Klarinet Archive - Posting 000132.txt from 2009/09
From: Diego Casadei <casadei.diego@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Antique clarinet length determines diapason?
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:38:44 -0400
Dear all,
in Italy (and might be also in other European countries) we call
"diapason" the fork-like tool that gives the central A pitch. You can
find a photo of it in the Italian wikipedia:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapason (which also says that ancient
Greeks were using such term to mean "octave"). On the same page, you
can also find some historical overview of the concert pitches used in
different epochs and places (it's a table: you don't need to master
Italian). For me (I'm Italian) it makes perfectly sense to call
"diapason" the absolute tuning of an instrument, by conceptual extension
from the tool above.
Apart from this linguistic note, I should repeat that a single length
measurement is not sufficient to find the pitch of a clarinet. For
example, the mouthpiece has some effect (Vandoren is selling different
mouthpieces for different tunings), so that it cannot be neglected.
The only reasonable way to find the absolute tuning is to assume that it
existed at least one mouthpiece giving perfect intonation to the
instrument (which is a _strong_ assumption: it's hard to find a modern
clarinet which is perfectly tuned on the full range). This makes it
possible to make repeated measurements over several intervals, as I said
in my first message. Later, one can average over all measurements and
guess where the fixed node was.
The fixed node is the starting point for all measurements, not the
barrel, not the bell. Starting from the fixed node, one can measure the
(quarter of) wavelength that corresponds to any pitch. But forget about
reaching a precision better than few Hertzs :-)
Cheers,
Diego
Peter Gentry wrote:
> 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
--
Diego Casadei, PhD.
Physics Department, CERN
New York University bld. 32, S-A19
4 Washington Place 1211 Geneve 23
New York, NY 10003 Mailbox J28310
USA Switzerland
office: +1-212-998-7675 office: +41-22-767-6809
mobile: +39-347-1460488 mobile: +41-76-213-5376
http://cern.ch/casadei/ Diego.Casadei@-----.ch
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