http://www.schillerinstitute.org/conf-iclc/1980s/conf_88_milan_tuning.html

This has to do with the change to making A=440 or higher in recent years, and how it has caused problems for instrumentalists and singers alike.

Listen to these examples to hear the difference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKKQp5_5u-M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwNntY4BTdw&feature=related

Thoughts?

The idea of something called the "Schiller Institute," incongruously based in Italy, being hooked up with the wife of has-been wacko presidential candidate, Lyndon LaRouche, and the possibility of bumper stickers proclaiming C=256, is all very intriguing.

I'm even more intrigued when I read that:

"the conference resolved to introduce legislation into the Italian parliament which would require a return to the natural tuning at which middle-C equals precisely 256 cycles per second--significantly lower than the current tuning which sets A at 440 cps--or frequently even higher! ! ! . . ."

Well, while I'm progressive enough to feel that a a little government regulation may be a good idea and isn't necessarily communism, I don't want no government telling me how to tune my fiddle.

To be a little more serious, tuning is a real issue to musicians, and I do wonder if many of us have ever actually been affected by the tendency of some ensembles to tune a tad higher to achieve a brighter sound?

Tomasino

Well, Italians take their music very seriously. Everyone knows opera, and unless you are born in Italy, you can't get a job singing opera over there unless they can show that no one else who is Italian is available for that performance. Unless you live in Italy, this regulation wouldn't be something you'd *have* to adhere to, but it would go a long ways in making conductors think twice about their tuning higher.

The question is: is brighter better? Obviously tuning higher makes it brighter, but is that a desired effect? In the sound clips, it is definitely not desirable for the singer. Conductors are so stringent on adhering to what the composer originally intended, but they won't play Verdi in the tuning *he* intended.

Morodiene,

I totally agree it is not better for the singer.

What is the reference you make to Verdi and conductors? Did Verdi specify a certain non-standard tuning?

Tomasino

Yes in that article I referenced it talks about Verdi's insistence that the tuning be at C=256:

'Verdi's letter to the War Ministry in 1884, calling for a "noble and majestic sound" as opposed to the "shouts of a too-high tuning"'

Karajan is mostly blamed for raising the tuning to A=440.

440 as a standard started before Karajan. It was adopted as a standard by the American Federation of Musicians in 1917, and was a US standard in 1920.

It's not as radical as going all the way down to A = 415. With A = 440, middle c would be approximately 261.626 Hz, with the B below it at approximately 246.941 Hz. At C = 256, the A typically tuned to 440 would be at about 430.539, compared to in A=440 the G# below it would be about 415.305.

Now this is assuming 12-tone equal temperament though.

That said I don't have a problem with people tuning their instruments to C = 256, but it doesn't need to be a worldwide standard.

The "Schiller Institute" lost all credibility with this, which appears on the web page linked above:



Oh well, it was the 1980s.

If I liked Verdi I would probably think it should be performed at the pitch for which it was written just as much as baroque should be performed at its correct pitch. For those with perfect pitch, a higher note doesn't just sound "brighter" but totally different.

The current trend for pitch to drift above A=440Hz should be resisted at all costs. I understand some woodwinds are now built to A=443Hz. This does indeed require legislation, as centuries of this malarkey show.

Well, hopefully one can look at the content of what is being said with a critical mind and see if it has value or not. That is like the popular internet argument "You know who else liked pancakes...Hitler!" thus making pancakes the bane of all culinary critics.

If you are going to go based on credibility, then the fact that great singers such as Renata Tebaldi, Monserrat Caballe, Placido Domingo, as well as other famous instrumentalists and Verdi himself all were in favor of this tuning should count more than the institute that held this conference.

I think the youtube clips alone are indicative of how important this is. In singing in particular, there are places in the voice called "passagios" where certain shifts happen. For men, anything above their upper passagio needs to covered, which means a conscious modification of the vowel to allow for the upper notes to be comfortable and maintain coordination of the lower register. For women, this means much more involvement of the upper register.

