Tuning Pitches of Orchestras

[Greta]

I happened to run across an audition posting at the San Francisco Symphony site, that has listed "The official pitch of the orchestra is A=441." Although A=440 is the generally accepted "concert pitch", I knew that some orchestras indeed tuned slightly differently from recordings, and I wondered...why?

Is it just tradition? Is it the conductor's choice?  I looked up the Wikipedia article on pitch, it was very interesting. It stated British and American orchestras usually adhere to 440Hz, while 442Hz is common in Continental European orchestras, and 445Hz in Germany, Austria, and the East.

Well, apparently according to the debate at the Violinist.com forum, the violinists taking auditions report many American orchestras have gone to 442Hz also, such as Chicago and L.A., and NY and Boston slightly higher.

So what does this accomplish? Is it a factor at all into why European orchestras "sound different"? I would associate a higher pitch with a brighter sound, yet the great Austro-German orchestra sound darker.

One violinist at that forum says he had been taught "that the reason conductors want higher tuning pitches is because string instruments are louder at higher pitches while wind instruments do not get louder at the higher pitches. This means that orchestras playing at higher pitches have a more prominent string sound." I certainly notice and admire the Wiener and Berliner strings, but it there any truth to that?

[Montpellier]

Crikey....ok it's noticeable to someone with extremely accurate perfect pitch like Boulez but 2Hz?  (442 against 440?) It's not that noticeable, surely, and I can see no reason to abrogate an international convention except just to be different.   Functionally weird.  I mean, it's going to screw things up for instruments like double reeds where the tuning latitude is very small indeed.

[Greta]

Yes, this bassoon article is about exactly that problem created when double reeds play internationally.

[jochanaan]

Crikey....ok it's noticeable to someone with extremely accurate perfect pitch like Boulez but 2Hz?  (442 against 440?) It's not that noticeable, surely, and I can see no reason to abrogate an international convention except just to be different.   Functionally weird.  I mean, it's going to screw things up for instruments like double reeds where the tuning latitude is very small indeed.

It's not that small.  We can easily make reeds to play +- 5 Hz away from A440, and we have to adjust constantly anyway.  And most woodwinds these days are made to play at A442 or so.  It's a lot easier to adjust down than up.  My German-made oboe (Hans Kreul of Tübingen, for those interested; I like its big dark sound better than that of most Lorées) would probably play naturally at A445, but I make reeds for it to play as close to A440 as I can get.

I probably couldn't tell if an orchestra was playing at A442 rather than A440, but I can hear the difference in pitch at A445, especially in head-to-head comparisons.  The main difference is tone; it's definitely brighter at the higher pitch.

(The darkness in the Austro-German groups comes from instrument construction and playing styles, not pitch.  At A440, they'd be even darker than they are. )

[hautbois]

From sources i have read a typical orchestra or ensemble, given even at its highest performance level, would fluctuate as much as to 443 or as low as 439 or more in a performance. It does not undermine the quality of an orchestra, but that sort of fluctuation is necessary because though one might start an argument of what tuning systems to use, one simply must remember that to play orchestral music solely on basis of equal temperament will result in a dreadfully out of tune performance. (Gerald Eskelin has a great book on this topic titled "Lies my music teacher told me") Even in piano concertos, because a piano's timbre naturally dies away, the orchestra can still play in tune together with it.

The point is, the temperament (To be a super nerd, the correct term is 'Temperament' and not 'Pitch', pitch itself refers to the note "A", which is pretty much standardised everywhere in the world, and we still don't know why!) on which the orchestra is set in is only a basis in which to rely on. For example, in a major triad chord of A-C#-E, if one takes the equal tempered system as with all pianos as a basis of 'correct tuning', the C# heard on the piano must be flattened slightly and the E raised the slightest for the chord to sound pure and beautiful (in tune!). But if one goes to a F major triad where A becomes the 2nd note in the chord consisting of F-A-C, the A is in this cased asked to be flattened. Sounds rather confusing, but that is how flexible performers should be.

