CONCERT Prren, in Music, is that particular pitch, or degree of acuteness, of the several notes which is used in the best concerts of this period. This //itch Is entirely a matter of convention, or agreement, among musicians, there being nothing in the nature of sounds that can fix or determine the pitch of any particular note of the scale ; nevertheless, any one of these being assumed or given, the principles of harmonics, and rules of tuning thence derived, will enable the practical musi cian, or tuner, therefrom to derive all the other notes of the scale.
With singers, where no instrumental accompaniments are used, it is common to use a PITC11-PIPE, almost similar to a stopped organ pipe, having the handle of its piston, or plug, graduated, or marked with the dis tances to which it should be drawn out, to sound each of the twelve half notes in the scale, or more, if wanted ; and, before beginning any piece of music, the pipe is set to the key-note of the tune, or piece, and sounded. Tliis is called pitching the tune, anthem, glee, &c.
Performers on stringed instruments, as violins, vio loncellos, Scc. commonly (when there is no organ or piano forte present) use a TUNING. FORK for pitching the note A, (because they have no string for C,) but tuners of keyed-instruments, harps. Sze. and some singers, use a C tuning-fork, this being the note which is con sidered as the fundamental' key-note, or lowest of the twelve notes in the scale. The particular C (among its various octaves) that is generally sounded by large tun ing-forks, is that on which the tenor-cliff is placed, call ed the tenor-cliff C, and answers to a leger line above the bass stave, and the same below the treble stave, in written or printed music : it is C-solfa-ut of the Gui donian gamut, Zi of the German tal,lature, and C of the middle scptarc, according to Earl Stanhope.
The most modern musical writers seem agreed, that the present hitch of the last-mentioned note is such, that it excites 21 complete or double 'iterations in the air, that is, backwards and forwards, in one second of time, at or near a mean state of the barometer at 30 inches, and the thermometer at CO', the latter in particular ; aLd all the various tables of beats of tempered steins, which have been published in the Philosophical Magazzne, by Furey and Mr Smyth, and those which will be given in our work, tinder the names of the inventors of the systems, tee. arc adapted to this pitch of the tenor
cliff C, and will only apply to instruments of that pitch.
Iu our article Acous ries, vol. i. p. 109, we have given a simple and useful theorem, that may also be 96.51 thus expressed, viz. N= I.), for finding the iY number of complete vibrations made by any note in one second of time ; which we shall here illustrate, by the calculation of an example at length, by logarithms, so arranged, as to serve as a formula for all similar opera tions, of an experiment that we once made on a C tuning fork, or, rather, on the vibrations of a brasswirc, tuned unison therewith, the wire taken from a coil, of which (58.4 inches in length weighed .0073 lb. avoirdupois) I inch weighed .000125 lb. (w) One end, of a sufficient length, of this wire was fixed to the top peg of a vertical monochord, or SONOMET•R, hanging over a pretty sharp steel edge below the peg, and to the other end of this wire a sort of scale-dish, for receiving weights (decimals of the lb. of 7000 grains) was attached ; and a 10 lb. weight being placed in the scale-dish, another moveable steel bridge on the monochord was set, and fixed so, that when, by tilting the monochord a little, or, rather, bringing it nearer to a vertical position than it before hung, by means of a strong hinge by which it was at tached at the top to its frame and stand, this lower bridge cut off or limited such a part of the wire be tween it and the upper bridge, as gave a sound, when struck, something lower than the fork under experi ment. Other smaller weights were then added in the scale-dish, until the sound of this portion of the wire, 11.7 inches long (L) between the bridges, exactly agreed with the fork. The weights in the scale-dish, the weight of that dish and its apparatus, and the weight of the remaining length of the wire over and above 11.7 inches, being calculated, as above, and added together, gave 10.34 lb., extremely near (t), for the stretching weights ; whence we have Whence it appeared, that this tenor-cliff C fork gave 241.48, or very near 2414. vibrations per I".