Praetorius's Cammerthon Pitch Standard

Author(s): Ephraim Segerman

Source: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 50 (Mar., 1997), pp. 81-108
Published by: Galpin Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/842564
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 EPHRAIM SEGERMAN

Praetorius s
Cammerthon Pitch Standard
Introduction
RECENTLY came across a quotation1 attributed to Howard Mayer
Brown: 'Musicology is what you indulge in when you know some-
thing is true, and have to go out and prove it'. At the opposite end of the
spectrum of confidence is Arthur Mendel in the Introduction to the
summation of his life's work on pitch standards2where he wrote:
In attemptingto write the history of pitch-standards,one is tempted to agree
with W. D. Ward,writing about a relatedsubject,that 'the best one can do is to
considerthe fields of controversyone by one and to point out what we do not
know'. Much of what is 'known' turnsout to be doubtfulor untrue.
Neither of these approaches represents the normal way that scholarship is
performed to generate knowledge. That is to collect evidence and then
objectively to pick the generalisation (formally called theory, hypothesis
or model, informally called picture, story or understanding) that most
reasonably and fully explains that evidence.
Brown's quote may express a confident feeling one may have at the
onset of a research project, when it is appropriate as a working
hypothesis, but in good scholarship, the theory must be adjusted to fit the
evidence, while this statement could be interpreted to imply the reverse.
Mendel's quote expresses the frustration of being the leading collector of
evidence in the field, mourning having to give up the theory he was
famous for because the evidence (i.e on organ pitches, especially that of
Praetorius) was against it, and finding no other theory that explained the
evidence to him as convincingly.
And what he described as 'what is "known"' was 'knowledge' on the
basis of popular belief rather than having been arrived at by the method
of scholarship. He did not identify what he was referring to, but it seems
obvious that it was the assumptions in the early-music field that baroque
pitch was a semitone below modern pitch, and that Renaissance pitch
was about a semitone above modern pitch. These conclusions originated
as very speculative extrapolations from some pitch measurements of

1 HerbertW.
Myers,privatecommunication.
2 Arthur
Mendel, Pitch in WesternMusic since 1500, A Reexamination,
Barenreiter(1979), a reprintof its publicationin ActaMusicologica
(1978).

81
surviving wind instruments that were very popular in their own time,
i.e. Venetian Renaissance and French baroque woodwinds. These
extrapolations were very attractive to early musicians because they
conferred all of the advantages of pitch standards in modern music
making (i.e. pitch is not a concern when assembling a group of players to
perform), while providing a remarkably 'convincing' demonstration that
an effort was being made to be 'authentic'.
Mendel's problem was that he did not have enough trust in his
evidence, and his judgment wouldn't allow a theory complicated enough
to be consistent with all of it. This overriding trust in judgment is
common amongst musicologists. Academic training in music history is
strongly focussed on developing judgment of truth (and quality),
assimilated from immersion in the case lore of accepted conclusions from
evidence and consensus judgments. Judgment of the quality of historical
works of all Arts is required of Arts 'experts' by the public, but this aspect
of their activities has to do with current fashions in Arts criticism, and so
has nothing to do with the scholarship of Arts history.
In 1982, fascinated by Mendel's collection of evidence, I took that
evidence as seriously as it deserved and formulated a theory3 of the
seventeenth and eighteenth-century pitch standards that his evidence
covered. It seemed to be consistent with all of that evidence. This did not
impress supporters of the popular pitch-standard assumptions, who then
published several papers to support their position.4'5 This has led to a
public debate between them and myself, in which the absolute pitch of
Praetorius's primary pitch standard Cammerthonis central.

THE EVIDENCE
The evidence provided by Praetorius6 that has been under discussion is as
follows:
1) At the end of the book (after the index and before the list of errata and
then the plates), is a two-page section headed only by 'NB'.7 In it he
wrote that at many places the organ pitch is too high or too low, so he
was providing the correct diagram so that pitch pipes over a full octave

3 EphraimSegerman,'On German,Italianand FrenchPitch Standards in the

17th and 18th Centuries',FoMRHIQ30 Jan.1983), Comm. 442, pp.27-39.
4 Herbert W.
Myers, 'Praetorius'sPitch', Early Music 12/3 (Aug. 1984),
pp.369-71.
5Bruce Haynes, 'Johann SebastianBach's Pitch Standards:the Woodwind
Perspective',JAMIS(1985), pp.5-114.
6Michael Praetorius, SyntagmaMusicumII, (Wolfenbiittel 1618), facs. ed.
W. Gurlitt(Kassel,1958).
7 Praetorius
pp.231-2, translatedby Steve Heavens,FoMRHIQ78 (an. 1995),
Comm.1328, p.60.

82
can be made precisely to the rechtenChormass(otherwise referred to as
the rechten Chor-Thon), for organ makers and singers to tune to. The
diagram is entitled Pfeifflinzur Chormass.
2) Immediately after the pitch-pipe diagram, Praetorius mentioned that
there is no better instrument for obtaining this pitch than a Nuremberg
sackbut which, when the slide is pulled out two finger's width, sounds an
exact tenor a (alamire)in rechterChormasse.Cornets, flutes, curtals and
dulcians are unreliable for this.
3) In Part II Chapter 4, Praetorius wrote: 'all through this work [unless
otherwise specified], instruments and voices are classified according to
Cammerthon,and not according [to the preferred] Chor Thon... . This is
because Cammerthonis far and away the most commonly used - nearly all
instruments, wind or stringed, and organs are built and tuned nowadays
to Cammerthon'.sPreviously in Chapter 2, he explained that he preferred
a Chor Thon used in Prague and at a number of Catholic chapels
elsewhere that was a tone lower than Cammerthon.Changing to this pitch
all over Germany would be impossible, so one must be content with
ordinary Cammerthonwhich in most places is also called Chor Thon.
When Chor Thon is mentioned with respect to instruments other than
organs, it is usually quite clear that the tone-lower Catholic Chor Thon is
being referred to. When it is mentioned with respect to organs, as in Part
III Chapter VIII, it refers to the usual current pitch, which in this
Chapter is also identified with Cammerthon.
4) Plate VIII shows scaled drawings of a trumpet and four sizes of
sackbut. Plate VI shows a scaled drawing of the largest size of sackbut. In
Part II Chapter 6, Praetorius stated that the trumpet's lowest note
sounded D in Cammerthon.
5) Plate IX shows scaled drawings of nine sizes of recorders.
6) Plate XXXVII shows scaled drawings of organ pipes. The scale has an
obvious error with what appears to be an extra half-foot between the
marking '3' and '4'. Many pipes where one would expect the speaking
length to be close to the nominal length are accurately so if we assume
that the markings are correctly related to pipe sizes and the upper
numbers are displaced half a foot from where they should be. Except for
this Plate and the following one (showing other organ pipes) and Plate V,
all 23 of the other drawings that have scales have the feet alternating
between division into 4 and division into 12. In Plate V, of the largest
instruments, the first foot is divided into 12, and all of the others into 2.
Only in the two plates of organ pipes is every foot divided only into two
parts. On the page before the first plate, Praetorius showed a ruler
6 inches long, and beneath explained that it was full scale and represented

8 Praetoriustranslationby David Z. Crookes(Oxford, 1986), pp.34-5.

83
half a Brunswick shoe or foot and a quarter of a Brunswick Elle. He then
added that this ruler applied to all of the following [plates of] instruments
that included smaller scales. As mentioned above, only the two plates of
organ pipes did not include smaller scales, so the scales of the plates of
organ pipes appear not to have been intended to be in Brunswick feet.

