Octave stretching and tuning a piano

I wanted to post something explaining the phenomenon of "octave stretching" on a piano - that is to say when a piano is tuned, the octaves are slightly further apart than the 2:1 ratio they ought to have according to musical theory. To understand why this is the case, a bit of background knowledge is involved.

"Theoretical" frequencies of notes

The first thing to understand is how the frequency of a note relates to our perception of pitch and musical intervals. The study of this has a long history, going back at least as far as Pythagoras (570-495 BC). He realized that a difference in pitch of one octave was related to doubling or halving the the length of a string under a similar tension (he might have perhaps used a monochord or something similar to work this out). We now understand that this is due to the frequency or number of vibrations per second of the sound (Pythagoras was aware of this, but did not have any means of measuring the number of vibrations directly). Nowadays (not in Pythagoras' time) we normally tune instruments using a system called "equal temperament" - how this came about is a long story in itself, and one which I hope to write about in a future post, but for now I will just describe the method.

So, to explain how the "theoretical" frequencies are calculated. Firstly, the note "A" above middle C is taken as a reference point, and if the piano is tuned to standard pitch, as would be expected for example if tuning for a concert, this would be set to 440Hz or cycles per second. Just to explain what is meant by this, the picture below represents the sound wave:

Obviously this is just a visual representation - what is really happening is a set of alternate compressions and rarefactions in the air, so we could imagine the line when it reaches the top as a compression and at the bottom as a rarefaction. A "cycle" would be the area represented by the red lines below:

So, in other words, there would be 440 successive compressions and rarefactions every second.

Secondly, an octave is standardly taken as a ratio of 2:1 in frequency - so that means that if A above middle C is 440Hz, the A above that ought to be 880Hz, and the one below 220Hz, and so on (this would give us a theoretical frequency for all the 'A's on a piano with a standard compass as follows:

A0 (Bottom A): 27.5 Hz
A1: 55 Hz
A2: 110 Hz
A3: 220 Hz
A4 (A above Middle C): 440 Hz
A5: 880 Hz
A6: 1760 Hz
A7 (Top A): 3520 Hz

Then, having obtained all the 'A's, we want to get the other notes in the scale. As I mentioned above, modern tuning uses a system called "equal temperament", which means that all the notes in the scale are equally spaced from each other, in a logarithmic sense (as I said earlier, I won't go into the historical background of this now). But as there are twelve semitones in a scale, we need to multiply by the twelfth root of two each time:

So in other words if we want to go from an 'A' to a 'B flat' we multiply by this factor and keep doing so again for each successive semitone. This means, for example, that Middle C will have a pitch of 261.6Hz (rounded to one decimal point).

So once we have all the notes in the scale, we can just multiply or divide the frequency by 2 for each octave, and thus we end up with 'theoretically correct' values for every note on the piano. When you use an ordinary chromatic tuner, such as a guitar tuner, these are the frequencies that you will be tuning to (I won't list these exhaustively as it is easily available elsewhere). However, when tuning a real piano, as opposed to a theoretical one, it just doesn't quite work like that.

All about overtones

To understand this a bit better, we need to understand the sounds that are produced when a string, fixed at both ends, is struck by a hammer. A key figure in the science of musical sounds was the German scientists Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), who invented a device called the Helmholtz resonator (amongst numerous other contributions to physics). He was able to explain that when a string vibrates, it does so in a complex manner, so that it vibrates through its entire length, 1/2 its length, 1/3 of its length, and so on as demonstrated by the diagram below:

The string is actually undergoing all these complex vibrations at once (only the first eight are illustrated above); this is one of the factors that gives the acoustic piano a particularly rich tone. Incidentally, the difference between a "bright" and "mellow" sound in a piano's tone is that when the tone is bright, the overtones are relatively more prominent. However, the overtones do become progressively weaker on a real piano as you work your way up the series, and bass notes (long strings) will have much stronger and more prominent overtones than notes in the treble. These overtones are important in various ways in tuning a piano, but for practical purposes nothing above the 8th overtone is really useful.

The string should therefore produce, as well as its fundamental frequency, overtones at double, triple, quadruple its fundamental frequency and so on. However, this is based on the assumption that the string is perfectly flexible, which is not the case; in reality, the string has a certain amount of stiffness. This stiffness has the effect of making the upper overtones relatively sharp of their "correct" frequency, and it turns out that in general, the shorter and thicker the string is, the more pronounced this effect will appear to be. Thus, a string which is tuned to A (440Hz) should in theory have its second partial (overtone) at 880Hz, but we might find in practice, say, that it is 881Hz (as an example). The general name for this effect is Inharmonicity.


How does this affect the tuning of a piano?

It turns out that what the ear perceives to be an "in tune" piano is based on lining up the harmonics of notes in successive octaves so that they coincide with each other, as this produces a "clean" sound. What this means is that when tuning the treble, if you move up an octave, you are generally aiming to tune the fundamental frequency of the note to the second harmonic of the note an octave lower; but because this second harmonic is higher than musical theory would suggest due to the effect of inharmonicity described above, the note an octave higher would correspondingly be sharper. So from the example above, if we set the A above middle C to 440Hz, and the second harmonic of that note is 881Hz in practice, we will be aiming to tune the A an octave above that to 881Hz. The way that this can be done when tuning is by listening for beats, which are interference patterns between strings at slightly different frequencies, and in this case it is the second harmonic of the lower note and the fundamental of the higher one that will generate this. If you can eliminate the beats, the string is in tune.

