The phenomenon, so
important from the point of the history of culture, namely, that each
age sees with its own eyes and hears with its own ears, can therefore
nowhere be more sharply observed than in the conception of natural
beauty and in the fundamental forms of musical expression which happen
to prevail for the time being. I will speak, therefore, of these
fundamental forms and not of musical works of art, for by means of what
one might call, by way of comparison, musical natural beauty, by means
of the prototypes of the high or low tones, of tone-color, of time, of
rhythm, etc., we can test most clearly the unconscious transformation
of the musical ear in contrast to the conscious development of artistic
taste.
Let us compare the orchestral pitch of the eighteenth with that of the
nineteenth century. As the peoples of Europe became more passionate and
agitated in public and in private life, and as our whole intellectual
life rose to a higher level, our orchestral tone was keyed up higher. In
1739 Euler reckoned the vibrations of the great eight-foot C to be one
hundred and eighteen to the second. In 1776, Marpurg, for the same tone,
gives one hundred and twenty-five vibrations. Chladni, in the year 1802,
calculated its vibrations as a hundred and twenty-eight, twenty years
later as a hundred and thirty-six to a hundred and thirty-eight to the
second. And since then we have, no doubt, gone noticeably higher!
We find, then, that the tone has risen most emphatically since the
appearance of the Romanticists; in the days of the Classical School it
remained the same for the greatest length of time.
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