KEEPING TO THE PROPER PITCH.
THE regulating and holding to a certain musical pitch is not so easy of accomplishment as it appears at first thought, for it has a curious tendency to creep up. It is said that Bach's music sounds much differently now from what it did when Bach wrote it, because the instruments are now pitched higher. In 1882 it was found that the pitch of high A at the Vienna Court Opera had crept from the prescribed 435 double vibrations to the second, to 443, and in 1885 this number had further increased to 450. Accordingly a musical conference was held, and a resolution was taken to re-establish the old pitch of 435 vibrations per second. Upon this announcement the Reichsanstalt, the Imperial Physical and Technical Institute of Germany, set up standard instruments, and has since tested and corrected many hundreds of tuning-forks, shortening them if they are too low in pitch, and thinning the arms if they are too high.11All the military orchestras of Germany are pitched alike, and the Reichsanstalt keeps the tuning-forks correct.