were always insufficient, or are now on the wane. Finally, that the public have no in terest in the matter. is The respective parts in the Chandon Anthems, the Dettingen Te Deum, his operas and oratorios, might severally be sung by the same performers, at the same pitch. What was that pitch? What do we really know about it? and its pitch, therefore, at this time is unimportant of itself. In connection, however, with the fact that it is considerably lower than that of an existing tuning-fork, said to have belonged to Handel (which gives 416 vibrations per second for A, equal to 499 for C), it deserves attention, and tends to inspire confidence in the authenticity and unaltered condition of the latter, neither of which of themselves admit of irrefragable proof. It must be admitted that the amount of direct evidence as to the pitch in the last years of the seventeenth century (the epoch of Corelli in Italy, of Purcell in England) We have seen that at an epoch considerably very small. It is otherwise, however, anterior to Handel's (1710-59), several with indirect evidence; and this, strange methods of ascertaining the paces of vibrato say, points unequivocally to the existence tion were known to men of science. These, of two contemporaneous pitches - one for however, they do not seem to have brought the church, the other for the chamber- -an to bear on practical music; in any case no organ pitch and an orchestral pitch, each reliable records of their having done so no doubt having its own varieties, but of have come down to us of an earlier date than which the former was always considerably the latter part of the last century. One exhigher. That this was the case in Germany ception may be named in the case of an emdown to a comparatively recent period, is inent writer on acoustics, Dr. Smith, Masattested by the existence, very recent if not ter of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, actual, of organs tuned to a higher pitch about the year 1755, ascertained and rethan has ever yet been reached by any mod-corded the pitch of the organ in Trinity ern orchestra. This was distinguished in Chapel as being equal to 388 vibrations per Germany from the secular pitch, or Kam-second for A, = equal to 466 for C. This merton, as the Chorton. Nor were these organ does not seem ever to have been used two contemporary pitches confined to Ger- in combination with orchestral instruments, many. The evidence we have as to former English practice, though of another kind, leads to the conclusion that it was akin to the German. Much, perhaps all, the church music of the age of Purcell indicates the use of an English Chorton. Not only is the tessatura to all the parts, to the eye, very low, but certain passages, not in exceptional solos, but in choral services for daily use, are beyond the reach of the majority of bass voices, even at our present pitch. On the other hand, the secular music of the same masters looks as extravagantly high as the church music looks low-indicating equally the use of a Kammerton. It is incredible that any considerable number of persons should ever have sung the songs in the Orpheus Britannicus or the Amphion Anglicus at a pitch even approximating to ours; equally incredible that entire volumes of chamber music should have been sold in large numbers which hardly any one could perform as it was printed. For Purcell's G substitute our E, and all difficulty disappears; his passages are then at once brought within convenient reach of the voices for which they were intended. There can be no reasonable doubt that in the last years of the seventeenth century, as the church pitch was much higher, so the chamber pitch in England was much lower perhaps to the extent of a minor third than it is now. In the course of the last century the higher pitch seems to have gone out of use in England. Nothing like the difference of tessatura which exists between the church and chamber music of Purcell St. Petersburg, various places 1865 and Blow is observable in that of Handel. Cambridge, Trin. Col Of the pitch in various years and places since the latter part of the last century we have abundant and thoroughly reliable evidence. The following table presents the results of various observations made and recorded in the years and at the places named in it, by Chladni, Fischer, Opelt. Lissajous, Scheibler, and other eminent acousticians who have lived and written during the last hundred years: Theoretical Pitch Conservatoire Diapason Normal A. C. 426 512 1788 409 490 1821 431 517 Kärnthnerthor Theatre1865 London, Handel's tuning fork c. 1740 likely to, or can possibly contribute to these. a A, C. 416 499 First for the wind-instruments. Of these Philharmonic Soc. 1812-42 433 516 the majority- the wood instruments especItalian Opera 1859 455 549 ially are of recent facture, designed, From this it appears that in 1788 A, in bored, and voiced to something like the Paris, was about 20 vibrations per second present pitch. They have the