I should point out that in practice, particularly in the bass, it is a little bit more complicated than this because there are multiple harmonics that may coincide (e.g. 2nd of lower note with 1st of upper note, 4th of lower note with 2nd of upper note and so on), and also double octaves can be check (i.e. 4th of lower note with 1st of upper note). The increased prominence of these overtones in the lower bass means that it isn't always possible to achieve a perfectly "beatless" tuning in the same way.
  
A good tuning may vary according to the piano

If you set out to get the best tuning possible on a very small upright (or baby grand), and did the same with a large concert grand, the two pianos would not necessarily be in tune with each other at the end of the process. Generally speaking, pianos with longer strings in the bass will have less inharmonicity than pianos with shorter bass strings, and therefore the resulting frequencies of the notes will be closer to their "theoretically correct" value, whilst those on the piano with shorter strings will be 'stretched' more. It should be noted that these differences apply particularly to the bass and tenor sections of the instrument where string lengths are limited by the size of the case, whereas strings in the treble are normally fairly similar in length no matter how big the piano.

How does this cause octave stretching?

The effect of inharmonicity is always that the upper harmonics are sharp of their 'theoretical' value, never flat. Thus if notes in the treble are tuned to the upper harmonics of the notes an octave down, or the upper harmonics of notes in the bass are tuned to notes above them, the effect is that the octave is made slightly wider. Additionally, the stretching will normally be greater in the bottom bass and the high treble than in the middle of the keyboard - this is because the strings are very short in the top treble, and thicker in the bass, as the lengthi is limited by the size of the case.

A way of expressing this is the 'Railsback curve', named after O L Railsback. The eponymous inventor, Dr Ora Railsback, taught at Illinois State Teachers' College (now Eastern Illinois University) from 1924 to 1950 and was head of the Physics Department for much of that time; he also completed a doctorate in Physics at the University of Indiana in the 1930s, and during the Second World War enlisted in the US Army. He was a keen musician who founded the college's first marching band, and his PhD research was in the physics of music. As well as his famous 'curve', he was also involved in the development of the Stroboconn, an early type of electro-mechanical musical tuning aid, first marketed in the 1930s (transporting this device required taking around two large cases each weighing around 15 kilos). In 1950, Railsback left to become Head of Physics at the University of Illinois.

On the diagram above, the 88 notes of a standard-compass piano appear on the axis in the middle (I have only highlighted the As and the top C). The blue dots represent a hypothetical "real" piano tuning (by this I mean that I have put in some example data to illustrate), and the red line is the "Railsback curve", which is a best-fit line representing an "ideal" tuning of that particular piano (the values of the curve should be roughly representative of what would be expected in reality).

It should be pointed out that the Railsback curve is not based on any particular mathematical equation, but rather on empirical observation of how the frequencies of notes relate to their theoretically correct values, when a piano is tuned in a way that is pleasing to the ear, and as mentioned above, the curve may differ according to the piano.

I hope the above will give a bit more insight into what "octave stretching" is on a well-tuned piano.

COVID update

As an update to my last post, I have decided with regret that I am not able to take new bookings until further notice. Although the government's advice has been somewhat confusing at times, it seems clear that the only way to beat the virus is for us all to stay home as much as possible and avoid spreading it. For this reason I think the only responsible course of action is to close temporarily notwithstanding any financial loss.

If you do wish to contact me about any piano-related subject, I am still answering the telephone and e-mails, and I am very happy to arrange an appointment when the current restrictions are lifted. If you already have a booking, I will be in contact with you.

Telephone: 07597 912403
E-mail: andy.chase.ycp@gmail.com

I would like to thank the many valued customers who have used my services in the past and I look forward to seeing you again once we have all made it through the current crisis. Keep safe everyone.

Many thanks,
Andy

Coronavirus (COVID-19) statement

Obviously we have all been much preoccupied of late with the serious situation developing over the pandemic of COVID-19 (coronavirus) and it is absolutely vital that we all do our part to reduce the spread of this dangerous pathogen.

The current position as far as tunings is concerned is as follows:

• I am willing to carry out tunings, but I am taking additional precautions, such as handwashing on arrival, wiping keyboards after I have finished, &c.
• If you believe that you are in a "high-risk" group for coronavirus or believe you might pass it on to someone in a high-risk group, I would suggest not calling ar present - it's not worth it.
• If you have any reason to suspect you or someone in your household has coronavirus, you can ring me at any time to cancel - there is no cancellation charge.
• Equally I might need to cancel at short notice for the same reason. If government advice is that I should cease activity, I will do so immediately.

I believe many other small traders and businesses are facing similar difficulties in trying to take the correct course of action. I am sure that eventually we will all make it through this period of unprecedented challenges, and I will update on this blog if the position changes at any point.

Kind regards,
Andy

Gustav Holst's Piano - event reports

I was rather busy last month, so I've only just had time to write up a report of the events involving Gustav Holst's piano. As I had mentioned, this is the very piano in Holst's special soundproof room at St Paul's Girls' School, where he was teaching at the time, and on which he composed the famous Planets Suite between 1914 and 1916. The piano originally cost 225 guineas, and was delivered to the school in 1913; as well as being in Holst's room, it was periodically transported within the school to the Singing Room and Great Hall for concerts, and then back again.

