Word: pitches
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...house lights dim, the stage brightens, the oboe sounds an A and the orchestra tunes up. To audiences, all A's sound pretty much alike-but not to trained musicians or to those rare individuals with perfect pitch. The Metropolitan Opera orchestra, for example, tunes up to an A that vibrates at 440 cycles per second-theoretically, the international pitch standard. In Pittsburgh, though, the symphony raises the pitch to 442, half a notch higher than the New York Philharmonic's 441.5. In Berlin, the Radio Symphony Orchestra soars to 446, enough to make singers' eyes...
...somebody is trying to organize things. A committee of the Council of Europe, meeting in Strasbourg, has just recommended to its 17 member nations that the world's musicians get in tune with each other by adopting the international pitch standard. This is obviously not the council's most momentous problem, but if harmony is finally achieved, it may put an end to discordant, bitonal performances of complex works like Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra. When the Vienna Philharmonic played the Strauss tone poem in London a few years ago, the orchestra built...
...Realm. Standardizing pitch would have other benefits. Violinists would no longer have to worry about strings snapping under increased tensions. Singers would no longer be shocked by discovering, as they walk onto a strange stage, that their parts have been transposed right out of the realm of possibility. Piano manufacturers would have fewer problems with shattered warranties. "On a grand piano, the pull on all strings creates a force of about 20 tons," says Dr. Daniel W. Martin, chief engineer of the Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. "Raising the pitch ten cycles adds another ton of pull. It could crack...
...American embassy by 30 college students. Many people, especially workers and farmers, either have not heard the news or show scant interest in it. While those who have heard it strongly oppose the Nixon move, and appear worried about future American intentions, there is little evidence yet of fever-pitch anger or anti-American feeling...
...unspectacular. Laird's message was the same for both allies: they could count on continued protection from the Seventh Fleet and the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but they would have to furnish "credible deterrence" on the ground themselves. Who could get upset over what amounted to yet another sales pitch for the Nixon Doctrine...