advantage, higher than A in Cambridge, in 1755, and 7 therefore, of being used at about their norvibrations per second lower than A in Lon- mal pitch. But they are inevitably of don at about the same time, according to somewhat smaller capacity contain "Handel's tuning-fork." Some years after shorter column of air-than their predethis (in 1795), on the foundation of the Con- cessors of other days. That their voicing servatoire de Musique, the orchestral pitch should be more "brilliant" on this acconnt in France is known to have been suddenly is simply incredible. Of the brass instruraised nearly a semitone. It appears to ments precisely the same may be said; with have experienced no further change till the this addition,- that, given the same instruyear 1821, after which it gradually rose till ments (and many of these are not new), 1859, when, by a legislative enactment, it elevation of pitch increases the difficulty of was considerably lowered, and the "Dia-reaching the exact notes. Is it the present pason Normal" (A at 435 C at 522), elevation we have to thank for the all but identical with that of the Conservatoire in expulsion from the orchestra of the most re1833, introduced. The pitch which ob- fined of brass instruments, the trumpet, tained in Paris immediately before this en- and the substitution for it of the coarsest actment has been, however, considerably cornets, cornopeans, and saxe-tubas dire! exceeded in altitude by that of other places; as many as 460 vibrations per second for A have been reached in St. Petersburg, and even 466 in one of the orchestras in Vienna. With these two exceptions, the average pitch of London was, in 1859, the highest in Europe. To what cause can this prodigious elevation (in which all musical Europe is implicated) be attributed? Is it a matter of choice, or a matter of chance? or have we already attained in music that point at which, in all other arts, decay and decline have had their beginning? that point at which a liking for the huge, the crowded, and the coarse, takes the place of a love for the majestic, the clear, and the refined? Is high pitch only the necessary complement to insupportable intensity, exaggerated emphasis? With those who defend it, it is, of course, a matter of choice, so far as choice acts in the matter. They tell us that a high pitch conduces to "bril-commodate itself to the present pitch by any liancy" in instrumental performance. It is extremely difficult to deal with an assertion of this kind (which, by dint of repetition, has become a sort of public opinion), expressing itself as it does by a word which can only be figuratively applied to anything that appeals to the ear. It is much to be desired that some one would tell us what brilliancy" in music exactly means. Is it force, or is it quality? Or is it something compounded of the two? In the absence of information on this head, let us assume that it is something desirable,- say, the utmost force combined with the best quality that can be got out of each instrument. Let us consider in what way high pitch is Not so. The violin But the brilliancy about which we are talking is not "pre-eminently seen " i. e., heard, in wind-instruments. It is from the violin family we get (so we are told) this accession of strength and sweetness. As with the wind-instruments, elevation of pitch will here, it may be supposed, be met by alteration of size. The new instruments, of course, will be of smaller pattern than the old, and the old will somehow be made to tally with the new. (and its belongings) resembles the voice in many things, and among them in its having attained perfection a very long time ago. The models of three centuries since are the models of to-day; and the highest compliment that could be paid to a contemporary "luthier" would be to tell him that his last violin might be mistaken for a work of Stradiuarius, who died at the age of ninetyseven, in 1733. The violin does not ac change of model, but by the use of thinner strings, and in the case of old instruments, by internal modification which destroys its identity, and would seem likely to diminish its resonance. How thinner strings and internal modifications can increase the "brilliancy" of violins, supposed to have come perfect from the hands of their makers, is a puzzle I leave to the initiated.