Pitch and brightness

[David Renaud]

Perhaps I may offer some experience with this creepy pitch problem.
I am a woodwind player, Clarinets as major, saxes and flutes as minor.
I have played pops concerts with a national orchestra,
and much freelance pit work, the odd pick up orchestra.

I can not explain the science, but I can offer my personal experience
that higher pitch is brighter. I have recordings of the Berlin orchestra
at A448, and some others at A435. This is a big spread.

The Bb clarinet is noticably brighter then the A clarinet in tone.
The spread of A435 to A448 is a good part of that semitone.
In fact, a German clarinettist must buy an instrument with holes
bored out differently. Making such a change by exchanging for just a
short barrel would throw all the scales intonation way off.

Also when I use a 65 mm barrel(1mm short) and voice the clarinet
tone up to A442(Montreal symphony is always 442; on their
auditions they advertise its requirement for the audition) I end
up brighter.

My hypothesis as to why orchestras push the pitch is simple.

We have built larger and larger halls,
with less and less wood, and more cushy seats and rug
that suck up sound. It requires a very bright sound to project
into a room of 3000 without amplification.  In fact some of the
older bass player I know often complain about how bright
the are asked to play compared with 30 years ago.

Timbre has evolved. Pitch is only one of the techniques
to achieve a strong core to the sound that is bright enough to carry.
Once the sound gets out a couple hundred feet it sounds much more mellow.

We don't get our best recording orchestras performing in
nice church halls and concert halls that hold only 300-500 people
with dozens of different reflective surfaces, shapes and contours.
Halls are so large, if there is too much reflection, the delay is too
great. They are massive, and often fall into two categories.
One...they are dead, or two.... they sound like a gymnasium because
the delay is so great.

So again I say. Rising pitch is only one technique orchestras are using
to deal with the problem. Equipment(mouthpieces, instruments)
& performance technique also have evolved to the same end.

This is not a new problem. I think a wind or string players
persuit of the perfect tone is sonewhat obsesive at this level of
performance. The in thing/equipment/mouthpiece/bow/technique,
goes in cycles. Perhaps one day it will swing the other way,
Perhaps one day all the clarinetist will be promoting double
embochures again in order to get a "darker" tone. It is so
competative for these job positions that everyone tends to follow
whoever is at the top of the food chain in order to meet expectations
and get a job. So a minority of musicians tend to set the trend.

                                           Cheers
                                           David Renaud
                                           Canada
                                           RPT



"Robert A. Anderson" wrote:

> The story I have read more than once is that the rise in orchestral
> pitch in the 19th century was due to brass instruments. In the quest for
> a "brighter" sound, instruments were made to give increasingly higher
> pitches. This phenomenon was largely responsible for the standardization
> of pitch. I may have read this in Helmholtz. I seem to remember that he
> (or probably Ellis, in one of the appendices) notes the pitch of various
> orchestras and manufactures, and that it rose to about 468, maybe in the
> 1860s or '70s. Perhaps someone better informed can tell whether or not
> that's accurate. I have never understood why a higher pitched brass
> instrument would sound "brighter", though. The explanation about the
> violins deadening under stress sounds plausible, at least. Anyway,
> Mozart's A was in the 430s, which is a long way from the 460s. So that's
> a much larger spread than 440 to 444. But the change happened
> gradually.  Maybe the "brightness" was a psychological
> (psycho-acoustic?) phenomenon. What do you brass players have to say?
>
> Bob Anderson
> Tucson, AZ