If the tuning is higher, then composers who wrote for the voice and were experts at it like Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, etc., they would take the passagio into consideration when writing melodies. They would write idiomatically for the voice, just like many of them did for other instruments, rather than working against it and asking them to sing things that constantly hover on the passagio.

But surely the passagio varies in pitch between singers more than the 32 cents we're talking about?

P.S. I edited my post to tighten up the argument a bit while you were typing.

Not for the same voice type. Sopranos, for instance, have their passagio from E5-F5, mezzos D5-Eb5. All major voice types (soprano, mezzo, alto, contralto, tenor, baritone, and bass) have passagios in distinct areas of the voice. This is part of how one identifies what the voice type is.

edited to add:
This is exactly what the baritone on the youtube clip was demonstrating. In the first piece, it is in the lower tuning. The E-flat he sings does not require him to cover because it does not go above his passagio. However, on the A=440 piano, he must sing the E-flat covered, which makes it much more awkward to sing.

I believe Karajan brought the higher tuning to opera. He tuned the orchestra at A=444!

The tuning difference, according to my calculations, is a little bit more than a quarter tone. For me personally--I'm a tenor--this would cause some problems in the area called the "bridge" or the "passagio," roughly meaning that area of the voice where it cracks and you start to yodel, or go into a falsetto if you don't know how to avoid it. The problems, though, would not be insurmountable. A few times through, and any initial awkwardness would be overcome for most well trained tenors.

But there is more to this than a fat quarter tone, because I believe this raising of the pitch has been going on for quite some time before Verdi arrived on the scene. I would surmise that the "usual tunings" were significantly lower than C256 in many parts of Europe before, say, 1850. I say "usual tunings" because I doubt very much that there was any standard pitch for most of music history. I would further surmise that the usual tunings were significantly different going from Vienna to Leipzig to Paris to London and all places in between. But, in general, I believe that pitch has been going up for quite a few centuries. To know all of this for sure, we would probably have to locate antique tuning forks and identify the tunings of medieval organs. There may be some scholars who have done this work.

Tomasino

There are. Pitch was all over the place, sometimes lower, sometimes higher than it is now. Standardization is good, but the pitch that is standardized is arbitrary. 435 and 440 are handy for the mathematics of the pure intervals.

C4=256Hz is about 37 cents lower than A4=440Hz




You are right. This has been discussed for a long time.

http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory27.htm#chartofpitch

http://www.uk-piano.org/history/pitch.html

Changing the pitch reference (both up and down) might be good for some, but also bad for other instruments...

What an interesting thread. It has some resonance for me as somebody that accompanies singers as well as instrumentalists. My clarinet players, sax players and flutists, want me to tune my piano to a=442 or higher. From what I understand, their instruments are made to be tuned in that way.

On the other hand, some of my singers have issues when the piano is tuned higher; they are happy when it's closer to a=438.

Some string players have issues with higher tunings, particularly the ones with very old, very pricey instruments.

And then there's the summer vs. winter pitch of the instrument. The piano WILL go up when the humidity increases, down then the humidity decreases (like in the winter).

So... what's a collaborative pianist to do?

Another interesting article on the history of pitch:

article on the history of pitch

It is clear that as BDB said, pitch was all over the place in the 19th century. To take just one example: in 1878 and 1879, the Covent Garden opera orchestra was pitched at almost A=450. So opera had a much higher tuning, well before Karajan!

The problem is that what is being said is either outright incorrect or relies on facts in dispute (namely, what pitch was actually in use where and when).



We only have the Institute's word that Verdi was in favour of it. Every other source I have found online unthinkingly quotes the Institute. Introducing a law to mandate a pitch different from the Germanic one to shaft it to the Austrians is not the same thing. The letter I quote below goes into more detail here. It's still correct to refer to C=256Hz as "Verdi pitch" because that's what his law said, but it doesn't follow that Verdi's music is written for Verdi pitch.



I agree this particular baritone is better off with the lower pitch - though I note the audience reaction to the difference in pitch of the piano before he starts is almost as big as that on the high E♭. But it does not follow that all singers will be.



