Explaining Pitch | Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment 

why don't you play in Ab?.........problem solved

It's about halfway between the half tones in A = 440 which makes it disturbing for those of us with absolute pitch.

@@fasteddie4145 Try it

I love 415Hz, 408Hz, and 392Hz.

He did point out that they were arbitrary. Strings like to tune a little higher to stand out, and that competition drove the value up. Likely 430 was perfect for concert A but I think math geeks preferred 440, although it doesn't give any of the other notes more factors.

I think the local organ also had to do with it

Even this statment is arbitrary and relative :)) No ?

That's not what perfect pitch is about. Someone who has perfect pitch, as opossed to relative pitch, has the ability to sing all the pitches in every scale without having heard a reference pitch just before.

It's fine to prefer music played at a lower pitch. But there is no magic in A 396, 300, or even 250! All you are doing is in essence transposing a key downwards, although the fingerings of a given instrument are not transposed. So you prefer early classical music played lower down. That's fine. But it doesn't make music more or less "authentic".

@@fingerhorn4 Actually it DOES make the music more 'authentic' when played at some frequency below A440. Because that's what the earlier Composers and Audiences were hearing, and that's how the original Instruments sound best.

@@suzannederringer1607 Historical authenticity is very difficult. Besides is subjective How is more authentic given that not only the pitch changed but also the instruments and the way we listen to the music? There is no way to go fully authentic now days unless you listen to the performance live, with the pitch, and instruments from the era when the composer lived (all with the exotic expensive materials like ivory and gut strings). All those requirements make it very difficult for the average orchestra and listener to have an authentic experience. That is why we just modernize those compositions and forget about historical authenticity.

@@shadowmax889 There was no universal fixed Pitch back in the day - as they point out in the Video. But you're right - one can't reproduce any specific Performance from the Past. Which is OK.

Hi James, The key consideration is the instruments we use. Where possible, OAE plays on instruments (or replicas) from the period in which the compositions were written. When we do that, we have to play at those pitches, as with older wind and brass instruments the pitch they can reach is dictated by the lengths of the tubing - it just wouldn’t sound good at 440hz. Musicians of the time would also have had to train their ear to deal with this as they travelled from place to place. Often the pitch used would have been set by the local church organ!

Why should all music be played within the same pitch 440Hz and the notes within 12-TET when A4 is 440Hz?? From a singing perspective I find modern pitch far to high.. The highest pitch before something severly dreadfull happens at the passaggios is 438Hz (I even had a prof. male opera singer agreeing that 438Hz is the highest healthy pitch for heavy dramatic voices).. 435Hz the former European pitch has a nice balance and is the pitch Verdi wrote his Requiem in and the highest pitch he would allow it to be performed at. If you ever hear a large choir performing at 440Hz vs 432Hz (Verdi's suggested A4) then you are in for a surprise. It is rather obvious when listning to the color of the voices, that 432Hz is much closer to most of the singers natural resonance. I have done a lot of testing with pitch and 216Hz/432Hz is very natural and relaxed. That 216Hz (A3) note is actually better than the A3 note 8 cents down at 215Hz/430Hz.. So lower is not always better.. THe A4= 432Hz note relates to La in a C major scale when C4=256Hz using pythogran tuning. With 12-TET that A4 is 430.54Hz when C4=256Hz so "modern" classical pitch gets you close to having the C at "scientific" 256Hz though I prefer C4 to be on the sharp side of 256Hz so 431Hz is actually nicer to my ears on voices as at 430Hz the voice starts to sit to low at certain notes within chest register and first passaggio bridging chest and middle..

James, the answer to your question is more complicated than just the frequency of the notes heard. Have you every wondered why clarinetists play on a Bb clarinet and also on an A clarinet? The answer isn't simply that one is easier to play in certain keys. Different pitches (certainly on wind instruments but also on strings and others) make the tone quality, the timbre, of the instruments different. A bassoon pitched at A=392hz is not simply a half tone lower than one at 415. The sonic spectrum of the notes is very different from one instrument to the other. The response in different registers is different, and the relative loudness of tones. The sound worlds at 415, or 430, or 435 are completely different than at 440. Hope this addresses your question.

Do you really find music not played at standard modern pitch "distressing"? I suggest you seek counselling.

@@oae oh .. so it is not about music at all.. you guys are like those re-en actors of the American Civil War. All show - but no one gets killed. Same way here - all show but it doesn't serve the music. Does it really matter if the wind instrument is drilled half a millimeter this way or that way on stage? It seems to matter to you ... it is perverse as James said. Mindlessly sticking to tradition ... it is an embarrassment if anything..

