Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/690

extend the compass of the voice upwards. Otherwise we may assume no disturbing alteration has taken place for more than 2000 years in its position and extent. Vibrations increase in rapidity as a note rises and decrease as it falls. Any note may be a pitch note; for orchestras custom has settled upon a¹ in the treble clef, for organs and pianos in Great Britain c², and for modern brass instruments b flat¹.

We are not without a clue to the pitch usual in the classic Greek and Alexandrian ages: the vocal octave to which the lyre “as adapted was noted as from e to e¹. As in choruses baritone and low tenor singers always prevail, d–d¹, at French or at medium pitch, would really be the Greek singing octave; we may therefore regard it as a tone lower than that to which we are accustomed. But to sing the lower Greek modes in or near the vocal octave it was necessary to transpose (μεταβολή) a fourth upwards, which is effected in modern notation by a flat placed upon the b line of the staff; thus modulating from our major key of C to that of F. This transposition has had, as we shall see much to do with the history of our subject, ultimately influencing the ecclesiastical chant and lasting until the 17th century of our era. It does not appear from any evidence that the keyboards—when there were more than one—of the early organs were arranged for transposition, but it is certain that the Flemish harpsichords to 1650 were made with double keyboards to accommodate it (see Hipkins’ History of the Pianoforte, 1897). But a positive identity of pitch cannot be claimed for any period of time, and certainly not for the early organs; the foot-rule of the organ-builder, which had to do with the lengths of the pipes, and which varied in every country and province, could easily cause a difference of a semitone. Scale and wind-pressure are also important factors. But with all these often opposed conditions, we find less variation than might be expected, the main and really important divergence being due to the necessity of transposition, which added a very high pitch to the primarily convenient low one.