Doesn't this mean open vowels going up and closed vowels going down? Every reference I've seen (and I've only found online ones, so perhaps they've all been cribbed from each other) says that the passagio is from 3 to 7 semitones. We are talking here about 1/3 of a semitone. If you listen to a female singer in the Celtic style they use open vowels to remain in their middle register far above the low end of their passagio. I am less familiar with operatic technique but I do remember a lot of "ah-ah-ah" on rising scales to warm up for baroque choir.

The New York Times covered this conference in 1989. In the article, Anthony Morss points out the different mood of pitches, giving the example that the Emperor Concerto is in E♭ major, without mentioning that most musicians apparently can't hear this difference in mood (which is surely the cause of the problem). Zubin Mehta confirms that in 1989 American orchestras were at A=442Hz. Diana Deutsch points out that vibrato is going to eat up some of the deviation.

And then this letter which followed the article debunks the claim that A=432 Hz is actually the correct pitch. This is the letter I referred to above when I disputed the Institute's facts.

Ah..Stephan Zucker. That explains it. I would not trust his translations or sources as good research because he has particular agendas. I suppose we all do to a certain extent, but I don't claim to be an unbiased journalist. I have seen his misinterpretations and quotes out of context before. I have no interest in slander, so I probably should not into further detail. I do not disagree that tuning has been all over the place in the past. I know Mozart's tuning was different than Bach's different than Verdi's, etc. If in fact Verdi claimed Othello should be done in a particular tuning, perhaps as a concession to tuning trends, then I am sure he wrote it with the intention that A=435 and so it should be done that way. I do not doubt then that it would be idiomatic for the voice in such a case.

As for your comment about Celtic singing, that is not necessarily known for its technique. I love Celtic music, and it can be sung with good technique, but I have not heard it done. It is similar to referring to a pop pianist to justify playing with tense hands and wrists as good technique. Also, I would not refer to choir warm-ups. Most choir directors are not voice instructors, and many of them these days are trying to get a different sound than would be used by solo opera singers.


Yes, the audience reacted to the difference in the piano right away. It was such a shock, like going form a warm bath to a cold shower! I'm sure if he was singing without accompaniment the reaction would have happened to his voice, but since the piano came first, that was most noticeable. This also lends credence to the possibility that tuning also affects the piano and not just the voice.

Perhaps I would say that all bass-baritones would be more comfortable singing this aria in the lower tuning based on this clip. That would be fair to say. Based on my experience, I can tell you that if I am singing an aria that goes up to a high C, the tuning makes a *huge* difference. Even a quarter tone. I have also witnessed such things in my students and with other singers I've talked with. There are some notes, once the voice is developed and balanced, that really require little difference in production: for instance going from D5 to Eb5 for sopranos there is nothing special that needs to be done. However, sometimes going from one note to the very next is a *huge* leap in the voice because there is a physical change in the functioning of the vocal mechanism. That means one has to make an adjustment to maintain a particular sound. This is how we define the passagios.

Failure to make this adjustment can have various outcomes, from a tightening of muscles around the larynx/a raising of the larynx, constriction in the tongue and jaw, constriction in the chest, complete release of the lower register which results in the voice flipping into falsetto, singing nasally, etc. Sure, people can and do fail to make these adjustments, but it is not an ideal technique then. It is a weakness in one's technique.



I'm not sure where you get this idea. What do you mean exactly by open and closed vowels?


I agree that different pitches contain different moods, and that different keys also contain these moods. What I'd be interested in knowing is how someone with perfect pitch might observe about different tunings.

Even talking about how vibrato varies the pitch, we're still talking about the vibrato being at a higher or lower part of the voice. Considering that a piece could either be hovering at the beginning of the passagio if sung at a higher tuning, or be below it with a lower tuning, the tuning still makes a huge difference because of the difference in the function at the passagio. The vibrato does not affect the function. If I sing a note in my passagio straight-tone, I still must make the changes necessary. If I add vibrato to it, that will simply intensify the volume, but not change the function.