* *Everything about these admirable instruments (the works of Stradiuarius) has been foreseen, calculated, and determined. in the clearest and most certain manner. The bar alone has proved too weak; in consequence of the gradual elevation of pitch inevitable result of which has been a considerable since the beginning of the eighteenth century, the increase of tension and a much greater pressure on But admitting, if only for the sake of It is to be regretted that so few of his peace, that such boundless improvement in vocal cotemporaries, male or female, should instrumental performance has been obtained have dared to come forward to support Mr. by such apparently insufficient and even Reeves' protest; but it is not in the least deteriorating agencies, what is to be said of to be wondered at. Very young athletes, the effect of the present pitch on the voice? of whatever kind, never care to husband Our greatest performer on the rarest of their strength. Not having ascertained its voices has had the courage to answer the limits, they think it has none. Athletes question in the most decisive and unequivo- who are no longer young may be glad to be eal manner-factis non verbis — by declin- spared unnecessary trouble, but only on ing to sing at it any longer. condition that nothing is said about it. No amount of youthful freshness, or of manly or womanly vigour, would guarantee its possessor who ran the risk Mr. Reeves has done, from the charge which has been brought against him. Few, like him, have the courage, or are in the position, to brave it. So the very young singers, and the singers who do not wish to be thought otherwise than young, however acceptable to them change might be, are silent as to the existing state of things. They sing "and make no sign." In a report, with which the present writer had a good deal to do, issued by the committee appointed by the Council of the Society of Arts, on "Uniform Musical Pitch," some ten years since, it was observed: "Some impediments stand in the way of ascertaining directly the effects of the present high pitch on the quality and probable duration of the voice. A remonstrance in respect of it on the part of a singer might be too readily interpreted into a confession of weakness; and a premature decay of physical power might be imputed to an artist who protested against the gratuitous exertion which an extravagantly high pitch obliges him to undergo." That which was indicated in this paragraph as possible or probable has come to pass. Mr. Sims Reeves did but refuse to do violence any longer to his voice and his ear, by singing music at a pitch in some cases nearly a tone higher than that at which its composer intended it to be sung "When straight a barbarous noise environs '' him, But, it may be said- it has been said already what has the public to do with all this? So long as we (the public) are entertained, what is it to us that the physical powers of Mr. A., Mrs. B., and Miss C., are tasked to the utmost, that the work which should be pleasant and easy is (from whatever cause) disagreeable and difficult to them, or that their careers in consequence are now and then brought to an untimely end? Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the public cares as little about the comfort and welfare of those who minister to its and a chorus, at even a higher pitch than pleasure as some who profess to represent has yet been tried among us, is heard far it would have us believe, the public has at and wide, the burden of which is that our least an interest in the preservation of its admirable tenor has been overtaken by "a own property. If anything be public proppremature decay of physical power," and erty, it is surely the voice of a public singer; (to speak plainly) is losing his voice. Mr. and the voice of a singer, public or private, Reeves must have known that the course he will not long maintain its strength or its was about to take would be followed by this sweetness if it be misused-made to do imputation as certainly as the head is work for which it is unfit. Rome was not followed by the tail; and he took it. Hay- built in a day; and the singer is the (often ing counted the cost of his procedure, he tardy) fruit of a long course of cultivation. proceeded, as none but a man conscious of Is it not Colley Cibber who accounts for the his ability to meet that cost would have rarity of actresses eminent in youthful parts, dared to proceed. To stop now to answer in the all but impossibility that a woman this imputation would be the idlest waste of should acquire skill enough to do justice to time and words. The answer, indeed (if them, before her youth is over and her it need an answer), will be the better sung beauty gone? Sentiment apart, it is diffithan said; and it will be, we may confi-cult to conceive anything in which the pubdently hope, for many years to come, with undiminished vigour and, if possible, in creased refinement. their upper surface. Thence the necessity for rebarring old violins and violincellos.- Fetis. Antoine Stradivari. Paris. 