Temperament standards are different everywhere sometimes because of the traditions rooted and also because of the music director's preferences etc. I never knew that SFSO plays in 441 (which is what i was taught to practise in for the sake of flexibility in case of future necessity to move up or down in case of job requirements) and i was told that all American orchestras play in 440, until a few months ago when i was told that NYPO plays in 442 and vice versa, so, i really don't know the culprit behind all this. But what i do know is that i doesnt matter what temperament they are in, because they sure can make a hell lot of good music!

Howard

[jochanaan]

hautbois, some orchestral instruments don't even use the tempered scale.  Strings are tuned to pure fifths, not tempered fifths; and brass instruments are based on the harmonic series--again, not tempered at all.  Even our instrument uses the harmonic series once you get above the first octave.  And we both know that our reeds greatly affect our intonation.   Really, it's amazing that orchestras can play in tune at all!

[hautbois]

hautbois, some orchestral instruments don't even use the tempered scale.  Strings are tuned to pure fifths, not tempered fifths; and brass instruments are based on the harmonic series--again, not tempered at all.  Even our instrument uses the harmonic series once you get above the first octave.  And we both know that our reeds greatly affect our intonation.   Really, it's amazing that orchestras can play in tune at all!

Yes, i am quite aware of that. But i have some doubts that you might as well clarify for me. How far off is a pure 5th from a tempered 5th?

Howard

[jochanaan]

Yes, i am quite aware of that. But i have some doubts that you might as well clarify for me. How far off is a pure 5th from a tempered 5th?

It's really very close, about a beat per second in the A440 range; that is, the D below that A, tuned perfectly, is about one cycle per second slower than a D tuned to a tempered fifth.  The real difficulty comes with the low G's on a violin, and the G's and C's on viola and cello; but even those aren't so far away you hear an audible dissonance.

[M forever]

A perfect 5th is the frequency ratio of 3:2 or 1.5. A tempered fifth is typically (though not always because there are different tempering concepts) 1.4953494 (which is 1/4 of the syntonic comma, the "error" that you end up with when you stack perfect 3rds on top of each other, some systems differ slightly).
So if you have an A=440Hz, the perfect 5th above it would be E=660Hz. The tempered 5th would be E=657.953736Hz.
In Jochanaan's example, the perfect 5th below A=440Hz would be D=293.3333Hz and the tempered 5th would be D=294.2456Hz, so the difference is indeed slightly less than 1Hz.

[M forever]

BTW, I did a little bit of research on the subject and found no simple answer for the question why the tuning at least appears to drift upwards either. In fact, it turns out that during certain historical periods the tuning was even much higher than today. E.g., according to some sources I found, the tuning of German organs in the early baroque was even as high as 490Hz (!). Apparently, there was a tendency to go to a lower tuning in the early 18th century which may or may not have had something to do with the popularity of French built woodwind instruments which were tuned much lower at the time since French organs were also tuned much lower. At least that's what some sources I found which appear solid to me say. It may be interesting to note that in some places, the common tuning was already much higher in the mid-19th century, around 442Hz in Berlin and even 456Hz in Vienna during some periods. So it is not as simple as saying that the "right" tuning is 440Hz and some just tune a little higher to make the sound "more brilliant".

[sound67]

Frankfurt Opera and Radio Orchestras: 443kHz. As I understand, this is the most common tuning pitch these days (?!)

[hautbois]

I would guess that 442 is the 'norm' nowadays because both the Malaysian Phil and Singapore Sym employ 442 (both being international orchestras with musicians from all over the world). Indeed there is no need to say who is right, but 440-445 is the basic range of today's preferences. (Period groups perform these days usually perform at 415 i persume?)

Howard

[jochanaan]

I'm not sure how true this is, M forever, but I've read that many of the great pianists in the 19th century insisted on tuning gradually higher because of its increased brilliance.  I seem also to remember that Camille Saint-Saens, in the latter part of his long life, complained that everything sounded a half-step sharp to him--a convincing demonstration that pitch had indeed gone up.