Zompist Bboard Again

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Dec 14, 2023 2:38 pm

sasasha wrote: ↑Thu Dec 14, 2023 10:53 am I think eventually the Xurnese will absorb the Eretaldan pitch standard: they have enough variation in their tuning bells to find some somewhere that match the new Eretaldan standard (and thus they can easily say that they are still using a native standard).

I'd suggest that a difference in pitch continues at least through the Industrial Age: neither the Salon nor the later regimes will have an interest in an Eretaldan standard.

They can use tuning forks, of course, they just choose a different number. Some brief research seems to show that A = 440 was not a worldwide standard here till after WWII.

Is the older continental standard (A435) noticeable to your ears?

Good point - and in that era, which (if either) gets adopted more globally is another open question.

Not particularly noticeable to my ears, but it makes a bit of a difference to my singing. Opera singers are taught to modify vowels to precise degrees at precise pitches to achieve optimum resonance. A435 is low enough to mean that the things you normally have to do on an Eb above middle C, for instance, you now need only do on the E. And you may find high notes more comfortable, and low notes less.

To those with perfect pitch, it makes a bigger difference still. (The organ at Lichfield Cathedral where I sing is at C=540Hz, or A=454(.084). There are a number of unfortunate Lichfield choristers who grow up with ‘Lichfield perfect pitch’, i.e. to them, the music of everything else in the world sounds flat, while only the music of Lichfield Cathedral organ and the other few organs in the world which use this rare standard sounds in tune...)