Klarinet Archive - Posting 000131.txt from 2009/09

From: "Peter Gentry" <peter.gentry@-----.uk>
Subj: RE: [kl] Antique clarinet length determines diapason?
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:16:55 -0400

Keith

Thanks for the response...

I think the reference to European (especially French) laws from the 1800's
with citing a definition of the word is arcane - though important for
musical historians.

I fully agree with you - why don't we just say absolute pitch or frequency
(not sure where level comes in though) instead?

The French and Germans are notorious for keeping their preferred "concert"
pitch different from everybody else just to annoy wind players.

Diapason derived from the Greek literally means "across the strings" so not
really related to reeds. The labelling of stops on the organ is also
charmingly bizarre.

Maybe I'm just a grumpy ex-scientist who likes simple definitions but I
baulk at fancy phrases and curlicues which only add "apparent" complexity to
the content without serving any purpose.

regards
Peter Gentry

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Bowen [mailto:bowenk@-----.com]
Sent: 28 September 2009 11:36
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Antique clarinet length determines diapason?

Peter,

There is good historical precedent; the fixing of a'=435 by French law of
February 16, 1859 was called the 'diapason normale', which was widely
followed, for example by edicts in Bavaria (1866) and Saxony (1875ish). So
it is quite well defined. It has been less used in this sense in Anglo-Saxon
countries, but of course, the original poster (Simon Aldrich) comes from a
French-speaking country, and anyway it was clear what he meant.

We can just as well use the term 'absolute pitch level'.

There is no disagreement that acoustic properties at the 'accurate musical
level' are not at the moment calculable. But we were only talking about
pitch.

Keith Bowen

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