp or flat as desired by adjusting his reed.
> The last time we had our piano tuned, I asked the tuner what pitch he used.
> He said "A@-----.
> (I live in France).
> This is a lot of hearsay but I would formulate the following hypotheses :
> a) Clarinets are made a little higher than strict A=440 because you can at
> least lower the pitch by pulling out the barrel, but it's more difficult to
> raise it if the orchestra plays sharp.
> b) Americans are more strict than Europeans in applying A@-----. Europeans
> play sharper.
> c) When people talk about A=440 they really mean "something in that region"
> and in practice the standard is not something that musicians apply.
> d) This worries people with an engineering or scientific background more
> than musicians. (This is something I have observed locally.)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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