Klarinet Archive - Posting 000365.txt from 2002/11

From: "William Semple" <wsemple@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Affect of Hall Acoustics on Pitch: A question
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 19:41:36 -0500

A GREAT STORY!! I will send this to Reilly Lewis, who plays organ and
conducts The Washington Bach Consort and the Cathedral Choral Arts Society,
with your permission.

----- Original Message -----
From: <LeliaLoban@-----.com>
Subject: [kl] Affect of Hall Acoustics on Pitch: A question

> William Semple wrote,
> >Where I'm coming from is that I have played a few
> >church gigs, and staying in tune with an organ is a
> >nifty accomplishment.
>
> There's another reason for this problem besides the building's geometry.
> Most pipe organ builders specify that the instrument will play in tune
with
> a=440 Hz at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Change the temperature much (and, with
> many pipe organs, change the humidity) and everything goes wicky-wacky.
> Drives organists nuts, because of course some pipes (depending on their
size,
> composition and construction) change faster and more drastically than
others,
> while the building temperature changes depending on when (or whether)
someone
> remembered to turn on/off the heat/AC. More changes happen when the place
> fills up with human bodies. The bottom line is that in most buildings,
you
> never have full use of the entire organ at any one time. That's *before*
we
> start talking about the general state of disrepair, the leaky wind chest,
the
> frayed leathers, the pipe way up in pigeon heaven that swallowed the dead
> bat, etc..
>
> When my uncle was resident organist at a large church, he used to leave
notes
> taped to the console to warn visiting organists of a whole litany of
> potential nightmares. One was: Never pull certain stops in the late
> afternoon when the sun had been shining through a certain stained glass
> window for more than an hour, and wait until an hour after sundown to use
> those ranks, because the sunbeams heated those particular pipes enough to
> throw them out of pitch with the rest of the instrument. IMHO one of the

> main reasons pipe organs feature so many harmonic corroborating stops is
that
> the complex overtones obscure the fact that the fundamental tones are all
> over the place. Church choirs usually cope with pitch variations easily
> enough, but bring in the instrumental players (especially the oboists) and
> welcome to Acoustical Hell.
>
> Lelia
>
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>

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