INTERPRETATIONS OF THE EVIDENCE

(roughly in chronological order relative to the type of evidence)
Using evidence 1) and 3). In the last century, Ellis9 had a wooden pipe
made at double the dimensions Praetorius gave for the largest pipe in his
Pfefflin diagram (making it a 1 ft. C pipe) and measured its pitch to be c"
at a' = 424 Hz. Ellis identified this pitch standard as 'a "suitable" church
pitch', and called Praetorius's 'chamber pitch' a pitch that he calculated
to be a meantone fourth higher. The latter obviously came from a
misreading of Part III Chapter VIII, where Praetorius was discussing very
old organs which could have been tuned a fourth higher (or a fifth lower)
than his current usual pitch and still be 'most suitable', presumably
because of the particularly easy transposition (involving clef substitution).
Bessaraboff1l accepted Ellis's pipe pitch determination and called it
Praetorius's 'Chor-Ton', and calculated a pitch that was a tone higher,
calling it Praetorius's 'Cammer-Ton'.What Ellis and Bessaraboff did not
properly appreciate was that Praetorius was a keen promoter of one pitch
standard, and being a pragmatist, it had to be the one that was most
prevalent in his time, called Cammerthonuniversally in his experience,
and also called Chor Thon in most places he knew. He was not promoting
the tone-lower Catholic Chor Thon (or the one a minor third lower) that
made instruments and voices sound better. It is likely that one motivation
for his discussion of low types of Chor Thon was his fighting against
pressures to raise the standard a semitone higher, a fight that was lost later
in the century. So the 'rechteChor Thon' (or 'Chormass') of the Pfeifflin
diagram was most likely a higher-precision version of 'Cammerthon'(or
the usual 'Chor Thon'). This will be confirmed below.

1) and 6): For his PhD thesis, Bunjesll had the Schlicker Organ Co. build
sets of organ pipes to Praetorius's dimensions, one set according to the
Pfeifflindiagram, and one set according to the two plates of organ pipe
drawings. He assumed that the scale markings were in Brunswick feet,

9AlexanderJ.Ellis, 'The History of MusicalPitch',Journalof theSocietyofArts

XXVII (Mar. & Apr. 1880), pp.293-336 & 400-03; and XXIX Jan. 1881),
pp.109-12.
O1Nicholas Bessaraboff,AncientEuropeanMusicalInstruments (Boston, 1941),
pp.58-9.
1 P. G. Bunjes, ThePraetorius
Organ(Univ. of Rochester, 1966).
84
not noticing Praetorius's statement under the ruler excluding this. The
mean value of the pitch levels of the pipes made from the Pfeifflindiagram
was a' = 430 Hz, and that from the plates was a' = 445 Hz. His
conclusion mentioned only the latter! This is surprising since he should
have at least suspected that the scale in the plates was that of the nominal
organ-maker's length, which probably reflected the length standardin the
principality where the measuring tools of German makers were
traditionally made. It would be quite fortuitous if that principality was
Brunswick. The likely reason for Praetorius to have added the Pfefflin
diagrams at the end of the book was that he knew that organ pipe
dimensions were the best way to communicate absolute pitch at the time,
and that the plates of organ pipes could not do this job. The work Bunjes
did was competent, but his final conclusion reveals the bias of expecting
Praetorius's pitch to be higher than his measurement.
Thomas & Rhodes12 theoretically calculated the pitches of the pipes in
the Ifefflin diagram and concluded that a' = 426 Hz. They did the same
for the pipes in Plate XXXVII, resulting in a' = 435 Hz. In the latter,
they made the unlikely assumption that in the scale, the length for the
highest number was correct and it was wrongly divided into 19 rather
than 20 parts, and the 'correct' markings would represent Brunswick
feet. This accounts for the difference between their conclusion and that
of Bunjes.
Gwynn13 made a critical analysis of the pitch determinations of Elis,
Bunjes and Thomas & Rhodes, applied some corrections the original
authors omitted, and indicated the strengths and weaknesses of each
study. He concluded that they all supported each other, and that the
pitch represented by the Pfefflin diagram was a' = 430 + 5 Hz. He
rejected the evidence from the plates of organ pipes, suggesting that the
scale related to nominal lengths rather than Brunswick feet. As with
Bunjes, his work was competent. That he had a bias for a higher pitch
was shown more recently when he wrote:14
It is odd that German organ pitch in the seventeenth century never seems to
descend to the A430 which my 1981 calculationssuggested for Praetorius.
I would prefer the accumulated evidence of North Germany's organs to
abstrusecalculationsfrom a diagram.
Surviving antique instruments can be closely observed, handled and
even played upon, and this can be far more satisfying than looking at a
picture (or drawing) or reading some text about such an instrument in an

12 W. R.Thomas andJ. J. K. Rhodes, 'Schlick,Praetoriusand the History of

OrganPitch', OrganYearbook II (1971), pp.58-76.
13 Dominic
Gwynn, 'Organ Pitch Part I - Praetorius',FoMRHIQ 23 (Apr.
1981), Comm. 342, pp.72-7.
4 Dominic
Gwynn, 'Comments on Early I8th-Century Organ Pitches',
FoMRHIQ67 (Apr.1992), Comm. 1101, pp.57-60.