The first to attempt to define pitch would seem to have been Arnold Schlick (Musica ausgetcutscht und ausgezogen, Heidelberg, 1511), who gives a measure, a line of 4⁠7/8⁠ Rhenish inches, which, he says, multiplied sixteen times, should be the lowest F of a small organ. He gives no diameter or wind-pressure. Dr A. J. Ellis used this indication to have an organ pipe made which with one-sixteenth diameter and a wind-pressure of 3⁠1/4⁠ in., at one-fourth Schlick’s length, gave f ¹ 301·6, from which he derived a just major third of a¹ 377, which would compare very well with an old Greek a¹. Schlick goes on to say the organ is to be suited to the choir and properly tuned for singing, that the singer may not be forced to sing too high or too low and the organist have to play chromatics, which is not handy for every one. Further, he says pitch cannot be exactly defined, because voices vary; he nevertheless gives the measure above mentioned for the low F, but if a larger organ is built to include the still lower C, then this C must be of the same measurement, the reason being that a greater part of church music ends in “grambus” a word understood by Schlick’s editor to mean the transposition of a fourth. The larger high-pitch organ will therefore be at a¹ 502·6. The Halberstadt organ, about which so much has been written, was, according to Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, Wolffenbüttel, 1618), built in 1361, and repaired or rebuilt 1495. He gives the longest pipe of this organ, B natural, as 31 Brunswick feet, and the circumference 3⁠1/2⁠ ft. He further tells us this pitch was a tone, nearly a tone and a half, higher than a suitable church pitch (Chorton), for which he gives a diagram. Dr Ellis had pipes (now preserved in the Royal Institution, London) made to reproduce both these pitches at 3⁠1/4⁠ in. wind-pressure. The Halberstadt pitch was found to be a¹ 505·8; the Chorton, 424·2. Ellis used mean-tone temperament in calculating this lower pitch; but as he used just intonation for the Halberstadt, it seems preferable to substitute it for the Chorton. thus reducing it to a¹ 422·8. Praetorius’s Cammerton, or chamber pitch, formulated in his diagrams for voices and instruments, is, he says, a whole tone higher, equivalent, therefore, to a¹ 475·65. Nearly all the German organs in his time were tuned to this higher pitch. Ellis offered the suggestion of a much higher pitch for this Cammerton in his lecture “On the History of Musical Pitch,” read before the Society of Arts, London (Journ. Soc. Arts, March 5, 1880), but the present writer is unable to accept it. The lower vibration number is justified by due consideration of the three divisions of the male voice, bass, tenor and alto, as given by Praetorius, whose Cammerton very closely corresponds with Bernhardt Schmidt’s Durham organ, 1663-1668, the original pitch of which has been proved by Professor Armes to have been a¹ 474·1. The Halberstadt pitch is nearly a semitone higher, which again agrees with the statement of Praetorius, and also Schlick’s high C organ. Yet it would seem there had been a still higher pitch used in the old ecclesiastical music. Upon this interesting question Praetorius is confused and difficult to understand, but he never wavers about the transposition of a fourth. In one passage he distinctly says the old organ high pitch had been a whole tone above his Cammerton, with which we shall find his tertia minore combines to make the required interval. The term tertia minore, or inferiore, is used by Praetorius to describe a low pitch, often preferred in England and the Netherlands, in Italy and in some parts of Germany. An organist, instead of transposing a whole tone down from the Cammerton, would for the tertia minore have to transpose a minor third. A corroboration of this pitch is found in A. Silbermann’s great organ in Strasburg minster (1713–1716), the pitch of which, taken in 1880 and reduced to 59° Fahr. (as are all pitches in this article), is a¹ 393·2. An old organ at Versailles (1789) was very near this example, a¹ 395·8. Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley (vide Ellis’s lecture) regarded the French ton de chapelle as being about a minor third below the Diapason Normal, a¹ 435, and said that most of the untouched organs in the French cathedrals were at this low pitch. Strasburg was French territory in 1713, but Silbermann’s organ is not quite a whole tone below. Ellis quotes an organ at Lille, a¹ 374·2, but no other instance of the very low Schlick pitch is recorded, although trial of the French cathedral organs might perhaps result in the finding of examples. Ellis gives Dom Bèdos (L’Art du facture d’orgues, Paris, 1766) as authority for a mean tone a¹ 376·6. To return to the tertia minore. Dr R. Smith, of Cambridge, in 1759, had the organ of Trinity College, built by Bernhardt Schmidt, lowered a whole tone, to reduce it to certain Roman pitch pipes made about 1720. His determinations of pitch by a weighted wire are not trustworthy; Ellis thinks they are not safe within four or five vibrations per second but gives a mean pitch for this organ, when altered, of a¹ 395·2. St Michael’s church at Hamburg, built as late as 1762 and unaltered in 1880, had a 17th-century pitch, a¹ 407·9. This is about a semitone below the Diapason Normal, and a just minor third lower than the St Jacobi organ in the same city (1688), measured by Herr Schmahl, a¹ 489·2. What was remarkable in this organ was that it had one stop which was an equal minor third lower, a¹ 411·41. The difference of a minor third, or, as we shall see later, a whole tone, had replaced the earlier fourth. Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley’s comparison of the church and chamber pitches of Orlando Gibbons (vide Ellis’s lecture) clearly shows the minor third in Great Britain in the first half of the 17th century. But the narrowing continued. Bernhardt Schmidt, better known in England as Father Smith, was invited about 1660 to build the organ for the Chapel Royal, Whitehall; two years later he built the organ in Durham Cathedral a¹ 474·1, difference a whole tone, and practically agreeing with the Cammerton of Praetorius. The Hampton Court organ of 1690 shows that Schmidt had further lowered his pitch a semitone, to a¹ 441·7. What happened at Durham was that at some subsequent date the pipes were shifted up a semitone to bring the organ into conformity with this lower pitch, with which it is probable Schmidt’s organs in St Paul’s and the Temple, and also Trinity College, Cambridge, agreed. This lowering tendency towards the low church pitch, and the final adoption of the latter as a general mean pitch throughout the 18th century, was no doubt influenced by the introduction of the violin, which would not bear the high tension to which the