It was on view in Lythe Village Hall near Whitby on 8th June all day, with a concert at 3pm given by international concert pianist You Chiung-Lin featuring a solo piano arrangement of Mars, Venus and Jupiter from the Planets Suite. The performance of Jupiter in particular was a real "show-stopper". There was a steady flow of people through the day and the hall was absolutely packed by an appreciative audience for the afternoon concert with over 200 people in attendance.

The Broadwood 7'6" barless grand piano used by Holst whilst composing the Planets Suite, seen at Lythe Village Hall

The audience gathers in preparation for the afternoon concert

The barless design has no cast iron bracing bars, a feature unique to Broadwood, meaning that the frame flexes significantly when strung and is made of cast steel instead of cast iron, which would not be strong enough.

There was also a display of children's artwork on the theme of "The Planets", seen in the photographs below:

The Holst piano also made an appearance in the Whitby Gazette and on the BBC (Look North and the Breakfast News) in which Alastair Laurence of Broadwood's explained its history. There was also a mercifully short cameo appearance on the programme by yours truly doing some work at the Broadwood workshops!

The piano then left to continue its journey southwards, making its way to the University of York's Jack Lyons Concert Hall on 14th May. I also attended this evening concert featuring all the movements of the Planets Suite - Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which was given by concert pianists Jakob Fichert and Mark Hutchinson (four hands on one piano)and which proved to be an absolutely magical performance. The Broadwood barless grand has a very mellow tone compared to most modern concert grands and a wonderful sustain in the bass.

There was again a fantastic turnout of approximately 250 people for the concert, which was part of the York Festival of Ideas.

You can find out more about the performers here:

You-Chiung Lin

Jakob Fichert

Mark Hutchinson

Future events

21st September, 3pm at St Paul's School

The piano will now make its way to St Paul's Girls' School, Brook Green, London W6 7BS, where there will be a concert on Saturday 21st September, Holst's birthday. John and Fiona York will perform a piano duet version of The Planets, with Heidi Pegler (soprano) and the Paulina Voices choir from the school. There will be an introduction by Dr Alastair Laurence from Broadwood's.

Concert at 3pm, £12 admission, students 18 and under free admission. 

Booking is advisable: you can book your ticket here

28th September, 7pm at Finchcocks

The Planets will again be performed in a duet version by Jong Gyung-Park and Anthony Zerpa-Falcon on a "Model 5" Broadwood from 1920 (identical to Holst's), at Finchcock's, Goudhurst, Kent TN17 1HH. 

Concert at 7pm, tickets £10. Booking essential, see www.finchcocks.com

13th October, 2pm and 7pm at the Holst Birthplace Museum, 4 Clarence Road, Cheltenham  GL52 2AY

"Inspirations from England" will feature music by Holst, Elgar, Sullivan, Stamford, Vaughan Williams and Britten, performed by Greg Tassell (tenor) and Gary Branch (piano).

Two perfomances at 2pm and 7pm, tickets £20 including wine and canapes, booking essential on 01242 524846 or curator@holstmuseum.org.uk

Gustav Holst's Broadwood Barless Piano is coming to Yorkshire in June

There will be some forthcoming special events during the summer celebrating the work of the composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934), most famous for his remarkable and inventive orchestral work "The Planets" composed in 1914-16, and recognized as an enormous influence on later 20th Century composers.

Between 1905 and 1934 Holst was a teacher at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, London, a fact commemorated in a composition of 1913, "St Paul's Suite". Whilst teaching there, he had a special soundproof room built in which he could compose, with a 7'6" Broadwood barless grand piano. This piano was later sold by the school, but was recently found to be in private ownership in Edinburgh. It will now be making its way back to St Paul's School in September, but making several special stops en route.

Open day on Saturday 8th June, 10am to 5pm

Holst's Barless Broadwood piano will be on display all day at Lythe Village Hall, Lythe near Whitby, YO21 3RT. This building is on the main road through the village, just opposite the community shop and bus stop. There are regular half-hourly buses during the day (service X4) on the Whitby to Loftus, Redcar and Middlesbrough service.

There will also be pictures on display from a children's art competition based on the theme of "The Planets", which has been organized with a local school. The competition will be judged by You Chiung-Lin, the performer for the afternoon concert (see below).

There will be an opportunity to look closely at Holst's piano; staff from the nearby Broadwood workshops will be in attendance all day, and refreshments will be available; entry is free until 3pm.

At 3pm, there will be a special performance of Holst's music by international concert pianist You-Chiung Lin, with a ticket price of £5 for this part of the schedule.

Concert in York on 14th June

Holst's piano will be played in a performance at the Lyons Concert Hall, York at 7.30pm on Friday 14th June. This will be a duet of the Planets suite (four hands on one piano) by concert pianists Jakob Fichert and Mark Hutchinson. The concert will be introduced by John Broadwood & Sons chairman, Alastair Laurence. Tickets £10, concessions £8, students £3. This event will form part of the York Festival of Ideas and appears on their website.

http://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2019/events/holst-planets/

Further events will take place during the year - watch this space for details!

Yorkshire Piano Makers (3): West Yorkshire firms - Hilton & Hilton, Newsome Brothers, Upton Gill & Co

In my last two posts on piano manufacture in Yorkshire, I covered the firms of Pohlmann and Waddington, who I believe were the makers with the largest output. However, there were several other smaller makers based in West Yorkshire, so I wanted to put as much information as I have about them online.