85
early source. As Gwynn suggests, the surviving instrument may seem
more 'real' than recorded early information about it. Yet when our
purpose is to evaluate historical evidence that is available from both types
of sources, we should not allow this feeling about 'reality' to hamper our
objectivity in evaluating that evidence.
Gwynn's 'accumulated evidence of North Germany's organs' is an
excellent example of such distortion ofjudgment. What is that evidence?
Mendel's2 table is as authoritative as any I know of. Every organ
A. Schnitger made or rebuilt from 1683 to 1690 was at about one
semitone above modern pitch, and afterwards it became two semitones.
Those were probably the most popular pitch fashions then. We can
consider that organs built before 1515 are irrelevant for Praetorius's time.
The remaining entries left in Mendel's table of German organs for the
period in between, that could be relevant to Praetorius's time, number
but three.
One was the Altenbruch bei Cuxhaven organ built byJ. Coci in 1501,
the pitch of which was lowered somewhat by H. C. Fritzsche in 1649 to
a pitch that seems to have been between 1?/ and 2 semitones high, just a
tone above Praetorius's Pfeifflindiagram pitch. It was stated that this was
done so that all proper Chormassigewind instruments could play in tune
with it. This pitch would be suitable since transposing by a tone was a
very common practice on melodic instruments at that time.
The famous Compenius organ and an anonymous c.1600 organ at
Pomssen bei Grimma are the other two entries, both at a pitch about a
semitone above modern. It is well known that the statistics of survival of
old instruments is very dependent on how useful they were in later
periods. About a semitone above modern was a popular German organ
pitch throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while the
pitch a semitone lower was not fashionable at all in Bach's time.
Praetorius was fighting against the pressure in his time to raise all organ
pitches to this level. So a minority of organs at this pitch originally would
be expected to become a majority amongst the survivors. The evidence
of these two surviving organs at this pitch is thus easily explainable under
the hypothesis that the pitch deduced from the Pfeifflindiagram is the
primary pitch standard that Praetorius referred to. Since the reverse does
not work, where the pitch of the Pfefflin diagram pipes should be
reasonably explainable under the hypothesis that the pitches of the two
surviving organs represents that pitch standard of Praetorius, the choice is
obvious. Gwynn's position is thus not an objective view of the situation.

2) and 4): Herbert Myers4 published a paper reproducing the Pfefflin

diagram, discussing it in the context of a supposed controversy between
Thomas & Rhodes and Mendel. The position of Mendel he reported
was that, on the basis of vocal ranges, Praetorius's pitch must have been
several semitones above the pitch derived from the Pfefflin diagram.

86
Indeed, Mendel had originally taken that position,15 but contrary to
Myers's implication, Mendel conceded in his final article2 that the
method of Thomas and Rhodes was correct, the Pfefflin diagram
evidence was definitive, and so he had been wrong. So the 'controversy'
was not a current one. On the basis of it, Myers wrote that 'the issue
seems to be far from settled'. With this justification he completely
ignored the Pfefflin diagram evidence (which was reproduced with the
paper) while going on 'to demonstrate how his [Praetorius's] pitch
standard can be established with comparative certainty' by considering
the plates of wind instruments.
In this consideration, Myers asserted (without presenting any
measurements or calculations): 'With very few exceptions (in particular,
the transverse flutes) the lengths of the wind instruments depicted are
very close to those of surviving examples that play at about a' = 460 (i.e.
slightly less than a semitone above a' = 440)'. This claim will be discussed
here in the section relevant to that evidence headed by 5). In addition, he
gave the evidence that the length of the Rechte gemeine Posaun (tenor
sackbut) in Plate VIII, c.267 cm, is typical of surviving Nuremberg
sackbuts which, with the slide 2 finger-widths out, sound at just under a
modern bb, implying that Chormasswas at about a' = 460 Hz.
In my reply16 to this article by Myers, I pointed out (as I've done
above) that for scholarly objectivity, any theory about Praetorius's pitch
must offer a reasonable explanation for all of the relevant evidence, and
his not attempting to offer an explanation of how the Pfeifflin diagram
can be consistent (or not inconsistent) with an a' = 460 Hz theory is just
not up to standard. The possible explanation I offered for Myers's sackbut
evidence to be consistent with a' = 430 Hz was that the semitone tuning
bit shown next to the sackbut in Praetorius's plate was always inserted at
Praetorius's pitch standards.
In a subsequent study of the lengths of all of the sackbuts in
Praetorius's plates, S. Heavens and myself showed17 that the trumpet and
the various sizes of sackbuts (with the shanks not inserted into those sizes
that used them, but with their slides out to raise the pitch half a
semitone) were all at the same pitch standard. As a result, the explanation
I gave of Myers's sackbut evidence was no longer possible. This led me to
a closer examination of the evidence on the relationship between sackbut
playing pitch and length.18 This study confirmed Myers's point that there

15 Arthur
Mendel, 'Pitch in the 16th and Early 17th Centuries', Musical
QuarterlyXXXIV (1948).
16Ephraim Segerman, 'Praetorius'sPitch?', Early Music 13/2
(May 1985),
pp.261-3.
17 Steve
Heavens and EphraimSegerman, 'Praetorius'sBrassInstrumentsand
Cammerthon', FoMRHIQ78 Jan.1995), pp.54-9.
18Ephraim Segerman, 'Praetorius's and Surviving Nuremberg Sackbut
Lengths& PlayingPitches',FoMRHIQ80 July1995), Comm. 1371, pp.34-6.

87
is a discrepancy of about a semitone between the pitch of modern
blowing of a sackbut of the size of a Praetorius tenor sackbut (with the
slide pulled out as he described) and the pitch derived from the Peiffiin
diagram. It explored possible causes for this discrepancy and concluded
that the most probable cause of the discrepancy is that modern traditions
of lipping the pitch on trombones and sackbuts are different from early
traditions of doing this on sackbuts.
In another article19 I discussed the differences between modern and
early aesthetics of intonation and phrasing that make such a difference in
lipping tradition plausible. Supporting evidence comes from a
comparison between original reeds and those that the vast majority of
modern players of baroque reed instruments prefer to use.20 Original
reeds were much stiffer than the reeds modern players prefer. Stiffer reeds
transfer much of the control over pitch from the fingering to the lips,
with more effort in playing and more concentration required to play in
tune. There must have been advantages for that degree of lip control over
pitch in the early style of playing that are not required in the modern
style of playing their music. One such advantage could well be to utilise
the pitch range between the basic note and the semitone above it, such as
for pitch-slurred appoggiaturas (a close imitation of a sigh). Modern style
of blowing sackbuts does not provide that range without using the slide,
while blowing a semitone lower would. The lower pitch also offers a
softer sweeter sound.
A consequence of one of the studies mentioned above17 was a
confirmation that the Chormass of the Pfeflin diagram was the same
standard as Cammerthon:Praetorius mentioned that the trumpet's lowest
note was usually D in Cammerthonand a crook was inserted to play C,
while some recent court trumpets were made for that note to be C
without a crook. The appearance of a crook in Plate VIII indicates that it
was of the former type. A comparison of lengths in that plate indicates
that the note produced by the Rechtegemeine Posaun with the slide two
finger widths (i.e. half a semitone) out was A in Cammerthon.But the
comment under the Pfeifflin diagram indicates that the same instrument
with the same slide position produced the same note in Chormass.Thus
Cammerthonand Chormassmust have been the same.
Since Praetorius's pitch relationship between trumpet and trombones
is consistent with the relative lengths, the lipping style to generate the
pitch must have been the same. So if early sackbut players normally

19EphraimSegerman,'On Measuringthe Pitch of EarlyWind Instruments',

FoMRHIQ80 July1995), Comm. 1372, pp.36-7.
20Ephraim Segerman, 'On the Difference Between Early and Modern
Baroque Reeds', FoMRHIQ 74 (Jan. 1944), Comm. 1223, p.37; Paul White,
'EarlySound Generation:Bassoon Reeds', FoMRHIQ76 July 1994), Comm.
1282, pp.47-9.

