PITCH (assihilated form of ph*, AS. pician, 4:er. pickets, to pick; connected with Eng. pipe). That. eharacteristie of a sound which is deter mined by the rapidity of the vibrations producing it. In music then. are two kinds of pitch. ab solute pitch, which is the position of a lone con sidered in reference to the whole range of musical tones, and relative pitch. which is its position as compared with some other single tone. In ascer taining the relative pitch of us tone. C is consid ered the standard or starting tune, and the pitch of the tone in quest' is found by progressing from C either by skips of perfect fifths (quints) or by skips of major thirds (tierce.). Tones determined by the former method are called quint tones, those found by the latter tierce tones. Relative pitch is, however, practically never used except for scientific purposes, since the difference in pitch between every tierce tone and its eortehiouang quint must be carefully calculated. For ordinary purposes the musical scale is divided into a series of octaves, to repre sent the absolute pitch of the notes. The abso lute pitch of any tone is dependent upon the num ber of vibrations taking plaec in a second. Each musicaI sound is produced by a series of vibra tions recurring on the ear at precisely equal in tervals; the greater the number of vibrations in a given time the more acute or higher is the pitch. In stringed instruments the pitch is de pendent upon the length, thickness, and degree of tension of the strings; the shorter and thinner a sf ring is the greater its tension and the higher the pitch of the note. In wind instruments, where the note: are produced by the vibration of a column of air, the pitch is dependent upon the length of the column set in motion; the shorter the column of air the higher the pitch becomes. The lowest tone used in music is given by the largest pipe's of modern organs and has sixteen and one-half vibrations per second ; but this tone is so un musical that it is used only in conjunction with its overtone:. The practicable range of musical
tones is from Cs (32 vibrations per second) to e' (4090 vibrations per second). The note C' is the basis of modern pitch, and the history of pitch is a chronicle of the variations in the number of vibrations per second which have been assigned to that note; for, strange to say, there is no absolute standard of pitch. We have no record of what pitch was used early in the history of modern music, but at the time of Cuido (P.Arezzo IA% ) 11.e steins to have had somewhere around 500 vibrations per second. Our first ex act idea of pitch is gained from the sizes of or gan pipes whirls were in use in the sixteenth century, and from these we find that it differed considerably according to localities. Different pitches were also used for secular and sacred musie. Early in the seventeenth century, how ever. a `mean' pitch was introduced• and for about two centuries this was an approximately standard pitch, sines only varied during that time from 495 to 515 vibrations a second. This is the so-called classic pitch, for it was during this period that the great masters of music lived. But with the growth of the orchestra and the increased importance of wind instruments. the pitels was gradually raised in order to obtain more sonorous effects: and various efforts were made to counterbalance the difficulties involved by a varying scale of pitch. in 1834 a congress of physicists at Stuttgart adopted 8eheibler's pitch (true c' 525). In 1559 a Freneh commis sion of musicians and scientists reported in favor of e' 522. This is the widely used French pitch. In 1557 it was formerly adopted by the Vienna Congress. and is now often vaned lnIernatimatl pitch. Philosophical pitch 512) is used con siderably in theoretical calculations. Concert pitch was a high pitch of about c' 540, much used in concert and operatic) work during the middle of the nineteenth century. See Acotrwrics; Si('; :Ind eonsult Ellis. The Bistory of Musical Pitch (London, 1850).