On Dec 10, 2007, at 1:44 AM, LGS-Europe wrote:
> Or for singers: in the Paris' Opera a' was 423Hz in 1810, and had
> risen to 431.7Hz by 1822. The singers complained and had it brought
> down to 425.8Hz. This lasted only 5 years; in 1830 it was back at
> 430.8Hz and continued to rise.
George Bernard Shaw (writing as "Corno di Bassetto") devoted his 18
November 1891 column in the The World to the problems of competing
pitches in London: French pitch, established as A=435 by a French
government commission (which included Rossini, Berlioz and Meyerbeer)
in 1858, London Philharmonic pitch, A = 452, which was made mandatory
for British military bands ("the utterances of the Philharmonic
Society being deeply respected throughout Great Britain by all
responsible citizens who are entirely ignorant of music"), the even
higher American pitch, low church organ pitch and high concert organ
pitch. He describes the effect of different pitches on singers and
instruments, and hypothetical international rehearsals of Beethoven's
Ninth and Gotterdamerung ("The sopranos complain bitterly of the
strain of the repeated high notes...up jumps the ghost of Beethoven
to declare that his music is perfectly singable, but that his
symphony has been transposed up from the key of D to that of E flat,
and is nearly a quarter of a tone sharp even at that. He then
returns to the shades, execrating the folly of a generation which
tries to give his works and those of Handel and Mozart the vulgarest
sort of cavalry-band shrillness.")
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