88
lipped a semitone below the top of their full-toned lipping range, so did
trumpet players. The evidence on seventeenth-century trumpet
repertoire21is that players lipped both a tone above and below the natural
harmonics for short ornamental notes. These were unlikely to be full-
toned notes in the modern sense, but the need for such full-toned notes
in early blowing practices must be questioned:

5): The idea that Renaissance pitch was a semitone above modern started
with Anthony Baines's classic book WoodwindInstruments . . 22 After
discussing how the surviving wind instruments from the sixteenth
century in the big collections are dominated by those of Venetian
manufacture, Baines wrote:
This, and the constantmigrationof playersfrom one country to another,led to
some degree of standardisationin instrumentalplaying-pitch.It was higher than
today. Recorders at Verona, identical in shape and in size with those in
Praetorius'sscale drawingsat "chamberpitch" [i.e. Cammerthon] sound a good
semitone above modern pitch; say about a' = 470. Many other specimensalso
sound about this pitch, though yet others are lower, probablyhavingbeen built
(asmanyinventoriesreveal)to suit the pitch of some churchorgan.
Three crucial points here lack the support of evidence: (a) exported
Venetian wind instruments affected local pitch standards for mixed
ensembles; (b) migrating players affected local pitch standards;and (c) the
Verona recorders are identical in shape and size to those depicted by
Praetorius.
Probably in response to this passage, Mendel compared2 the total
lengths 'of several recorders in Praetorius's plate with the lengths and
lowest notes of a few sixteenth-century surviving recorders in European
museums and found no support for Baines's assertion. The level of
accuracy in length measurement that Baines was working to was not
particularly high, making his use of the term 'identical' unfortunate. For
example, the length of Praetorius's bass recorder he gave in his classic
picture book23 was 93 cm, while Mendel measured it as 97 cm (as I do).
People not experienced in scientific methods will, after getting an
attractive theory, do some measurements and then judge that the results
are close enough to be consistent with it. Then they publish that theory
(sometimes with absurd claims like 'established with comparative
certainty') without checking how well the measurements might
distinguish between that theory and other likely competing ones. Their

21PeterDowney, 'What Samuel Pepys Heard on 3 February1661: English

TrumpetStyle under the Late StuartMonarchs',EarlyMusic,xviii (Aug. 1990),
pp.417-29; PeterDowney, 'On Soundingthe Trumpetand Beatingthe Drum in
17th-centuryEngland',EarlyMusicXXIV (May 1996), p.267.
22 Anthony Baines, WoodwindInstruments
andtheirHistory(1957, revised1962),
p.242.
23 andAmericanMusicalInstruments
AnthonyBaines,European (1966), p.83.
89
search is for supporting evidence to make their stories more convincing,
rather than for critical evidence that will distinguish between hypotheses.
Myers clearly overstated whatever case he had about wind instruments.
When he claimed that their lengths in general, as depicted by Praetorius
'are very close to those surviving examples that play at about a' = 460',
he must have known that only the organ, recorders and brass instruments
would be relevant. This is because for other instruments, the accuracy of
relating playing pitch to length measured on the plates cannot be high
enough to distinguish between two pitches a semitone apart, as required
to support the statement.
In the Appendix to this paper, I calculate Praetorius's pitch standardby
comparing measurements of his recorder plate with the reported lengths
of surviving instruments where the playing pitches are also reported. It is
to a much higher precision than attempted before because it averages
over many recorders in each case. My result is a' = 440 + 5 Hz. The
original pitch standard is probably a little lower because of shrinkage in
the surviving recorders and the tendency of modern players to blow
sharper than early players. This study is thus consistent with the
determinations of Praetorius's pitch standard from his Pfeifflin diagram,
and shows that any claim that the sizes of Praetorius's recorders supports a
pitch of a' = 460 Hz is mistaken.

RELATED PITCH STUDIES

Bruce Haynes, an oboe specialist, was as intrigued with Mendel's
collection of evidence as I was. In his paper,5 Haynes assumed, not
surprisingly, that Praetorius's pitch was a semitone above modern, and
that the primary orchestral pitch in France and Germany, from Lully to
Mozart, was a semitone below modern, and then marshalled the
evidence to justify this position as best he could. So evidence that could
be interpreted to be consistent with this picture was cited as reliable, and
evidence that could not be so interpreted was presented and judged (as
Myers did) to be unreliable, and so needs not to be considered. The entry
on Pitch in Baines's recent Oxford Companion book24 suffers from not
reading Haynes's article critically enough. In my study,3 as a consequence
of fitting the theory to the evidence, Cammerthon(or Cammerton)turned
out to be constant throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
as also was trumpet pitch (also called Cornettentonafter the cornett
became obsolete), which was a tone higher.
I then published another version of my analysis of Mendel's evidence25
which was clearer than my previous effort, emphasising the logic of how

24 to MusicalInstruments
AnthonyBaines, OxfordCompanion (1992), p.266.
25Ephraim Segerman, 'Eighteenth-Century German and French Pitches',
FoMRHIQ42 (an. 1986), Comm. 683, pp.62-8.

90
my interpretation of the evidence all hangs together. Then Haynes26
disputed my two papers, reiterating much of what he wrote in hisJAMIS
paper. In it he wrote 'the claim by anyone to accommodate all of it [the
surviving information on baroque pitch] seems to me naive', and cited
evidence that he expected me not to be able to explain. I was naive in
assuming that the superiority of my analysis would be so self-evident that
it didn't need fighting to defend it, and so did not reply. Several years
later, when I used my model of the evolution of pitch standards in
another context, Haynes issued a challenge that I should reply to that
paper before again mentioning my model.27 Then I reluctantly did what
he requested28 and comprehensively covered every point that he had
made, showing how I can reasonably explain all of the evidence he
presented according to my model, and challenging him to do the same
according to his. In the five years since then, Haynes has not replied, but
I understand that his faith in the truth of his theory is unshaken.
In the world of music performance, 'commitment' is a word of praise,
judgment is more important than evidence when they conflict, and
judgment consensus is as close to truth as the vast majority are interested.
This kind of truth is of course the knowledge of fashion. In the real
world of careers and reputations, the knowledge of fashion is what
counts. But it has no right to masquerade as the knowledge of
scholarship.
Cary Karp's 1989 review article on pitch history29 devoted
considerable space to Praetorius's pitch. He often performs the valuable
service of redoing and thus checking out the calculations of previous
authors, and here he focussed on the question of shrinkage of the paper
in Praetorius book. This is relevant to the interpretation of the Pfeiflin
diagram since Praetorius relied on the ruler printed before the plates
rather than including a scale on the same sheet as the diagram. Karp
made a fuss about the possibility that the shrinkage on the two pages
might be different. His agenda apparently included spreading the errors
in previous estimations of Praetorius's pitch so that there was less
contradiction between them. Thus he included the pitches derived from
measurements of the two plates of organ pipes in his range of possibilities

