A was one of the last things European countries would agree on before the outbreak of World War II. Representatives from Switzerland and the United States sent their views by mail.
Into the fray stepped Sir James Swinburne, an electrical engineer who, in search of better insulating material for electric gadgets, had been instrumental in the development of plastics. Swinburne was also a music lover, a dedicated amateur pianist and organist. British piano tuners had settled on A in , but, his interest in ratios and electronics converging, Swinburne objected: , he noted, was a prime number; was more easily factored, and more easily electronically synthesized.
The other European powers agreed. It was one of the last things they would agree on before the outbreak of World War II. Even today, it is not exactly a universal standard. Early-music groups have continued to explore older, lower pitch levels. Leonard Bernstein, that paragon of successful excess, routinely tuned the New York Philharmonic to the edgier, more brash A In the end, A is, in practical terms, an elusive target. In fact, until the 17th century natural philosophers thought it absolutely illogical to make any attempt to quantify it or even theorize about its measurement.
What I like to make clear with this, is that until as far as historical documentation goes no one had measured and analyzed the exact tone frequencies. In the fifteenth century Arnold Schlick of Heidelberg, gave us the pitch of the time as being A.
An Organ in Hepusdat dated with a pitch of A Scholars who have studied historical instruments claim that thepitch of the note "A" in the seventeenth century may have variedfrom The following is an incomplete list of pitch standards from various sources. The pitch of A has remained the standard since Pitches have risen a little, particularly in Eastern European countries, which often wish pianos to be tuned to A or even a bit above.
Some concert halls in the UK and European countries have two pianos on site, one tuned to A and one tuned to A This is to keep the pianos stable, as constantly raising and lowering the pitch is not good for the piano; it makes it hard for the piano tuner to make the tuning stable.
Here is a full list of the theoretical frequencies for all the notes on a piano tuned to A theoretical frequencies. Barrie Heaton Dip. Acknowledgements and Selective Bibliography. Type in your Town. Remember Me. Recent Listings. Paul Cathedral organ A According to Steinway of New York, is right around the time they switched from three piece rims to the continuous rim that is used today. So it is unlikely the pitch was any higher before , yet Steinway of London had a fork A Sign up for our newsletter and get tutorials and tips delivered to your inbox.
How did we, as a modern society, agree on Hz—A4—as our pitch standard for tuning? Is it based on mathematics or opinion? Over the past few centuries, the tones that have made up western classical music have fluctuated considerably.
Initially, there was no standardized pitch for instruments to tune themselves to, which meant that each orchestra would be tuning to a different pitch from one another. Ever since the 18th century, A4—the A above middle C—has been the measurement and tuning standard for Western music. Depending on what part of the world the orchestra is from, however, A4 could range from anywhere between Hz and Hz.
Famous composers like Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven all tuned their orchestras to a different pitch, and even when the tuning fork was invented, the note it produced differed depending on whose tuning fork was used. After several attempts at remedying the difference in tuning standards between different orchestras—A, A, A—the International Organization for Standardization set an international standardized pitch of Hz for A4.
You can hear how these pitches differ, if only in the slightest sense, here. Many musicians and non-musicians alike vehemently oppose the industry standard of Hz as a reference for tuning.
We're just going to focus on the tuning standard itself for this article. To give a quick background of how Hz came into the picture, we turn to Joseph Sauveur, a French physicist who, in , came up with the concept of a scientific or philosophical pitch. He explained that, by placing middle C at Hz, you can create a system where each octave—or factor —of C lands on an even integer, instead of containing "dreadful" decimals.
0コメント