Hilton & Hilton

A Hilton & Hilton oak piano, originally manufactured for school use, dating from c.1920 (by kind permission of customer)

The village of Ravensthorpe, just outside Dewsbury, seems to have been quite a centre of piano-building during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, being home to at least two firms: Hilton & Hilton and Newsome Brothers. The manufacturers Hilton & Hilton were based after around 1900 at the Victoria Piano Works, which was on a site at the north end of Victoria Street in Ravensthorpe (the north side of the building backed onto Clarkson Street). The terraced houses in Victoria Street itself still remain, but the works site now has some houses on it that look to date from around the 1970s - the old maps for the area seem to show that the old works disappeared some time between 1974 and 1983 (though piano production had ceased long before then).

Victoria Street in Ravensthorpe as it is today. The modern houses at the far end are on the site of the former Victoria Piano Works; the works and the houses in the rest of the street were built some time around 1900.

Hilton & Hilton (the firm may originally have been known as Hilton & Co) appears to have been established around 1872 by Tom Hilton and Tom Hilton (presumably they were related but not brothers!) The older Tom was born in 1843 and according to the 1881 census was living in Huddersfield Road, Mirfield with his wife Mary, his five children Charles, Harry, Clara, Asa and Ann, and his mother, also named Ann; he is listed as a piano maker. The younger Tom (born 1847) was based in Dewsbury and was married to Martha, with two children, Edith and Ralph. An 1881 trade directory gives the address of Hilton & Hilton as being Saville Street, Leeds (a now long-demolished thoroughfare which was adjacent but to the west of Little Queen Street, quite close to the site of what is now the Westgate roundabout), and this is still given as their address in a directory of 1894. Whether this was a factory, earlier factory, office or warehouse is not at all clear, though the evidence of the census does suggest that manufacturing was likely taking place in Ravensthorpe by this time. From the evidence I can gather, the Leeds building was located on the west side of Saville Street, roughly at the rear of the Argus Foundry.

It seems that the older Tom concentrated on manufacturing, whilst the younger Tom, who was a musician, was responsible for the sales side of the business. Later on, in the 1920s, Tuley's piano shop in Bridge End, Leeds, were listed as their agents (whether this was the location of the showroom at an earlier date I cannot be sure). From census returns, it appears that they may have had a workforce of around 20 people in the late nineteenth century, perhaps half of whom were piano builders and tuners, and the remainder were skilled woodworkers, carpenters, french polishers and the like; the output of instruments was perhaps in the region of 80 a year (by the 1920s the firm claimed to have made around 2,000 pianos).

The former showrooms at Tuley's music shop in Bridge End, Leeds, now the offices of a Chartered Accountancy firm.

There are several other characters who may have been associated with the firm (or possibly the other Ravensthorpe manufacturer, Newsome Brothers), one of whom is Tillman J Putz. According to "Makers of the Piano" by Martha Clinkscale, he is recorded as a piano builder in London in around 1855, having his workshops at 1 Judd Street, Brunswick Square, "of probable German or Austrian origin." By 1881, he was lodging with a family in Huddersfield Road, Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire; it appears very likely that he may have offered his considerable expertise to either Hilton & Hilton or Newsome Brothers (see below). From census returns, it appears likely he may have been born in Cologne in around 1820, and by 1891 he was living in London again, hopefully perhaps having made enough money to enjoy a decent retirement.

Another person who seems to have had an association with instrument manufacture in the area around the same period was George Tanfield, born around 1851 in the village of Gate Helmsley, near York. His occupation is described as "piano maker" and in 1881 he is living in Bradbury Street, Ravensthorpe. From this it seems very likely that he may have been an apprentice at Waddington's in York (the subject of a previous post) and then, having learned his trade, then went off to work for either Hilton & Hilton or Newsome Brothers. In the early twentieth century he turns up in Bradford (of which more later).

Bradbury Street in Ravensthorpe, where George Tanfield was living in 1881. Most of the original houses have been replaced by modern ones, but a few remain on the right-hand side of the photo.

It seems that by around 1900, neither of the two Hiltons were any longer connected with the firm, both being described as retired. Around this time the company appears to have passed into the ownership (or at least the chairmanship) of Harry Cottam, of Bradford. Cottam was not a piano maker by trade - in fact he seems to have started his working career as a mill hand, then went on to become a successful manager at a Co-op shop in the city. He had a "break" when he inherited an estate of houses, a mill and some building land from his father-in-law and then went on to become one of the movers and shakers in the local building trade - apparently he was responsible for developing several streets on either side of White Abbey Road, some of which still stand today, and was also instrumental in the development of the suburb of Thornbury, until then a semi-rural area.

The houses that Harry Cottam built - Bilton Place in Bradford, one of the streets he originally developed.

From this it seems unlikely that Harry Cottam ever learned to build or tune a piano himself, but he seems to have added this to his large empire of business interests - although why specifically he took the decision to branch out into musical instrument manufacture is not known. An internet obituary of Private William Haldenby, who sadly died in action on the Western Front in 1917, says he had worked for eleven years at "Cottam's Victoria Piano Works", so it seems Cottam had taken over some years before the war. Hilton & Hilton pianos were still being built into the 1920s, and although there is no record of when the firm closed this was quite likely to have happened in the early 1930s along with so many others, with the advent of recorded music and the radio. As mentioned earlier, the buildings survived, presumably in other uses, for another fifty years or so.