He started the classical oboe note at almost A = 435 then brought it down.

432 hz people are the anti vaxxers of music

'original' lol. you know some people even went up to 460 :)

I’ll agree about the arrogance in that all the authentic practice people can claim is that what they’re doing is closer to what the composer heard than the alternatives are and therefore what the composer wrote for than the alternatives are. That matters sometimes more than others. To deal with vibrato really quickly: vibrato in the Baroque period was an ornament, not a constant. Yes, I think that Baroque vocal practice should involve less vibrato. For one thing, the blend between multiple strings or multiple voices is different with less or no vibrato. I’ll also agree about playing musically being the most important factor, though that doesn’t make other factors less important. Again, it depends. On one hand, playing the second Brandenburg on modern instruments screws it up completely because of how much louder modern trumpets are, so it transforms a concerto for four soloists into a trumpet concerto. That’s just wrong; it repurposes the entire piece. On the other hand, invalidating Glen Gould’s body of work because he played it on piano is also wrong. He had a lot to say musically. Also, keyboard works from the Baroque could typically be played on many radically different keyboards. Das Wohltempierte Klavier could be played on harpsichord, organ, clavichord, or virginal (subcategory of harpsichord). Adding piano to that list doesn’t exactly invalidate the performance. On the other hand, I think piano on a continuo part just sounds weird. Also, some works translate to modern instruments far better than others do, and I don’t only mean solo keyboard works though they’re included. I found listening to Mozart on authentic orchestra, in this case the Academy of Ancient Music recordings, to be a revelation - his symphonies suddenly made more musical sense because those melodies fit those textures so well. On the other, I found listening to Beethoven symphonies on authentic orchestra to be disappointing because his work translates so well into modern instrumentation even if that’s basically an accident. Trying Beethoven on authentic piano made me understand what he heard in a completely different way. The Pathetique opening sounds massive on a modern piano like a Bosendorfer, just thunderous. On an authentic piano instead of sounding dramatic it sounds melodramatic, like silent movie piano playing. That changes how the pianist approaches interpreting the piece. This is not to say that any of the early composers wouldn’t have loved modern instruments, though it is also not to say that those composers wouldn’t have written differently if they were working with those different textures. If we take a classical piece and set it for different instrumentation, like putting a Beethoven symphony music on a group of classical guitars, we acknowledge we’re doing it. In a sense we’re doing that when playing on modern instruments. We don’t tend to acknowledge that. In some cases it’s more drastic than others, certainly when replacing recorder parts with modern flutes, which happens often. That’s not a change in period, as modern flutes are way more similar to Baroque flutes than they are to recorders; it’s a change in instrumentation. Baroque composers had transverse flutes available and when they wrote for recorders they did so for a reason; they implicitly said that flutes were not what they had in mind. The same is true when replacing a viola da gamba part with a modern cello - those composers had cellos available and wrote for them, so their decision not to use cello was a conscious one. Authentic practice is important. It just doesn’t invalidate other choices.

David Trainer true! Tuning forks from the classical period were tuned to around a=410 to a=435. This all differs from different regions. In some regions it didn’t really matter. A4 could be anything back then. As you said: Purely arbitrary.

A4=0hz

In this very video it was stated that pitch varied widely across Europe. No one said that A=430 was THE Classical tuning.

The 430Hz is a modern compromise for playing Mozart, Händel and Hayden on period correct instruments. To me modern 442Hz (most common orchestral pitch for A4), is an abomination. You can't take pitch higher than 438Hz for heavy dramatic voices in the operas of Puccini, Verdi and Donizetti, So the A4=437Hz that Verdi set as the upper limit for his Otello is really the highest we should even have gone for a standard in contemporary music.. Former European pitch (continential or french pitch was A4=435.3Hz and that is the true modern A4 with 12-TET. Händel and Mozart I think were more concerned with better major and minor thirds than 12-TET can achieve so they had forks at 422.5Hz and 421.6Hz respectively which translated from meantone to 12-TET would lie at 424/425Hz.. Modern baroque at 415Hz is also just a compromise so it is in tune with A4=440Hz as 415Hz is 100 cents lower at modern G#4. True Barque pitch is closer to 407-410Hz and more in line with the A4=430-435Hz region (100 cents up).. The human voice and region for 439-445Hz (using 12-TET) is not just natural.. Passaggio sits at a really bad place,, and the resonance is far removed for the natural relaxed resonance of a calm human voice..

Rameau's pitch went as low as 380.