26Bruce Haynes, 'Eighteenth-Century German and French Pitches?',

FoMRHIQ53 (Oct. 1988), Comm. 891, pp.32-48.
27 Bruce
Haynes, 'Response to Eph Segerman'sComm. 1063', FoMRHIQ66
Jan.1992), Comm. 1082, p.36.
28
EphraimSegerman, 'Reply to Comm. 891 by Bruce Haynes', FoMRHIQ
67 (Apr. 1992), Comm. 1098, pp.45-52. This paper contains tables comparing
our two models.
29 Cary Karp,'Pitch', The New GroveHandbooks in Music,Performance Practice,
Musicafter1600, ed. by HowardMayerBrown & StanleySadie (London, 1989),
ChapterVII, pp.147-68.

91
of what the standardcould be, in spite of presenting a translationof
Praetorius'sstatementunder the ruler that makesthis invalid,apparently
not understandingwhat the statementreferredto.
Praetorius'spitch has quite recently been discussed by Nicholas
Mitchell.30His paper starts with a model of vocal pitch levels and
transpositionsfor differentclef sets that is not without interest(though I
stronglydoubt the validityof his basic assumptionthat the same tessitura
was followed everywherein churchmusic). The model has fundamental
pitch standardsat about 1, 2 and 3 semitonesabove modern. The rest of
the paper attempts to support the model by citing the pitches of
survivinginstrumentsand those of Praetoriusthatperformedin churches
then. The evidence most relied on is the experience of modern early-
music performers.He assumesthat Praetorius'sCammerthon was about a
semitone above modern, and arguesthat Chor-Thonshould be read as a
tone higherthan Cammerthon. This discussion shows all the faults of
scholarshipmentioned above, including measurementstoo coarse to
distinguishbetween differenthypotheses,selecting supportingevidence
and ignoring contradictoryevidence (e.g. Praetorius'sPfeifflindrawing)
and assuming statements made by early authors are wrong without
supporting evidence or explanation. To these he added faith that as
modern early-musicperformersget 'better',their performancepractices
come closerto the originalones.

CONCLUSION
In summary,acoustical analysis and reproductionsof Praetorius'sset
of pitch pipes (Pfeifflin)consistently indicate that Cammerthonwas
a' = 430 + 5 Hz. Variousresearchershave tried to find fault in the pitch
standardderivedfrom this set of organpitch pipes, but failed. The only
apparentcontradictoryevidence is that sackbutsof the lengths of those
Praetoriusdepicted play today at a standarda semitone higher. This
contradictionmust be eliminated, and the weakest assumptionin this
situationis that blowing pitch todayis the same as as it was originallyon
the same instrument.It is quite possible to blow a sackbuta semitone
lower than the way it is blown today (which is about as high as it will go
without breaking into the next higher vibration mode). The wind
playersstill believe in their version of the Cammerthon standardbecause
they can'tcontemplatethe possibilitythat earlyplayerscould haveblown
their instrumentsso differentlyfrom how it is done today. They have
been satisfiedto considerthat the evidence of the set of organpitch pipes
is a mysterywithout any explanation.I am curious about how they will
react to the analysis of the pitch standardof Praetorius'srecorders
presentedhere.
30 Nicholas
Mitchell, 'Choral and InstrumentalPitch in Church Music
1570-1620', GSJXLVIII(1995), pp.13-32.

92
 The proper method of historical scholarship is to pick the theory that
best explains all of the evidence. This is to ensure that the conclusion is
objectively as close to truth as possible. Otherwise, one can 'prove' any
one of a wide variety of theories by just picking that evidence that is
ambiguous enough not to be inconsistent with it. The choice of
scholarship is clear in this case of Praetorius's Cammerthon.Nevertheless
the early-music movement has a culture including beliefs such as that
a' = 460 Hz was a major Renaissance pitch standard for mixed ensemble
music. Such beliefs or traditions are protected by insisting on impossibly
high requirements for 'proof' of anything different. Another such
tradition, that musicians can learn much about early performance
practices from playing surviving instruments or 'copies', is also a myth.
Early instruments are too versatile to impose a particular performance
style on the performer.
Being objective is not one of the job specifications required of
musicians. Perhaps we should be thankful for that, since it might impair
the beauty of the music they produce.

APPENDIX
Pitches and lengths of Praetorius's and surviving recorders

Praetorius
On Praetorius's plate (Fig. l), there are problems with where on the open
end at the bottom one measures from. The ends usually appear as curves
(as if they are seen in perspective), and they are often tilted with respect
to the instrument's axis. Such tilting is inconsistent with manufacture by
turnery, which surviving recorders lead us to expect, so they must surely
be errors of drawing. Does one measure the length down the centre or
along a side, and with the tilted ones, which side? There is also the
question of whether the end of the recorder was supposed to be
represented by the inside, middle or outside of the line. It is also possible
that instead of measuring the total length, it may be more appropriate to
measure the length of the air column or bore (from the open end at the
bottom to the top of the window), which should be more closely related
to pitch and is just as easy to measure (especially since the top of the
window was marked with a groove all the way round the instrument in
Praetorius's recorders and many surviving ones from his period). All of
these factors will be explored.
Praetorius's Plate IX in Crookes's edition was enlarged on a
photocopier by a factor of 1.4. Since the scale is at 90? to the length
measurements, and some photocopiers enlarge slightly different amounts
in different directions, another enlargement was made with the plate
rotated 90?. On comparison, the two enlargements had identical
dimensions, so this kind of error was not present. Measurements were

93
 I

I. tt. o. 0[q^[t f j . ua'dfgtmlinQimw

4.* avInbDifcant. ,.L(dnp>Uttti:
,ccvryftrfiff. i. tAmcNnti'm
utn f amntamn
Mffiffinper6aod.
.40 I

FIG. I. Praetorius's Plate IX.

made with a ruler calibrated in 50ths of an inch and estimated to the

nearest half of a space between graduations (ie. to the nearest 0.01 of an
inch). When the line being measured was centred neither on a ruler line
or a space, a figure to the nearest 0.005 of an inch was recorded. On
repeated independent measurements, it was not uncommon for different
measurements of the same length to differ by 0.01 inch.