The Hilton & Hilton pianos I have come across from the 1920s are very well-built overstrung models with a decent tone. They seem in particular to have produced a large number of pianos intended for school use, typically with oak cases.

 Hilton and Hilton "Gold Medal" Pianos

Quite a number of Hilton & Hilton instruments seem to have the phrase "Gold Medal Pianos" next to the makers name, and some of these actually have pictures of the gold medals; there are two, one marked "Gold medal - Leeds 1900" and another saying "Highest award - Dublin 1902". The Leeds gold medal has a design which looks very like the city's coat of arms which suggests that this event may have been arranged or facilitated by the municipal authorities, but it is not the Leeds Triennial Music Festival as that took place in 1898 and again in 1901. Unfortunately I cannot determine which events or exhibitions either of these two medals refer to. It seems very likely that these may have been trade exhibitions of a more general nature, rather than anything specifically piano-related.

A Hilton and Hilton "Gold Medal" piano from around 1900, with magnificent walnut case and original candle sconces (by kind permission of customer)

I was recently asked to tune this Hilton and Hilton "Gold Medal" piano from around 1900 or perhaps a little earlier (there is no mention of where the gold medal has come from). It has a good tone in the bass compared with many straight-strung upright pianos of its era.

Newsome Brothers

I should mention another Ravensthorpe firm called Newsome Brothers. Unfortunately, information about them seems to be relatively scant, but early twentieth century pianos made by them feature two gold medal awards, one for "excellence of manufacture" in 1898, and one "for merit" in 1899, though as with Hilton and Hilton there is no explanation of which particular trade fair or association these are related to. By 1920, the address of the firm is listed as "North Road, Ravensthorpe", very much in the same vicinity as the Victoria Piano Works, and the proprietor again is listed at this point as Harry Cottam. In view of this, one would stringly suspect that by this point they were being produced at the same site as Hilton & Hilton.

Huddersfield Road in Ravensthorpe: William Newsome was based somewhere in this area. Tillman Putz was also living in this street in 1881, lodging with Maria Sleight, a confectioner.

The first mention of the firm I can find is in a West Riding trade directory from 1881, which lists a William Newsome, Pianoforte Manufacturer simply giving the address as Ravensthorpe; the 1891 census lists a William Newsome, piano manufacturer, living in Mirfield and his date of birth as 1828. A trade directory of 1894 (which also shows Hilton and Hilton still based in Saville Street, Leeds), again lists William Newsome in Ravensthorpe and also two other piano related businesses: the "Ravensthorpe Piano Depot" of whom we are informed that Walter Holt is the manager, and the piano maker Joseph B Wood (but likewise no address for either apart from Ravensthorpe). Whether the firm had existed for some time by then, or whether William Newsome had worked elsewhere or simply took up piano-making later in life is not clear, but the business crops up again in the directory of 1894. By around 1900, William Newsome (who would by then have reached an advanced age in any case) no longer seems to be working for the firm.

It appears, however, that William was not one of the "brothers" as a copy of the London Gazette from November 10th, 1899 found online states: "NOTICE is hereby given, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between us the undersigned, Frederick Newsome, Ernest Newsome, and Arthur Newsome, carrying on business as Piano Manufacturers, at Ravensthorpe, in the county of York, under the style or firm of Newsome Brothers, has been dissolved  by mutual consent as and from the first day of November, 1899, so far as regards the said  Frederick Newsome. All debts due to and owing by the said late firm will be received and paid by the said Ernest Newsome and Arthur Newsome, who will in future carry on the business under the same style or firm of Newsome Brothers. Dated sixth day of November, 1899." From this it appears that William was most likely the father of the brothers and that until 1894 the firm was simply known under his name alone. Census records also suggest that Arthur and Ernest were both born in the mid-1870s, so would have been too young to take over the firm at least until the mid-1890s (I cannot establish Frederick's date of birth but he may have been a little older).

Upton, Gill & Co

By 1901 we find George Tanfield (who was mentioned earlier) now living in Bradford, along with Fanny Tanfield (b.1854), presumably his wife, and Alice Tanfield (b.1874), who may have been his daughter; his home address was in Boynton Terrace, West Bowling (which still exists) and he was associated with a firm of piano manufacturers called Armitage & Tanfield, with factory premises in Newall Street off Manchester Road (the street still exists but all the original buildings are now demolished). I do not know how many pianos they made as I cannot find any record online of an Armitage and Tanfield piano, and it is possible a large part of their business may have been as a piano dealership or carrying out repairs.

Boynton Terrace in West Bowling, Bradford: George Tanfield was living here in 1901.

According to the 1911 census, George Tanfield was still living in Bradford, but in the 1912 trade directory, the firm in Newall Street is now referred to as Armitage & Hiram. It is possible that Tanfield had moved to another firm, Upton Gill & Co, who seem to have started out relatively late, as they do not appear in trade directories until 1912. There is no record of them in the 1901 directory, though there is a "Charles Edward Upton-Jones" of Claremont Terrace, Morley Street (just a couple of streets away from their factory), who was listed as a music and musical instrument seller, though it does not appear he had any connection with the firm. An A H Gill, piano manufacturer, who presumably must have been one of the partners in the company, was living in the leafy suburbs of Mayfield Grove, Baildon near Bradford in 1912, but there is no record of him anywhere in the vicinity in 1901.

