Peterborough pitch change

[MrGongGong]

Anarchy?

Anarchy is not chaos (as i'm sure you know)

Chaos is a wonderful thing indeed

The tabla player I was recording with today had tuned to A @ 458 , perfect resonance for the drum and the room , 440 would be so dull

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Anarchy is not chaos (as i'm sure you know)

Chaos is a wonderful thing indeed

The tabla player I was recording with today had tuned to A @ 458 , perfect resonance for the drum and the room , 440 would be so dull

Are you sure it wasn't in B flat?

[MrGongGong]

Are you sure it wasn't in B flat?

Well strictly speaking SA is not really "A" anyway
and doesn't have a fixed pitch (unless, of course , you are playing with a harmonium)

[DracoM]

I remember those occasions as a treble all too well, Roger: once with a commissioned triple choir piece (written out in illegible mss) that we weren't really on top of, from Kenneth Leighton who was also there to witness our mangling of it and for the seemingly long-running feud we had with Norwich choristers who had thrown lit bangers onto our coach. We were envious of the Peterborough boys, not only for their rather more refined singing, but because they also got to wear cloaks!

Aha!! Is that why no-one apparently listened to the Norwich CE?

[Madame Suggia]

Thank goodness!

For a minute I thought they'd moved the market.

[Cornet IV]

[QUOTE=MrGongGong;355199]Nooooooooooooooooo

This sounds like a terrible idea
from the folks I know who know about these things
its a huge undertaking and only worth doing if you want to play other instruments with it ! QUOTE]

Not only terrible, it is lunatic! I'm astonished that the church administrators were persuaded to waste such an extraordinary sum in pursuit of such a patently worthless undertaking.

To spend this sum in order to accommodate "visiting orchestras" is a nonsense in itself. The organ is a stand-alone instrument intended and built for service to the church, it is not a public instrument (in the Town Hall sense) and has no need to be employed with other instruments - the fact that it might be as much as a quarter-tone (wow!) sharp in respect of some arbitrary standard is wholly irrelevant. In any event, orchestras frequently are asked to play at "non standard" pitches to cater to the vanity of certain conductors, so they can well adapt to the organ's characteristics.

"The choristers and lay clerks have all learnt to sing at the standard pitch, that's the pitch they hear when they play their violin and listen to their iPods, so the cathedral organ is the odd one out," he said.

This is absolute rubbish and a wholly specious proposition. The compass of the human voice is unaffected by such a very minor shift in pitch. I doubt if more than 5% of singers could detect a departure of this degree from the "standard". Like string players who become inured to playing out of tune to accommodate the dictates of equal temperament, the singers naturally adapt. I am given to wonder how choirs ever managed before 1939. How grateful should we be that Palestrina, Gibbons, Croft, Weelkes and Dr Sir Arthur Gore-Ouseley, Bart did not have iPods? Gosh! In their day, pitch was hardly above A415! How the cathedral authorities ever came to be bamboozled by such obviously arrant tripe is beyond me. I wonder how they will react to the choice of the many tuning conventions with which they may be presented.

Kirnberger III anyone?

Give me strength!

[mercia]

The organ is a stand-alone instrument intended and built for service to the church, it is not a public instrument (in the Town Hall sense) and has no need to be employed with other instruments

doesn't Mr Q make the point, either in the article or the video, that there is no other venue in Peterborough for orchestral concerts, i.e. the cathedral is the local "concert hall" ?

[MrGongGong]

doesn't Mr Q make the point, either in the article or the video, that there is no other venue in Peterborough for orchestral concerts, i.e. the cathedral is the local "concert hall" ?

This IS a valid reason for wanting to do this
but I wonder given the speed of the East Coast mainline whether the lack of pipe organ in Orchestral concerts is a huge problem for the good burghers of Peterborough ?

"The choristers and lay clerks have all learnt to sing at the standard pitch, that's the pitch they hear when they play their violin and listen to their iPods, so the cathedral organ is the odd one out," he said.

This is b*llocks IMV or maybe I missed out on "calibration" when I was in a choir ?
We know that pitch varies widely (apologies for this again but it does prove the point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnhlQUBsd6g)

Reading town hall ?