94
 There are 11 depictions of recorders (9 sizes, with the back as well as
the front shown of the Great Bass and f Bass. Measurements of each
depiction were given equal weight in the analysis. The scale factor to
convert measurements (in inches) of recorders on the plate to full size (in
mm) is 285.36 (mm per Brunswick foot) divided by the measured length
(in inches) of a Brunswick foot on the plate scale. There are 5 full
Brunswick feet on the plate scale, and the length of one was averaged by
measuring across all of them and dividing by 5. On each depiction, the
measurements made were of the total length 1) down the centre from the
middles of the lines, 2) the outsides of the lines and 3) the insides of the
lines, as well as 4) the left side and 5) the right side. Also, the bore length
was measured down the centre from the middles of the lines. The results
are shown in the upper regions of Table 1.
It is worthwhile to try to get the maximum amount of information about
the relationship between nominal pitch and length from Praetorius's
drawings of recorders. The random errors in Praetorius's depiction of
lengths and our measurements of them can be reduced by an averaging
over the various sizes. Pitch differences are proportional to the logarithms
of frequency ratios, and frequency ratios are reciprocal to wavelength
ratios. Since ratios of wavelengths of lowest notes should be close to
ratios of lengths of air columns, it is reasonable to expect nearly straight
lines from a plot of the logarithm of length vs. pitch. Graph 1 shows the
logarithms (to the base 10) of the total lengths as well as the bore lengths
along the vertical axis, plotted against the nominal pitches of the lowest
notes (in semitones above C, called 'pitch number') along the horizontal
axis. The data used for this plot are given in Table 1, where the measure-
ments are along the centre axis of the instrument, between middles of
lines. In the graph one can see that, except for the first (the Great Bass
recorder), the data points (shown as circles) lie very close to straight lines.
From the pitch names associated with fingering holes on the drawing
of the Great Bass, we can infer that the lowest note was D. Yet in his text
and in his table of pitches, Praetorius gave the lowest note as F. There is
clearly an inconsistency here. The plate was obviously designed to leave a
space for a Great Bass in F. But then when he drew and cut that part of
the plate, either the F Great bass was not available and he decided to
shrink a D one into the space, or he drew an F one but mistakenly
labelled the holes as if it was a D one. The former would be a practical
expedient and the latter an error that is harder to explain. The error in
labelling the finger holes of the d" recorder as if it was a bb one is more
easily explained because he listed both sizes in his table of tunings, and
both are a tone away from the more usual descant. We would thus expect
that the analysis of the data would be best if the Great Bass were omitted
completely, but since the computer that does the work does not
complain, the analysis was carried out with all three possibilities,
postponing judgments to as late as possible.

95
 TABLE 1: Data on Praetorius's recorders

Totallength (where measuredin figureand line) Borelength

Lowest PitchBore length
pitch number central central central left side right side central
middle outside inside middle middle middle

Length in mm
DorF 2 or 5 1995 1999 1990 1987 1982 1827
DorF 2 or 5 1993 1997. 1989 1982 1982 1830
Bb 10 1451 1453 1450 1444 1449 1315
f 17 971 975 965 966 971 878
f 17 973 978 971 968 971 876
c 24 631 636 625 626 636 551
g' 31 427 429 422 427 425 374
c" 36 320 325 313 319 323 269
d" 38 295 296 286 294 294 248
g" 43 218 221 214 216 218 187
d" 50 143 147 141 142 146 116

Logarithmof length (to the base 10)

Dor F 2 or 5 3.300 3.301 3.299 3.298 3.297 3.262
Dor F 2 or 5 3.300 3.300 3.299 3.297 3.297 3.262
Bb 10 3.162 3.162 3.161 3.160 3.161 3.119
f 17 2.987 2.989 2.984 2.985 2.987 2.944
f 17 2.988 2.990 2.987 2.986 2.987 2.942
c' 24 2.800 2.803 2.796 2.797 2.803 2.741
g' 31 2.630 2.633 2.626 2.630 2.628 2.573
c" 36 2.506 2.512 2.496 2.504 2.509 2.430
d" 38 2.470 2.471 2.457 2.468 2.468 2.394
g" 43 2.339 2.344 2.329 2.334 2.339 2.271
d" 50 2.156 2.167 2.148 2.152 2.163 2.066

Regressionline slope
Bassomitted -0.02502 -0.02484 -0.02528 -0.02505 -0.02491 -0.02618
CGreat
GreatBassin F -0.02526 -0.02510 -0.02550 -0.02529 -0.02514 -0.02635
GreatBassin D -0.02400 -0.02385 -0.02423 -0.02403 -0.02388 -0.02503

Mean pitch number

GreatBassomitted 29.56 29.56 29.56 29.56 29.56 29.56
GreatBassin F 25.09 25.09 25.09 25.09 25.09 25.09
GreatBassin D 24.55 24.55 24.55 24.55 24.55 24.55

Mean logarithmof length

Gt Bassomitted 2.671 2.675 2.665 2.668 2.672 2.609
Gt Bassin F 2.785 2.789 2.780 2.783 2.785 2.728
Gt Bassin D 2.785 2.789 2.780 2.783 2.785 2.728

Root meansquaredeviationof logarithmof lengthfromregressionline

GreatBassomitted 0.0056 0.0048 0.0050 0.0057 0.0044 0.0084
GreatBassin F 0.0067 0.0064 0.0059 0.0066 0.0058 0.0082
GreatBassin D 0.0178 0.0171 0.0184 0.0180 0.0176 0.0207

96
 GRAPH 1: Praetorius'srecorders- totalandbore lengths.
Circlesarelogarithmsof totallength (above)and logarithmsof bore length
(below)plotted againstpitch number(semitonesabove C) of lowest note.
Linesare (bestfit) regressionlines calculatedwithout the GreatBass,
(farleft, in D).

3.4 '
3.3

3.2
3.1 t
3.0

2.98 t
-0
2.8
o
2.7
bt 2.6
e~4
0
2.5
*-4
2.4
2.3
2.2
2.1---V
2.0
1.9 ..... . .. ..... ... . .........
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 5.5

Pitch number(semitonesabove C).