From census records, it appears that this may well be Arthur Howard Gill, born 1867, who is described in 1911 as "managing pianoforte factory". His place of birth was Southwark, from which one might be tempted to suspect that he may have learned his trade at one of the London firms; however, he is listed in 1901 as still living in the capital, but working as a grocer; in 1891, an Arthur Gill, who may be the same person was a merchant clerk. It may be, therefore, that he was mainly an entrepreneur, manager and administrator, rather than having a detailed knowledge of piano construction himself.

The same records turn up a George Upton, born 1880, who is described as a "piano maker" in the 1911 census - his birthplace was also in Southwark, the same as Arthur Gill. In 1901, there is no record of him in Bradford, but there is a George H Upton in London whose profession is frustratingly not recorded. We can speculate that perhaps Arthur Gill was the business guru behind the enterprise, whilst George Upton had the technical know-how; however, what event precipitated their decision to up sticks from London and come to Bradford to set up a piano factory is not entirely clear.

Their factory was located at the Wilton Works, Wilton Street, Bradford, just off Morley Street; a snippet of information from a local history website states that in February 1908 the "Wilton Street Piano Works" were destroyed by fire (so presumably the firm must already have been in existence by then). The 1908 map of the city shows a couple of empty sites at the western end of Wilton Street near the junction with Morley Street but the firm is listed at the same address in 1912, so they must have rebuilt around then. Some of the older buildings in Wilton Street survive today, and from this I believe it is quite possible (though not absolutely certain) that the building at the west end of the south side of the street, which occupies the corner plot, was the Upton Gill factory from around 1908 (when it was rebuilt) until production finished.

This may possibly have been the Upton Gill piano factory (constructed around 1908) on the corner of Wilton Street and Morley Street. The doorway just to the left of the blue sign has an elaborate fanlight with two carved cherub-like figures. The building has now been converted into student accommodation, known as Kexgill House.

In 1912, the firm also had a telephone number, Bradford 2652, which would then have been something of a novelty.

The firm produced modern instruments (including some player pianos) and probably ceased operations in the early 1930s. In 1944 the company went into voluntary liquidation with a special meeting held at 5 Seawell Avenue, Morecambe - the retirement home of the then Chairman, Harry Cottam. Cottam himself seems to have enjoyed a comfortable retirement, and on his death in September 1946 left an estate valued at the not inconsiderable sum of £63,655 12s 11d. Whoever said no-one ever made any money out of pianos!

A history of pitch standards in piano tuning

In a previous post I explained that "standard" or "concert" pitch means that the note A above middle C has a frequency of 440Hz (cycles per second), and that this was settled upon at a conference in 1939. However, someone recently asked me what pitch would originally have been used for a late nineteenth-century Broadwood grand piano. This is a difficult question to answer, since prior to A=440Hz, there was no single universally agreed standard. So I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the different pitches pianos were tuned to in the past, and how the current standard came about.

The situation can be summed up fairly well by looking at this set of tuning forks, which would date from around a hundred years ago. These are "C" forks which probably would have been used by a piano tuner in the early part of the twentieth century, and there are four different pitches as inscribed on the side of the prongs:

C 517.3 Continental
C 522 New Philharmonic
C 528 Medium
C 540 Old Philharmonic

An set of tuning forks (left) used about a hundred years ago. Two modern forks (C523.3 and A440) are on the right.

It seems to have been a feature of the British piano trade that people were traditionally (and commonly still are) taught to tune using middle C as the reference note (although the forks are actually an octave above this). If we recalculate these frequencies (assuming equal temperament) to values for the note A, which is the generally accepted standard for orchestral tuning, we get A=435Hz, A=439Hz, A=444Hz and A=454Hz (none of these corresponding to modern standard pitch, though "New Philharmonic" is close). From the fact that tuners were carrying these sets of forks around, it would seem likely that these may all have been used at various times depending on the requirements of the customer, and no doubt all of this caused considerable confusion!

To work out the origin of all these pitch standards, we should transport ourselves back into the late eighteenth century, when pianos were becoming widely produced and available for the first time. It should be noted that during this period, there was no standardization of pitch. At the time, absolute pitch could only be measured with limited accuracy - for example, the Italian mathematician, Vittorio Francesco Stancari (1678-1709) had experimented with a toothed wheel as a tone generator. It should also be mentioned in passing that the French mathematician Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716), who worked extensively on acoustic theory, was an early advocate of pitch standardization and in 1713 proposed that middle C should be 256Hz (known as "scientific" or "philosphical" pitch as each "C" has a frequency which is a power of 2), which would correspond in an equally tempered tuning to A=430.54Hz. Apparently, Sauveur's efforts were not particularly welcomed by musicians in his own time, and this pitch has never been widely used as a musical standard (though Italian musicians briefly adopted something similar in 1881, actually A=432Hz, before agreeing to the A=435Hz at the Vienna conference of 1885); however, medical tuning forks, employed for the measurement of hearing, are quite commonly found at this frequency.

The tuning fork had been invented in 1711 by John Shore (1662-1752), a prominent British musician, so it would have been possible to have a convenient portable reference of relative pitch from this time onwards, and it may have had at least some effect in reducing the enormous range of standards in use. A fork made by Shore, which he gave to the composer Handel, still exists today and has a frequency of A=422.5Hz. A fork belonging to the instrument maker Johann Andreas Stein in the 1780s, whose pianos were played by Mozart, comes in at a similar value of A=422Hz, so this is likely a tuning that would have been familiar to musicians of this period. However, there was no consistency - some church organs built during the period have A as low as 390Hz, and some chamber instruments (according to contemporary measurements) were as low as around 410Hz. At the other end of the scale, some organs in Germany that were played by Bach have A as high as 480Hz - a difference in pitch of nearly a major third!

