Concert pitch

The pitch used for an English cathedral organ in the 17th century, for example, could be as much as five semitones lower than that used for a domestic keyboard instrument in the same city.

Generally, the end of an organ pipe would be tapped with a cone tuning tool to curve it inwards to raise the pitch, or outwards to lower it.

[4] A tuning fork that belonged to Ludwig van Beethoven around 1800, now in the British Library, is pitched at A = 455.4 Hzⓘ, well over a half-tone higher.

[5] Towards the end of the 18th century there was an overall tendency for the A above middle C to be in the range of 400ⓘ to 450 Hz.ⓘ The frequencies referred to here are based on modern measurements and would not have been precisely known to musicians of the day.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Michael Praetorius reported in his encyclopedic Syntagma musicum that pitch levels had become so high that singers were experiencing severe throat strain and lutenists and viol players were complaining of snapped strings.

The standard voice ranges he cites show that the pitch level of his time, at least in the part of Germany where he lived, was at least a minor third higher than today's.

Solutions to this problem were sporadic and local, but generally involved the establishment of separate standards for voice and organ (German: Chorton, lit.

[7] Rising pitch put a strain on singers' voices and, largely due to their protests, the French government passed a law on February 16, 1859 setting the A above middle C at 435 Hz, 435 Hzⓘ.

An 1885 conference in Vienna established this standard in Italy, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Prussia, Saxony, Sweden and Württemberg.

[10] This was included as "Convention of 16 and 19 November 1885 regarding the establishment of a concert pitch" in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 which formally ended World War I.

[15] The high pitch was maintained by Sir Michael Costa for the Crystal Palace Handel Festivals, causing the withdrawal of the principal tenor Sims Reeves in 1877,[16] though at singers' insistence the Birmingham Festival pitch was lowered and the organ retuned at that time.

At the Queen's Hall in London, the establishment of the diapason normal for the Promenade Concerts in 1895 (and retuning of the organ to A = 435.5 at 15 °C (59 °F), to be in tune with A = 439 in a heated hall) caused the Royal Philharmonic Society and others (including the Bach Choir, and the Felix Mottl and Arthur Nikisch concerts) to adopt the continental pitch.

In 1834 the Stuttgart Conference of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians recommended C264 (A440) as the standard pitch based on Scheibler's studies with his Tonometer.

[23] In 1987, the New York Times surveyed international practice, noting that “the A of most symphony and opera orchestras today ranges between 440 and 444.”[24] The most common standard around the world is currently[when?]

In 2015 American pianist Simone Dinnerstein brought attention to this issue and later traveled to Cuba with strings donated by friends.