The lines of closest fit (regression lines) were calculated for all six sets
of measurements in Table 1. Plots of the four sets not shown on Graph 1
look very similar and so are not given here. A measure of the closeness of
fit of a line to the data is the root mean square (rms) deviation from the
line, a kind of average difference between the logarithms of length (the
circles) and the line. The rms deviations of the total length and of the
bore length from their regression lines are shown on the lower section of
Table 1 for each of three assumptions: (1) that Great Bass should be
omitted because it resulted from a rough scaling to fit the space, and so is
not a proper member of the series; (2) the pitch of the Great Bass was F;
and (3) the pitch of the Great Bass was D. A glance at the rms deviations
shows that the lowest (i.e. the closest fit to a line) occurs with the total
length when the Great Bass is excluded. On average, compared to when
the Great Bass is omitted, the rms deviation assuming that the Great Bass
is in F is 24% greater, which isn't very bad, while the rms deviation
assuming that it was in D is 3.5 times greater, which is very bad. The

97
regression lines shown on Graph 1 are those excluding the Great Bass.
The slope, the average logarithm of length and the average pitch number
shown in the table are the parameters defining each regression line.
The rms deviation of the logarithms of bore length are considerably
greater than the acceptable rms deviations for total length. It is surprising
that the total length appears to be more precisely related to the nominal
pitch than the bore length. The length of the windway is really quite
arbitrary. It is quite possible that the maker or makers of the set of
recorders that Praetorius depicted deliberately adjusted the windway
lengths so that if the players had recorders at somewhat different pitches,
they could tell which is which by just comparing total length. This may
well have been a tradition adhered to by most makers of Renaissance-
type recorders. The bore lengths could not be good predictors of pitch
because the pitch also depends on window dimensions and details of the
bore width. These could not have been well scaled to the bore length
(makers could probably get away with using the same reamers for
different sizes).
The effect of measuring from the middle, the inside and outside of
each line, and of measuring along the sides appears to make little
difference, so for some purposes we can use the different sets of
measurements as an indication of the spread of errors to be expected.
If the relationship between length and pitch was intended to be purely
harmonic (i.e. length and frequency were in inverse proportion, so that a
difference of an octave in pitch results in a factor of two in length), then
the regression line slope would be -(log 2)/12 or -0.02509. The slopes of
the regression lines for total length (both when excluding the Great Bass:
-0.02502 and assuming that it was in F: -0.02526) are remarkably close to
this figure. The steepness of the slopes reflects the type of measurement,
with the inside-line measurement being steepest, the outside-line
measurement the least steep, and the others intermediate. This is because
the widths of the lines are smaller fractions of the length on large
recorders than small ones, so when taking logarithms, the line widths
shift the measurements of the small ones up and down much more than
the large ones.
The pitches of Praetorius's recorders are nominal pitches. If a similar
regression line for the logarithms of the lengths of surviving recorders
plotted against measured absolute pitch is parallel to the one from the
Praetorius's plate of recorders, then the pitch standard of Praetorius's
recorders can be estimated from the pitch shift necessary to get the two
lines to coincide. This assumes that possible differences in blowing style
between then and now will not affect pitch. Such an assumption is not
historically valid, but blowing style can affect pitch much less on
recorders than any other human-blown wind instrument, so it is more
valid than otherwise. Another questionable assumption is that the
surviving recorders are identical to how they were when made. Warping
98
and especially shrinkage in the four intervening centuries has probably
raised their pitches, but only slightly.

Survivingrecorders
The information on lengths and pitches of surviving Renaissance
recorders that was readily to hand was that published by Marvin31 and
Roos.32 Marvin gave detailed measurements of thirteen Renaissance
recorders, of which one, his No. 10, offers no useful length information
since its foot is missing. He defined a + or - after a pitch name as half a
semitone. When he discussed the recorders by the 'Schratt's' (his
numbers 7 - 9), he wrote that they were 'pitched slightly higher than a
semitone above A = 440', which I interpret as an addition of 0.2 to the
pitch number. Roos gave measurements on 5 Renaissance recorders,
those with Catalogue No. 1.1 to 1.5. When he shows a - after a pitch
name, I assume that one subtracts 0.3 from the pitch number. The pitch
numbers, total lengths and bore lengths (and the logarithms of these
lengths) are given in Table 2, with the parameters defining the regression
lines and the rms deviations from these lines given at the bottom.
Graph 2 shows the logarithms of the total lengths plotted against pitch
number, as well as the regression line. The recorder with the greatest
deviation from the regression line is the lowest one at pitch number 25. It
is Roos's 1.1, and being the only one that was unplayable (its pitch
apparently measured in a way different from the others), there are
grounds for rejecting it. The difference in the regression line made by
omitting Roos's 1.1 is hardly discernible, and so it is not shown here. Yet
as seen below, the effect on the final results is not insignificant. Graph 3 is
the same as Graph 2 (as is the effect of omitting Roos's 1.1) except that it
shows the logarithms of the bore lengths rather than of total lengths.
The rms deviation is greater for bore lengths than total lengths,
supporting the hypothesis that makers then deliberately tried to make the
total lengths of recorders representative of their pitches, while bores and
window heights varied with bore length less systematically to be in tune
at various pitches. All of these rms deviations are greater than those of
Praetorius's recorders. The probable explanation for this is that there are
errors in pitch in these sets of measurements (which become errors in
length here) which are not present in Praetorius's recorders (we can safely
assume that his recorders were in tune with his pitch standard). A typical
(logarithm of length) deviation of 0.013, if all converted to pitch error,
would correspond to half a semitone. We would expect this error to be
distributed between length error and pitch error.

31 Bob
Marvin, 'Recordersand English Flutesin EuropeanCollections', GSJ
XXV (1972), pp.30-57.
32 Wilhelm
Roos, 'The MusicalInstrumentCollection at Meran', GSJXXXII
(1979), pp.10-23.

99
 TABLE2: Data on survivingrecorders.

Measurer Lowest Pitch Total Bore Log. of Log.of

pitch number length length total bore
Name Reference mm mm length length
Marvin 1 F# 6 1759 1691 3.245 3.228
2 c# 13 1184 1117 3.073 3.048
3 f# 18 914 851 2.961 2.930
4 g# 20 816 765 2.912 2.884
5 c#' 25 625.5 564.5 2.796 2.752
6 c#' 25 622 555 2.794 2.744
7 C#+ 1.7 2501 2433 3.398 3.386
8 G# 8.2 1654 1603 3.219 3.205
9 g# 20.2 790 743 2.898 2.871
11 c 12 1344 1273 3.128 3.105
12 f 17 947 886 2.976 2.947
13 e' 28 523 466 2.719 2.668
Roos 1.1 c#' 25 565 505 2.752 2.703
1.2 bb- 21.7 717 654 2.856 2.816
1.3 bb- 21.7 720 656 2.857 2.817
1.4 g#- 19.7 860 784 2.934 2.894
1.5 c 12 1270 1165.5 3.104 3.067
Totallength Bore length
including excluding including excluding
Roos's 1.1 Roos's 1.1 Roos's 1.1 Roos's 1.1
Regressionline slope -0.02560 -0.02531 -0.02709 -0.02676
Mean pitch number 17.31 16.82 17.31 16.82
Mean logarithmof length 2.978 2.992 2.945 2.960
Root mean squaredeviation 0.0145 0.0128 0.0156 0.0134