Nonetheless, it seems quite likely that, allowing for significant variations, the pitch of Shore's tuning fork was fairly similar to what might have been used in the early days of piano tuning. Several tuning forks survive from the early nineteenth century - for example a tuning fork used by John Broadwood & Sons, piano makers, from 1800 is equivalent to approximately A=423Hz (it's actually a C-fork) and some from the 1820s give A=428Hz. However, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a trend became very apparent: pitch used by instrumental performers, especially orchestras, was getting higher and higher, a phenomenon often described as "pitch inflation". It is possible that one factor in this trend was a set of musical instruments presented by Tsar Alexander of Russia to the Austrian Army on the occasion of the Congress of Vienna in 1814, tuned to a higher pitch than was normal for the time. The use of higher pitches and wind instruments or increased tension on strings gives a more "brilliant" sound with more overtones, and in the course of the quest for this, pitch inflation continued unabated. (It is true that pianos too can sometimes have a brighter tone when the pitch is raised, but of course they are not normally tuned by the performer, but rather by someone who does not want to break any strings!)

Pitch inflation and tuning in the nineteenth century

In any case, the early nineteenth century was the heyday of the orchestra and by mid-century pitch inflation was almost out of control, with some orchestras (such as the London Philharmonic) going higher than A=450Hz - a full semitone above what it was in Mozart's time. Needless to say, this development was received with much chagrin by singers, who were straining their vocal chords trying to reach the ever-higher notes. The situation became so bad that in 1859, the French government decided to act and declared that by law A=435Hz was in future to be the standard for musical performances. This standard was known as the "Diapason Normal" (diapason is French for a tuning fork), but in English-speaking countries was normally referred to as French Pitch, Continental Pitch (as in our set of tuning forks), or International Pitch (this last term should be used today with caution as it may be taken to mean International Concert Pitch, or A440). This pitch was adopted by several other countries (it was adopted at an international conference in Vienna in 1885) and remained an important standard until the adoption of A440 in 1939; however it was by no means universally accepted, possibly not even in France, and certainly not elsewhere, e.g. the Vienna opera is recorded as using A=447Hz in the 1870s. In particular, the British held out at the "Philharmonic Pitch" of approximately A=452Hz (it is actually a bit of a moveable feast) for orchestral performances until almost the end of the nineteenth century.

Another development around this time is also worthy of mention: Johann Scheibler, a German silk manufacturer who was a self-taught acoustician, invented a "tonometer", a set of 56 carefully calibrated tuning forks, arranged by carefully counting "beats" between adjacent pairs and measuring them using a pendulum or metronome. This enabled a more accurate measurement of absolute pitch than had previously been the case. At a conference of German scientists attended by Scheibler in 1834, A=440Hz was proposed as a standard pitch, although it was not widely adopted - however it may have been used in some parts of Germany (e.g. the Dresden Opera in 1862), and by the Streicher piano company. Incidentally, around the same time as Scheibler, a Frenchman called Felix Savart was experimenting with toothed wheels as more accurate tone generators.

However, this does not really answer our question of what piano tuners were doing in the latter part of the nineteenth century. There is some evidence from records and tuning forks of common practice in the UK. The Broadwood company was using three different pitches which seem to have stayed very roughly the same - a "low" pitch, starting at around A=433Hz but which eventually seems to have settled down to the French standard of A=435Hz, a "medium" pitch of around 446Hz, which eventually moved to around A=444Hz, and a "high" pitch equivalent to the Philharmonic Pitch (later referred to as "Old Philharmonic") which varied between around A=452Hz and A=455Hz.

Around the 1860s, Broadwood tuners were issued with sets of three "C" forks, marked "Vocal", "Medium", and "Philharmonic", corresponding to tunings of A=435Hz, A=445Hz and A=452Hz respectively. The low pitch was presumably used for singing, the medium pitch probably for standard domestic tunings and the high pitch perhaps for concerts or playing with other instruments. These three pitches are the ancestors of three of the four tuning forks in our early twentieth century set: the Continental (A435), Medium (A444) and Old Philharmonic (A454). 

The final one derives from 1896 - under Sir Henry Wood, when the famous Promenade Concerts were first instigated, the very high orchestral pitch was abandoned, supposedly in favour of A435. However, this was incorrectly assumed to apply to a temperature of 15⁰C (59⁰F) - in fact it was an absolute standard. In a concert hall at 20⁰C (68⁰F) the pitch of brass instruments tuned to A435 at 15⁰C would rise to approximately A=439Hz, so this was adopted as the new standard, and became known as the "New Philharmonic" pitch, with the previous, higher, pitch now referred to as "Old Philharmonic". This was still not an end to the matter, as the British Army continued to hang on to the old higher pitch for its military bands until the 1920s. The cost of replacement of the older instruments tuned to the higher pitch may have been a significant factor in this.