1856. lic could have a deeper interest than the preservation of the instrument - never, alas! to be replaced by another of one Mademoiselle Nillson presents an honourable exception. We have not yet been told that she is losing her voice. Perhaps we shall. whom the sunshine of its own favour has | vocal music. The Gallo-Belgian, Italian, ripened into that rare product of nature, art, and circumstance - a great singer. But the public has an interest closer than any personal interest, in the depression of musical pitch; musical performance, of whatever kind, would be not merely facilitated, but improved by it. Not only would vocalists find the amount of their physical labour lightened, not only might they hope for a prolongation of their artistic career by its general adoption, but they would inevitably sing better, as well as more easily and longer, for it. Every instrument has pitch especially becoming to it at which it answers most readily to the touch, at which it yields the sweetest, strongest, and most certain sound. And of all instruments, that by which this truth is most emphatically asserted is the voice. In every voice there is a pitch, at which every passage possible to it can be executed. A passage may be possible to it higher or lower, but in the one case generally with a loss of sweetness, in the other of strength. and English masters even of the sixteenth century, and earlier, are still not only models for students who would write well for voices, but their compositions are still able to give pleasure to the unlearned and unlearning auditor. While, for grandeur in the combination, or refinement in the succession of musical sounds, for contrapuntal skill or melodic grace, in the double chorus or the single and often self-supporting air, none, even of the giants who have come between him and ourselves, have surpassed (should it not be said have equalled?) our countryman by adoption, Handel. It will, of course, be admitted at once that the inventor of such passages as those which abound in the works of this mighty master is likely to have known how best to give effect to them; i. e., where, in the great system of sounds, to place them so that they would be heard to the best advantage. Assuming even that he cared little for the convenience of his performers, it is likely at least that he would arrange his passages so that they Now, the structure of an artificial instru- might be most effectively performed. Now ment, a violin or an oboe, admits of very nothing is as ever effectively performed as it considerable modification. The body of the might be, the performance of which is unreaone may be formed on a different model, or sonably difficult, and attended with pain to its strings may be thicker or thinner; the the performers. It is certain that a large pipe or the reed of the other may be short- number of Handel's passages, both choral ened or contracted to almost any extent; and solo are, at the present pitch, unreasonbut the human voice, so far as we know its ably difficult, and that the performance of history, has been what it is now (i. e., has them is attended with pain, not merely to had the same limits as to compass) from the performers, but to the auditors. Who time immemorial. Out of many millions of now-a-days hears with pleasure, nay, who, contemporary basses and sopranos, we here with " ears to hear," ever hears without and there find one of the former who can suffering, that passage, so sublime in contouch the B flat below the bass stave, of the ception, in the Hallelujah Chorus, which is latter the F above the treble; among cer- made by those successive steps on the words tain races, higher or lower voices are more King of kings? The drums may beat or less numerous than among others; cer- and the fifes may play, the organ may roar tain climates, too, seem more favourable and the violin bows scrape le percer to the production of the one than the other; tympan d'un quinze-vingts," still, clear but there is not the slightest evidence to and compact the Amazonian phalanx penejustify a belief that the average soprano of trates the mass, and by dint of a musical the nineteenth century differs, or that the" system" altogether its own, culminates in average tenor of the twentieth century will differ, from the average soprano or tenor of the eighteenth.”* The progress of music during the last century has been chiefly in the direction of instrumental composition and execution. With exceptions, insignificant in quantity though not in quality, the instrumental music of the seventeenth centuries even that of Corelli and of Handel has little more than an historical interest for the average performer or auditor of to-day. Not so the - Report of the Committee appointed by the Society of Arts on Uniform Musical Pitch, London 1859. 66 66 a G-much nearer to Handel's than ours; while the auditor, to whom every step of the ascent has been as every turn of the screw to a heretic under torture, gasps out his joy as the summit is not attained, that that much at least of his evening's work is over. It is not at all improbable that Handel liked something, and occasionally arrived at something akin to, what is now called "brilliancy; nor is it altogether impossible that he may have known how to give it to his compositions, when he wanted to do so. I put it to the most enthusiastic advocate of high pitch, whether, if that great master had desired to add to the "brilliancy" of the passage to which I have | Reeves, has been made in two choral and alluded by an elevation of pitch, it might instrumental concerts, under the direction not