Abstract
THE question of musical pitch has, through the action of some of the leading pianoforte makers, been again introduced into public discussion. That it should end in the general adoption of the French diapason normal hardly admits of a doubt, especially as it is in the United Kingdom only there remain any advocates for the high pitch formerly general. France introduced by law the diapason normal in 1859, and has been gradually followed by Belgium and Italy, Germany and Austria, Russia and the United States of America, leaving this country in musical isolation from which a great effort has yet to be made to bring it into uniformity with other musical countries, so that the note A will be approximately the same here as anywhere else, and not give the impression of a transposition. The difference of vibration number is not so very much; if it were a semitone, it might be easier rectified—at least in concert organs—it may be stated at , or at most of an equal semitone. It is measurement and the important consideration of temperature that justify the admission of a subject, at the first aspect merely artistic, into the columns of NATURE. Temperature has as yet met with insufficient consideration. It is hardly alluded to in the “Sensations of Tone” by Helmholtz; it meets with a bare mention only, although somewhat extended in the footnotes of the English translator, the late Dr. A. J. Ellis, who refers (p. 90, second edition) to the experimental work in that direction of Mr. Blaikley.
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HIPKINS, A. The New Philharmonic Musical Pitch. Nature 60, 421–422 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/060421a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/060421a0