In his book "A Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte Construction" of 1916, Samuel Wolfenden, chief designer for the well-known firm of George Rogers and Sons, describes the same four pitch standards, the only difference being that the "medium" pitch is given as C=530Hz (A=445.7Hz), which he describes as the old Society of Arts pitch (from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), and also notes that both the Medium and Old Philharmonic pitches varied slightly because of "slight concessions to the conditions under which pianofortes are used in combination with wind instruments at high temperatures". He describes the Continental pitch of A435 as "general throughout Europe" and said that there had been many years of contention among musicians due to the use of the high pitch [Old Philharmonic] which was obnoxious to vocalists; he comments that it is "retained because used by military bands...because of the great expense of new instruments." He also mentions in passing that "quite recently an influential committee of musicians and manufacturers in America has established a pitch founded upon A=440 v.s. [vibrations per second]."

In an article to the "Organist and Choirmaster" magazine of July 1899, the piano manufacturers John Broadwood & Sons put themselves at the forefront of the drive to move to the then newly established standard of A439, commenting that: "So far, pianoforte makers have held aloof and made no effort to secure uniformity in regard to the pitch at which their productions are tuned. Some favour one pitch and some another. The consequence is that if a visit be made to any of the large emporiums in provincial towns where pianos are sold, the visitor is hampered in his choice by seldom finding all pianos in the same show-room tuned to a uniform pitch." The letter continued: "In regard to concert grands, the want of uniformity in regard to pitch is serious, and necessitates makers keeping a double number of instruments." They had written to other manufacturers about this matter, which seems to have led to the use of the "New Philharmonic" pitch as at least an informal standard for British piano tuners around this time.

A selection of three forks used in the middle of the twentieth century - A439 (marked New Philharmonic) on the left, A440 (marked British Standard) in the middle and A452.5 on the right.

Another set of forks from a piano tuner's kit around the middle of the twentieth century contains three "C" forks. The one on the left, labelled "New Philharmonic" is equivalent to A=439Hz as one would expect, the middle one is an A=440Hz fork, and the one on the right is a slightly different version of an Old Philharmonic fork, A=452.5Hz. In her 1933 book "The Piano-forte, its history traced to the Great Exhibition of 1851", Rosamond Harding describes the use of the New Philharmonic A439 pitch as "almost as universal in this country as on upon the continent, though pianos are occasionally tuned to the old Philharmonic pitch, a' 454 (c'' 540)." (The idea that the New Philharmonic and Diapason Normal were in some sense the same seems to have persisted for a long while).

The road to A440

So having meandered through the many twists and turns of the various old tuning standards, it seems appropriate to come to the question of how A440 came about. It appears that in the United States, there was relatively little pitch standardization with A continuing to creep upwards, getting to somewhere between A=455Hz and A=460Hz (Steinway were apparently using A=457Hz in 1890). An early advocate of A440 as a standard was J C Deagan, proprietor of a company producing percussion instruments, notably including tuning forks. He described it as the "higher German pitch" (in contrast to A435), but there also seems to have been an argument along the same lines as the New Philharmonic Pitch - that when concert halls were heated (in this case to 72⁰F from the 59⁰F on which the French standard was supposedly based), the pitch of wind instruments rises to A=440Hz. The American Federation of Musicians adopted this in 1910, and it seems to have gradually gained acceptance, being generally used by the US recording industry after 1925 and ratified by the American Standards Association in 1936.

In May 1939, a meeting at Broadcasting House, London (facilitated by the British Standards Institute) was held, attended by delegates from France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, with representations from Switzerland and the United States sent by telegram. It was this conference that eventually agreed on A=440Hz as the new standard, although some British representatives were still in favour of A=439Hz. It seems that the British electrical engineer James Swinburne (1858-1958), a keen musician, may have played a role in advocating A440 as it is easier to subdivide mathematically. Apparently piezo-electronic generators of the time (as used by the BBC) worked on the basis of a tone which was divided or multiplied by particular numbers and as 439 is a prime number, 440 was easier to work with in this respect. To what extent this really was a factor in the decision I don't really know, but in the end 440Hz was agreed upon, practically the last thing anyone across Europe reached consensus about before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1955 the International Organization for Standardization confirmed this standard as ISO 16, and reaffirmed it in 1975.

Well, with agreement reached, that should bring us to the end of our discussion... but in fact, it does not. Notwithstanding the fact that A440 is the only agreed international standard for tuning musical instruments, today the majority of orchestras in the world do not tune to this frequency (jazz musicians generally do, however). In fact, there is a website here (should you ever need to know) giving the tunings used by various orchestras in countries around the globe.

Firstly, it would be worth saying a little about the lower pitch standards in use today. For early music, both A=430Hz and A=415Hz (sometimes called Baroque pitch) are often used. These do not reflect the exact tunings actually used in the Baroque period (as there were no standard tunings), but rather are convenient compromises. Both are probably closer to the actual (albeit inconsistent) tunings that were used, but an additional consideration is that it is somewhat safer to tune historic instruments (at least in the case of harpsichords or early pianos) below A440. The 415Hz tuning is also highly convenient as it is exactly a semitone below modern standard pitch and therefore can be played with modern or standardly tuned instruments if the parts are transposed by a semitone.

Leaving the question of early music aside, however, it is clear that many orchestras tune to 441, 442, 443 or 444Hz, in search of that same brilliance of sound as their nineteenth-century predecessors. To understand this, we should consider the old French pitch of 1859 - the important thing is that, although many musicians ignored it, up until 1939 it had the important effect of putting a brake on pitch inflation. In fact, the whole thing is a bit like inviting people to turn up to a party at 7.30 when you actually want them to come at 8, since if you asked them to come at 8 they would actually come at 8.30. In the same way, whatever pitch standard is set, some people will try to push the envelope, but normally only so far.