have occurred to him to write it a sem- of Mr. Joseph Barnby. No musician who itone or even a tone higher? Evidence is was present at the first of these can have not wanting to show that he was acquainted failed to have been struck by the excellent with the keys of E flat and E natural, and timbre or quality, especially of the soprano also that the instrumentalists of his time and tenor voices, as well as by a certain air could play in them. He knew better; and of ease characterizing the delivery of all would not have risked a passage which the vocalists, principal or other. This was could never be sung otherwise than harshly, less apparent later in the performance than rarely otherwise than out of tune. at the beginning; not because the ear got At one of the earliest meetings of the used to it, but because, as the temperature committee on Uniform Musical Pitch, ap- rose, so did the pitch with it; and so will it pointed by the Society of Arts, the follow- always, till our public rooms are better vening resolution was passed unanimously:- tilated. By the end of the first part of the That as the basis of any recommendation concert it was somewhat higher than that of a definite pitch, the capabilities and con- recommended by the Society of Arts; by venience of the human voice in singing the the end of the second part, much higher. compositions of the great vocal writers, This rise was no doubt accelerated by the should be the first consideration." This organ, which, being elevated some ten feet resolution was passed nearly ten years ago, above the highest part of the orchestra, lux"unanimously," by a body deeply interested uriated in a temperature as many degrees in the subject, and certainly competent to higher, and therefore inevitably kept the discuss it in all its bearings. They subse- lead, in sharpness, of all its brother instruquently recommended the adoption of a ments. Nor are these all the disadvantacertain pitch lower than that obtaining ges under which Mr. Barnby's experiment then, and a fortiori, now. Why was it has been tried. The wind-instruments not generally adopted? Or, why was little such of them as were new-were already or nothing done in the matter? Why were adapted to the new state of things. Not so things allowed to go on pretty much as be- the stringed instruments all of them old. fore? A sudden declension of pitch must for them Partly, no doubt, because the necessity be attended always with some loss of sonorfor any change has not even yet been unan-ity. Instruments of this class will not, at a imously admitted; but chiefly on account moment's notice, adapt themselves to a of the very great cost of making it. The particular pitch recommended by the Society of Arts (C at 528 vibrations per second), which had already been adopted by a Congress of Musicians at Stuttgard, in 1834, was, not without protest, adopted by the Society, as a compromise. It was thought by some to be too high, too near to the present pitch, to afford the relief sought in a new one. They did not oppose its recommendation, however, because they believed and the belief was shared by many practical instrumentalists that existing instruments (wind-instruments mostly) could in most cases be adapted to it with comparatively little cost. Experience seems to have justified the protest, as it has certainly not confirmed the belief; seeing that the first attempt that has been made to realize the intentions of the Society has been in excess of what their committee recommended, and that the attempt has been carried out, not by the alteration of old instruments, but by the purchase of new ones, adapted to the French "Diapason Normal" of 1859, which gives C at 522 vibrations per second. This attempt, doubtless connected with the protest of Mr. Sims pitch other than that to which they have been long-used-or mis-used. They are animal, as well as vegetable, and resent unaccustomed treatment -new strings, or relaxed tension of old, and being made to vibrate otherwise than of yore. But these and other shortcomings notwithstanding, Mr. Barnby's experiment was quite successful enough to justify perseverance in it, with a little modification of his modus operandi. I venture to think that in his choice of a pitch he has made a mistake; that the French " Diapason Normal" is still too high; and that he would have done better to have adopted what is known as the "Theoretical Pitch" (of C at 512 vibrations per second). Could the pitch throughout any given performance be by any contrivance maintained, the little difference between the two would be of slight practical importance; but an ascent of nearly a semitone in the course of a concert being not at all an uncommon circumstance, it is advisable to An eminent double-bass player whom I questioned between the parts of the performance about the change, said, "I am afraid every moment lest my sound-post should fall," a catastrophe which would inevitably have been followed by the entire collapse of his instrument. |