[mercia]

does this mean that in churches throughout Britain with organs predating 1939 (if that is the magic date) choirs and congregations are regularly straining their voices by inadvertently singing hymns, psalms, anthems etc. at too high a pitch ? should perhaps a health warning be pinned to every porch door ?

[Cornet IV]

[QUOTE=MrGongGong;355490]This IS a valid reason for wanting to do this but I wonder given the speed of the East Coast mainline whether the lack of pipe organ in Orchestral concerts is a huge problem for the good burghers of Peterborough ?QUOTE]

Frankly, I do not accept that the absence of a suitable concert venue in Peterborough is reason enough to repitch the Cathedral instrument. How often is an organ scored in symphonic works anyway? It seems to me that for the very infrequent occasions when an organ might be required, for the equivalent of Harrison's bill, the promoters could make many hirings of an electronic alternative, thus preserving the 19th century integrity of the Cathedral instrument and avoiding a great deal of unwarranted disruption. In any event, I'm sure there must be churches in or near Peterborough which might house an organ half a semitone below that claimed so necessary to the maintenance of the peculiarities of these iPod-centric singers and instrumentalists.

I agree absolutely, MrGG, "this is b*llocks" As I suggested earlier (and if I had known how to spell b*llocks, I would have done so!), this is a specious argument wholly devoid of merit and I continue to be astonished that anyone has fallen for it.

[Sir Velo]

the promoters could make many hirings of an electronic alternative,

Did you hear the recent Sinfonia Antarctica at Glasgow City Halls, for which the organisers made the schoolboy error of using an electronic replica? It made climbing the Beardmore sound like doing the school run in a clapped out old Lada.

[Chris Watson]

Cornet IV - I've no idea who you are, but sitting at my desk in Oxford I like to imagine that I'm addressing a charming bearded sandal-wearing gentleman of a certain age who's probably very knowledgeable about wind pressures and mutations and really quite passionate about the King of Instruments but who is living in a world of ideals rather than the reality of 21st century daily music making, and the demands/technical problems of singing at nearly-but-not-quite a semitone higher than what has now (quite possibly regrettably) become normal pitch. If the BBC article is to be believed, this pitch change has been wanted for quite some time, so it isn't some whim that Robert has had on arrival. If you sing every day, particularly if you also play an instrument, you very quickly develop a muscle-memory in your voice for pitch, just in the same way that a good sportsman knows precisely how hard to strike his chosen round object to get the desired effect, and if you are required sometimes to sing at an awkwardly high pitch it can be extremely uncomfortable, and very possibly damaging to young voices. That's not to say that voices can't adapt to a different pitch - when singing at 415 or 465 you make a mental adjustment and re-calibrate, just as a golfer would do on a particularly windy day, but being forced to sing in the gap between two established pitches just isn't good for you.
Someone else mentioned Lichfield - don't they have an electronic organ there for use in the festival? I seem to recall one. It's a solution to the wider compatibility problem mentioned, but not one anyone who loves the real thing should be happy with. Of course it would be a pity if all historical anomalies were ironed out, but if the opportunity arose to make life easier for the people who make music day in day out in a cathedral, surely it would be perverse not to take it.

[Vile Consort]

does this mean that in churches throughout Britain with organs predating 1939 (if that is the magic date) choirs and congregations are regularly straining their voices by inadvertently singing hymns, psalms, anthems etc. at too high a pitch ? should perhaps a health warning be pinned to every porch door ?

Harrison's were building instruments tuned to A=435 in the late 1920's, and so a little below modern pitch.

[Chris Watson]

Slightly off topic, but I hope nonetheless interesting, is this entertaining and informative book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony/dp/0393334201

It deals mainly with temperament rather than pitch, but does remind you how very recent the idea of conformity of pitch and tuning is.

[MrGongGong]

Slightly off topic, but I hope nonetheless interesting, is this entertaining and informative book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony/dp/0393334201

It deals mainly with temperament rather than pitch, but does remind you how very recent the idea of conformity of pitch and tuning is.

Worth a read imv