Thus spoke Zarathoustra +

[Horace Greeley]

James, et al,

I'm coming in a little late on this but would like to add a bit, and
solicit input from someone who _really_ knows pipes.

I don't think a case can be made for having no inharmonicity in
organ pipes - quite the opposite.  Working on pipe organs is much
like cultivating Ficus trees - They'll never quite let you know if 
they have too much or too little sun/water/shade/whatever - but
they'll sure drop their leaves when annoyed.

Same thing with organs.  They are simply massively responsive
to minute variations in temperature, humidity, draft, dust,
perhaps, even, lumpy gravy.  Minute variations in voicing can
be induces simply by the position of the tuner's body relative to a given
distance from a "tuned" pipe.

As to orchestral intonation - there was a brief period of 30 years or
so when conductors (now mostly dead) had and took the time to tune
orchestras carefully.  These were folks like Szell, Markevich, and a few
others.  If one listens critically to most recorded music, one will find that
most recent (last 10 years or so) recordings have simply appalling intonation.
The most usual culprits (besides conductors who seem tone-deaf) are second
chair woodwinds, particularly bassoons and clarinets, who play sharp, and
oboes
and flutes who tend to play flat.  Others include generally sharp trombones,
flat trumpets, and schizophrenic horns, who play flat on the F side and sharp
on the Bb side of their instruments.  In the meantime, the strings, who, if
they
are most fortunate do not work with an oboist who inherited Tabateau's  habit
of playing a "tuning A" lower than he actually played, are still stuck with
four
or so open strings, to which they must reference if they are going to maintain
any kind of internal structure to their own playing.


The problems are more noticeable in US orchestras in general, but most of
the recent Eastern European recordings are practically unlistenable...there
isn't even that redeeming quality of musicality which characterized the
performances of conductors like Ansermet and Mrvansky.

Two points to put all of this into some kind of perspective:

First, Edgar Brinsmead contended that the reason for the establishment of 
440Hz as the standard for "Concert A" for the reason that measurements taken
(at the time, ca 1890's) indicated that the _average_ change in pitch of an
orchestra during performance was 10Hz.  (Remember that most instrument
were not as stable as they are now - listen to some of Koussevitsky's early
recordings.)  And, that, therefore, in order to have the piano sound as in
tune
as possible, tuners/manufacturers split the difference - between the older
"French" or "Diapason" A at 435Hz, and the (projected) 10Hz higher
end-of-performance
level of 445Hz.  (Remember also that this was not all that long after the
little used,
and seldom discussed "Steinway" A of 464Hz.  Yes, the old strings would
take it, 
I am not sure that the ones we get now would.)

Second, we, as technicians, must constantly keep fresh in our minds, as a part
of our regular operational equation, that we, by the nature of the work we
do, hear
things in greater detail that practically anyone else.  We may take in the
same
reductively ascertainable material, but, our filters are different - and -
we are
(if diligent and professional, as we all are) constantly striving to hear ever
finer gradations of pitch and tone color.

As an illustration of this, when taking an acoustics class (X years ago),
the instructor
had been a researcher at Bell Labs for years, and had written what was, at
the time,
a leading acoustics text.  In one class this expert asserted that while
some people
could hear gradations as small as 2 or 3 cents, no one could hear anything
finer than that.
After some discussion...a trip to an audiologist convinced him that, yes,
there were/are
some who can hear more acutely than 2 or 3 cents.  The point here is that
we do this
regularly, most musicians do not - not that they can't they just don't.

Finally, I've always sort of liked the sound of the organ being a little on
the flat side at the
end of Zarathustra.  After all, at the end of his tremendous inflation,
great vision, and eventual
psychotic break, even Zarathustra had to come back to earth.  Thus, as the
orchestra plays that
long, drawn-out diminuendo (growing, I would suggest, more and more sharp
in the process), we
are left with the great pedal Bourdons on C and G... and that's why the C
must be flat, because in
the score there is no E - but, if the organ is well tuned, you will hear it.

(It's different for the Saint Saens Organ Symphony, but, that's in c not C...)

Best to all.

Horace






At 06:59 AM 10/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Michel,
>Back in the 60's when Allen organs were still analog I got the job of
>retuning the Allen to A-442, the St. Louis Symphony's pitch for a
>performance of this piece..  The only time it seemed when you heard the
>organ was at the end and I don't recall the Allen sounding flat.  All I
>felt was "All that work for that"!
>
>James Grebe
>R.P.T. from St. Louis
>pianoman@inlink.com
>"Take me through the darkness to the break of the day"
>
>----------
>> From: Michel Lachance <chance@InterLinx.qc.ca>
>> To: pianotech@ptg.org
>> Subject: Thus spoke Zarathoustra
>> Date: Tuesday, October 14, 1997 4:27 PM
>> 
>> Robert Scott wrote:
>> > 
>> > 
>> > How about using a pipe organ with the piano?  Don't they have
>> > zero inharmonicity?  If you tuned middle C to a pipe that was
>> > rich in harmonics, then the partials of the piano string would
>> > beat with the harmonics of the pipe.
>> > 
>> > Bob Scott
>> 
>> 
>> Have you ever heard Richard Strauss Overture Also sprach Zarathoustra 
>> (2001 Odyssey Theme...)?  What strikes me everytime I hear it, no matter 
>> what version, is that flat sounding organ when left alone after the 
>> orchestra was holding a full blast C major chord at the end.  Is it 
>> because the orchestra pitch tends to go slightly up when playing a 
>> triple forte? Or is it because all these organs have been tuned by the  
>> same tuner?
>> 
>> Michel Lachance
>
>
Horace Greeley

Systems Analyst/Engineer
Controller's Office
Stanford University

email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
voice mail: 650.725.906
fax: 650.725.8014