Quoting Morodiene:

"Most choir directors are not voice instructors, and many of them these days are trying to get a different sound than would be used by solo opera singers."

This is a little off topic, but I just want to say I couldn't agree more. Most choir directors should do something else, like spending most of their time fishing, or tuning up motorcycles.

Tomasino

LOL...I agree! I had to stop choir singing because it was ruining my voice. No one goes for the big sound that Robert Shaw got out of the Atlanta Symphony Chorus anymore. They all want breathy choir boys.

This is going to be way off topic, but it seems like the thread has come to an end anyway.

Choral singing for a serious singer is really a horrible experience. At first you're supposed to sing louder than the other tenors so they can learn the notes from you, because none of them can read music very well. They get real close to you so they can hear, and they have bad breath and colds and flu. And then later on you're supposed to blend with a lot of inferior voices, and that's when you're supposed to produce that breathy, hooty sound you're referring to--and it's easy to make that hooty sound because now you have a cold.

My voice teacher in college was against the whole endeavor of choral singing, and talked me into giving up my job in a church choir when I was a freshman, even though I was making a few dollars at it. But I had to find a way to get my ensemble credits in, and the obvious way was to get into the college choir. I got around it by getting in my piano credits during my sophomore year, after which I was advanced enough to be a studio pianist in my voice teacher's studio. I was just barely proficient enough to play several vocal recitals, and managed to fulfill my ensemble credits that way.

The worst thing about training yourself to be a soloist while singing in choirs is that the vocal sound is different. Choir directors want a spooky sound, full of breath, full of hootiness. You are supposed to produce a sound that blends rather than a sound that is unique, vibrant and individual. You spend too much time during the week producing this spooky sound, and then, when you're tired at the end of the day, you attempt to develop a more vibrant and unique sound. And you don't really have the energy for it. I advise any serious singing student to stay far away from choirs. It's the kiss of death.

Tomasino

The problem is that you're arguing for change - quite radical change, given the expense of supplying orchestras with new instruments - but offering only anecdotes as proof. Zucker referred to documents which presumably live in libraries or museums and could be checked by a scholar. (Newspapers don't generally fact check letters.) Maybe those with a sound knowledge of operatic voice technique can extrapolate from your anecdotes, but I don't have such knowledge and as this is a forum for pianists you can't assume it. I would have thought the question could be settled by locating a flute used in original performances and measuring its pitch.



How can you possibly know his intention?



I guess good Irish singers are thin on the ground in Wisconsin, but Australia is crawling with them, and based on my visit to London I would say it is too.



Over in the parallel thread to this one in their forum, the tuners seem to have reached this conclusion.



More anecdotal argument, which proves nothing.


Warning: 18th century earworm ahead.
"Ein Vogelfänger bin ich ja."
Vo - open; fäng - closed; bin - closed; ich - closed; ja - open.
I've heard this terminology used by popular singers when justifying their use of American accents when singing. The "o" in "dog" is short (closed) in British and Australian English but long (open) in the US except New England. As you point out, there's a lot of folklore and conflicting claims regarding voice.

PlayWell,
We can go back and forth on this forever. I posted this because I wanted to begin discussion. I have not done *any* research on this subject whatsoever, and frankly, I'm not sure I will. So, yes, my points are anecdotal, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily false or wrong. Again, I am not into bashing anyone's name, but I just wanted to say that Zucker is not necessarily considered a reliable journalist by the general vocal world, so I take what he says with a grain of salt. My speculation on Verdi is just that: a way of presenting another possible explanation for what was supposedly quoted. I don't trust the source, therefore I don't trust his conclusions. Sure, I have no way of knowing what he said, but when you've dealt with people (like Zucker) who love to take things out of context, you have to assume that he has done the same here.

My comment on Celtic singers is from a purely technical standpoint. I don't think I've heard any from Wisconsin (I don't go to many live concerts), so I wouldn't say they are poor around here. But the recordings I've heard (Celtic Woman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5T6gyCPDvM for example) from a purely technical standpoint there are a ton of vocal faults, and I find this kind of singing in pop music, musical theater, etc.

