Welcome to our new series, What the Fact?!
Throughout 2018, we’re teaming up with talent at the Australian National Academy of Music to bring you informed answers to real questions and topics about your music career.
Ever wondered why you feel performance anxiety? What the deal is with tuning to 440Hz – or not? Why you should bother undertaking a music residency? We’re here to tell you all about it.
In this interview, we chat with the master of tuning, Nick Deutsch. Nick is the artistic director of ANAM and has tuned to more hertz than you can count. (Seriously. He’s performed with leading orchestras across the world and his tuning ranges from 440Hz to 441, 442, 443…)
He’s held the position of solo oboe with the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, performs as principal oboe with Bayreuth Festspiel Orchestra, the Super World Orchestra, and the Australian World Orchestra.
Nick is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts himself, after commencing his studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He went on to win the Gwen Nisbet prize for most outstanding student and later picked up an MSOS scholarship to study in Germany. The rest is history – and here is how he plays it (on his Marigaux M2 oboe).
Let’s hack TUNING!
You’re the artistic director of ANAM: an institution that tunes to 441Hz. What’s the story? How and why does a university choose this precise tuning?
It’s a story about standardisation. Well, actually non-standardisation.
There has never really been any reliable standard of what exact ‘concert A’ (the A above middle C) should be. Throughout history, there have been variations of pitch from town to town of up to 100 hertz. This may have been for a simple reason that limited funds were spent on the metal used to build the town’s church organ; shorter pipes means a higher pitch.
At ANAM, we play at 441Hz because this sits between the pitch that the major Australian orchestras [play] such as Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (440Hz), Australian Chamber Orchestra (440Hz) and Sydney Symphony Orchestra (441Hz), and many of our European guests who play at a higher pitch.
Ideally, there would be an international standard, and attempts at this standard have been made to varying degrees of success. When ANAM chooses to conform to the pitch played by leading musical institutions in Australia, a degree of national standardisation is being supported.
Tuning does often fall to 440Hz. What is this? And why is this considered a standard across many genres today?
A = 440Hz has been a common pitch choice for tuning. In 1939 at an international conference in London, an agreement was made to make 440Hz the international standard.
Alas, as concert halls expanded and technical advances were utilised by instrument makers, a brighter, more projecting sound was sought and the urge to increase the pitch even further has occurred.
And to mix it up even more, I hear that you perform to 443Hz when in Europe! As a performer, what impact does this have on your music making? Is it all about Historically Informed Performance, or do you feel there are other effects on aesthetic or performance?
The current trend in Europe is 443Hz. As an international performer, it is necessary to be flexible with pitch. Our students here at ANAM also need to have an awareness and flexibility regarding the non-standardisation of international pitches. An oboe built by a maker in France is nowadays built to play at 443Hz. Whilst this appears to be a gross imprecision, it is a manageable difference.
I correct the pitch difference when travelling between Europe and Australia purely by blowing my reeds in to the required pitch. With a good concept of the new pitch, this is achievable, especially when I need to increase the pitch. As I decrease the pitch, I blow in a new reed especially for that lower pitch.
I think at this point that it is also important to highlight how small a few hertz are. Internationally, we are talking a difference of three hertz, 440-443Hz. This is a stark contrast to the variations available in the Renaissance and Baroque; the implications for HIP specialists are another story indeed.
For us ‘modern’ musicians at ANAM, differences of up to a fifth of a hertz are required as we temper the note of a chord. If I need to play an E flat in a C minor chord, I need to adjust it considerably for it to be perfectly in tune according to what we call temperament.
I play with many different orchestras, and I need to be always changing. Here are some examples: The Chamber Orchestra of Europe (441Hz), The Budapest Festival Orchestra (442Hz), The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (442Hz), Frankfurt Opera (443Hz), Bavarian State Opera (444Hz). The Australian World Orchestra is a brilliant example. It’s an orchestra of Australians who come from all over the world. Generally we play at 441Hz but, as we’ve seen from this discussion, we must be flexible to accommodate musicians working in so many different orchestras and traditions of pitch.
How have you found that audiences react to the different tunings – can they even hear the difference? What are the differences that we might not expect?
It would appear to a listener perhaps as a colour (timbre) or a feeling. As I mentioned earlier, pitch has increased due to a desire to create a brighter sound; a sound that can carry to the back of a large concert hall. I would imagine that concertgoers may sense that a higher pitch creates a more brilliant and exciting sound.
There are other considerations which will affect the quality of this sound colour, such as the design of instruments and reeds, strings, mallets, or even the acoustic of the hall.
As an oboist, you are of course a top candidate for discussing this subject. What has leading orchestral tuning taught you?
Yes, as an oboist, I set the pitch for the orchestra, as all the instruments tune to the oboe. Mostly, an orchestra tunes to concert A. Despite this, there are times when a different note, more relevant to the key or instrument, is being used. If wind instruments are playing a piece in E flat, it makes sense to tune to E flat; if strings are involved, the ensemble must tune to a common open string; or brass instruments comfortably tune to B flat. Each ensemble has its own tradition. For example, in the Budapest Festival Orchestra, I tuned the strings to a G, the winds to an A, and the brass to a B flat.
When it really comes down to it, why should we care about how we choose to tune?
The beauty and harmony of music is best presented with good and tasteful intonation. Making intelligent decisions and agreements about pitch, how to tune and temper, are vital tools for our end result. Due to the differences of pitch on the international stage, choosing how to tune can make it easier for travelling artists to adjust to the local expectations rapidly.
And finally…top advice for learning how to play in tune?!
The best tool we have for learning to play in tune is our ears. Our ears need training, too. An understanding of good intonation is vital. A beautiful tone can only be achieved with good intonation.
Intonation is not black and white. There are physical imperfections in the major and minor scales of Western classical music. Many kinds of temperament have been designed to compensate for this. Differentiating between a ‘melodic’ intonation and a ‘harmonic’ intonation are needed to achieve good intonation in the whole ensemble. What this means is being in tune not only with oneself, but understanding where to pitch the note in relation to its melodic or harmonic function.
See Nick starring on oboe, among the musicians of ANAM when they present Tombeau de Claude Debussy, 7.30pm March 24 at ANAM, South Melbourne Town Hall.
Check back in soon for our next What the Fact?! with professionals in the music industry.
Image: Nick Deutsch, credit: Wolter Peeters/AWO. Tuning fork by Growing Labs, CC-BY-SA-2.0. Emoji via APACHE – License 2.0.
