Pitch, the degree of acuteness of musical sounds. A musical sound is produced by a series of vibrations recurring on the ear at precisely equal intervals; the greater the number of vibrations in a given time the more acute or higher is the pitch (see SOUND). The pitch of musical instruments is adjusted by means of a tuning-fork, consisting of two prongs springing out of a handle, so adjusted as to length that when struck a particular note is produced, that note being C in Britain, and A
in
Germany. It is obviously important to have a recognised standard of pitch by which instruments and voices are to be regulated; but there is, unfortunately, not the uniformity that might be desired in the pitch in actual use. For two centuries, down to about 1827, the pitch in use was nearly uniform (C = 498 to 515 vibrations per second); but since then, owing mainly to an aim of wind-instrument makers to obtain greater brilliance of tone, it has constantly been rising, to the detriment of soprano voices especially, till in 1859, in the Covent Garden opera band, it was a semitone higher (C = 538). The French government, on the report of a special committee, in 1859 fixed the pitch of C at 522, which continues in use in France to this day, and is known as French pitch. An international conference, where all the chief European countries were represented except France and England, was held in Vienna in 1885, which resulted in the adoption of French pitch as the standard. In 1891 the American piano-manufacturers agreed to adopt French pitch. An effort towards uniformity of pitch in Great Britain, made in 1859-69 by the Society of Arts, and a subsequent attempt initiated by the Royal Academy of Music in 1885, had no practical result. Most British orchestras continue to play at the higher pitch (known as Philharmonic), while in music not orchestral, and with vocalists generally, a pitch about the French is used. The main obstacle to the lowering of pitch is the expense of new wind-instruments, it being impossible to lower the old ones to so great an extent. See A. J. Ellis, History of Musical Pitch, reprinted from the Journal of the Society of Arts, 1880, and given in abstract in Nature, vol. xxi.