OK, now that I understand what you mean by open and closed vowels. how exactly would one sing and "ah" open on the way up and closed on the way down? Isn't an "ah" an "ah" no matter what?

Tomasino:
And isn't is odd that most university voice majors are required to sing in a choir? That is the dumbest rule! This is why I encourage my voice students to major in something else if they can. Colleges tend to ruin more voices than build them, sadly.

I'd agree and have heard much better than this from relatively unknown singers. Very exact pitch control and long phrases without breathing are features of the style.



You might be curious to know that our biggest stars of musicals here are ex-Australian Opera.



What I meant was that music is often written so the open vowels are on the way up and the closed ones on the way down. I also seem to remember hearing this as a reason ENO should not be doing what they're doing. But what I meant by the last sentence of my previous post was that I don't know what to believe.

Name some singers then and post some clips. It is hard to know if what you say is true if I can't hear it.


Perhaps it is different in Australia, but over here, both the opera scene and the musical theatre scene are in trouble vocally speaking. This was not the case even 30-40 years ago.



I'd like to see some proof of this that music is written that way. Take "O mio babbino" by Puccini as an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFypui1xKlk . The first high a flat goes up on "oh" of bello. The next high a flat is an "ee" in l'amasI Indarno" Of course, no soprano can sing EE up there purely, so the vowel must be modified to have an "uh" shape to the mouth. A pure EE would screech. The next high a flat you have "eh" again with some modification, then "oo", "eh", and "eh" on the proceeding a flats. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to which vowels get placed where.

In Mozart's Dove sono you can hear all sorts of vowels on higher pitches and lower pitches: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9-9SgHR_U

I don't believe we can make safe generalizations about certain vowels being somehow better set by a composer in certain prescribed ways. A singer well trained in the European bel canto tradition is pretty much expected to be able to sing any vowel going up or down, although the vowels will be adjusted going up or down.

Some of the confusion may be that there are other singing traditions than bel canto. Deliberately breaking the voice over the registers is what yodeling is all about. I believe most bel canto voice teachers would regard yodeling as detrimental to bel canto. But if yodeling is the goal, I don't see the harm. Not knowing exactly what is being talked about with reference to Irish or Celtic singing, I don't know if this applies or not, but I think it may.

Tomasino

Well, "bel canto" as a school of teaching is pretty much meaningless now because so many in the operatic/classical world claim to teach in this school but they all have so many different ways of teaching and different concepts of how the voice works best. It's so confusing a term these days, unfortunately.

Believe it or not, my teacher (and I as well) teach yodeling as a part of classical training. Great singers of the past could yodel quite well, since it takes strength in both "chest" and "head" voice. The act of yodeling helps to coordinate the registers, and so while it is not necessarily something you would do in an aria, the process is quite good for vocal development.

Bel canto is not a meaningless term to me, but I do use it in a very broad sense that includes just about everything that we regard as classical singing. I exclude from the term many popular and folk styles, particularly those styles where, in female singing especially, the chest voice is favored over the sound we think of as a soprano sound, and the style does not bridge over to include the soprano sound. An important characteristic of bel canto singing, as I use the term, and as it seems to me the way the term is usually used, is the ability to easily and seamlessly bridge the registers, but not to exclude those few musical situations where the registers are deliberately broken. This characteristic is what is required in most classical music. It may be a broad definition, but it is not "meaningless."

I'm sorry I used the example of yodeling, as it apparently caused you to miss my point. There are certainly teachers who stress breaking the registers, as in yodeling, as a progressive teaching technique leading to the ability to bridge the registers. We don't disagree. The point I was making, and I could have been clearer, was that it is confusing and unproductive to speak of Celtic and Irish singing in the same breath as bel canto--as I use that term--because Celtic singing, assuming we mean the same thing by Celtic singing, is one of those folk styles that is characterized by not bridging the registers.

Tomasino

I agree, Tomasino, that singing Celtic or any other style is very different from singing classically. The sound and technique are so different that it's like comparing apples to oranges.