Baroque Festival

[Fred S. Sturm]

Avery Todd wrote:
> 
> List,
> 
>    For those of you interested in HT's, I just thought I'd post
> something that, to me, is unbelievable.
>    Starting this Saturday, this festival goes for abut a week
> and is primarily being done by the Houston Symphony. Composers
> such as Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Purcell, Telemann and Corelli all
> have works being performed.
>    What I find hard to understand is that all the concerts with
> the Symphony people are performed in ET and at A-442, their
> standard pitch. This means that for a triple concerto they're
> doing, I'm going to have to raise ours to stabilize it so that
> the symphony tuner won't have to fight that when he's tuning the
> 3 together. :-(
>    I know some might just say, so.....? But I can't believe
> they're doing a Baroque Festival this way. Oh well, at least _I_
> don't have to tune for any of it except one. And that one is at
> least at A-440 with one of our faculty members.
>    Just thought some might find this "curious". :-)
> 
> Avery
> 
	If they are doing a triple concerto (presumably Bach) with three 
concert grand pianos, that's already so far from baroque that the pitch 
and temperament hardly register as issues. On the other hand, It's 
preferable, from the technicians point of view, to trying to get three 
double manual harpsichords to be in tune, all at the same time, under 
the lights, and under conditions of a festival (sharply limited 
timeframes). So count your blessings. ;-)

Fred Sturm, RPT
University of New Mexico