Combiningthe informationon Praetorius'and survivingrecorders

The pitch standard of a Praetorius recorder relative to modern would
be its pitch number according to modern pitch minus its nominal
pitch number. That difference is in semitones. If we want it in cents,
we multiply the difference by 100. If we want it in Hz relative to
a' = 440 Hz, since in that pitch region there are 25 Hz in a semitone, we
multiply the difference in pitch number by 25, or divide the difference in
cents by 4.
The above assumes a particular length. If it is supposed to be an
average Praetorius recorder, the logarithm of that length would be on the
regression line at the pitch number of its nominal pitch. To find its pitch
according to modern pitch, we would find that logarithm of length on
the regression line that relates such lengths to modern pitch (the
regression line of surviving instruments), and find which pitch it

100
 GRAPH 2: Surviving recorders - total lengths:
A _
Logarithms of total lengths with regression line.
3.5 '
t

3.4

3.3

3.2
C
0 3.1
0
-5

1.4
3
0

0
2.9

2.8

2.7

2.6
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Pitch number (semitones above C).

GRAPH 3: Surviving recorders - bore lengths:

Logarithms of bore lengths with regression line.
3.5

0
._

c0
wl

Pitch number (semitones above C).

101
corresponds to. Since Praetorius's pitch standard should be the same
regardless of length, (doing the above for a different length should give
the same result), the two regression lines need to be parallel, i.e. they
should have identical slopes. In actuality the slopes differ slightly, so a
compromise slope for parallelism should be used. If they differ more than
slightly, then this procedure loses validity.
Each regression line goes through the mean point (the mean logarithm
length at the mean pitch number). Any adjustments of slopes to make
two regression lines parallel would rotate the regression lines about their
mean points. If we measure the pitch difference at the mean logarithm
length of one set of measurements, the slope of the line for that set is
irrelevant. To get the logarithm length of the other line to be the same,
one starts from its mean point and moves along the slope to get there.
Measuring Praetorius's pitch standard by doing this to each of the
regression lines in each pair provides limits within which the compromise
slope is probably contained.
Table 3 shows the results in cents (for the various assumptions made) of
calculating the pitch standard by comparing the regression lines of each
of the five sets of measurements of Praetorius's total length with the
regression line from measurements of total length of surviving

TABLE3: Praetorius'spitch standard(centsfrommodern)

Slope Totallength Bore

used: length
P=Praetorius central central central left side right side central
S=surviving middle outside inside middle middle middle
Roos's 1.1 included
GreatBassomittedP 1 -6 11 9 3 59
S -27 -42 -4 -18 -31 16
GreatBassin F P -16 -25 -3 -8 -13 46
S -26 -39 -7 -17 -27 24
GreatBassin D P 77 68 91 86 80 144
S 27 14 47 36 26 78
Roos's 1.1 excluded
GreatBassomittedP 10 4 20 18 12 69
S -5 -20 19 5 -8 40
GreatBassin F P -8 -16 4 0 -5 56
S -10 -23 10 -1 -11 42
GreatBassin D P 89 80 102 98 92 157
S 45 31 64 54 44 97

The valuesin italicsarerejectedfor variousreasonsgiven in the analysis.

102
instruments, and comparing the regression line of Praetorius'sbore
length with the regression line of measurementsof bore length of
survivingrecorders.In each pair of rows in each labelled category,the
upper row uses the slope of Praetorius's regression line to get the
logarithm lengths to agree, and the lower row uses the slope of the
regression line of surviving instruments for this purpose, expecting that
the appropriate value should lie in between the two. The upper half of
the table uses the parameters of the regression line of surviving
instruments when Roos's 1.1 recorder is included, and the lower half uses
this regression line when that recorder is not included.
A glance at this table shows that a calculation of Praetorius's pitch
standard is very sensitive to small variations in the regression line
parameters, and a very accurate calculation of it from recorder
measurements cannot be expected. As may be expected, the calculated
pitch standard is always lowest if the original total length measurements
are to the outsides of the lines, and highest if they are to the insides of the
lines, with the other three sets of measurements of total length
intermediate. If we accept the assumption possibilities that Praetorius's
Great Bass should be omitted or that it was in F, and reject the possibility
that it was in D, and accept that the results are more reliable if Roos's 1.1
is omitted, a story that Praetorius's recorders blown by modern players
would sound at a pitch standardof between -23 and +20 cents (a' = 434-
445 Hz) emerges. But a story that the pitch standard was between +40
and +69 cents (a' = 450-457 Hz) emerges from the bore length
measurements. Both stories cannot simultaneously be true, and neither
can be accepted until what is wrong with the other is reasonably
explained. It is not a choice for judgment, but a matter of best fitting the
evidence.

Exploringthe inconsistency
The discrepancy between the calculation of pitch standard from the total
and from the bore length measurements can either be a statistical accident
or real. It is unlikely to be a statistical accident because the pitch standard
calculated from the bore measurements is outside the range of variation
in pitch standard calculated from the five independent measurements of
total length, and it is outside the range no matter whether the slope used
is from Praetorius's regression line or that of the surviving instruments.
The reality of the inconsistency is confirmed by an apparent design
difference between Praetorius's recorders as depicted and the surviving
recorders measured. On all recorders, the ratio of total length to bore
length tends to decrease as size increases. For the same sizes as surviving
recorders, that ratio is greater on the Praetorius recorders, most so on
the largest ones and decreases with decreasing size. This is shown on
Graph 4, where the ratio of total to bore lengths is plotted against
logarithms of the total length. All of the recorders considered are

103
included, with the squares being the surviving recorders and the circles
above them being the Praetorius depictions (the same sets of
measurements as in Graph 1). The differences are more matters of
centimetres rather than millimetres.
For either total or bore length data, the formula for calculating pitch
standardis:

pitch standard = mpn(s)-mpn(p)-{ [mll(s)-mll(p)]/slope(s or p))

where mpn is the mean pitch number, mll is the mean logarithm of
length, (s) is of surviving recorders, (p) is of Praetorius's recorders, and
the slope is that of the regression line. The result is the number of
semitones above (+) or below (-) modern pitch. The mean pitch
numbers are the same when doing this calculation for the total and bore
lengths, so the differences in the calculated pitch standardsmust be due to
the mean logarithms of length and/or the slopes. The calculated standard
would be increased if mll(s) is raised, mll(p) lowered, or the slope is less
steep. For the surviving recorders, there is no reason to doubt the
measurements of total length or bore length or the slopes of the
regression lines for these. The only possibilities left for explaining the
discrepancy are either that there is something wrong with Praetorius's
drawings, or that his instruments were really different from the surviving
ones. Shrinkage with age in the lengths of surviving recorders should be
no more than a few millimetres, so this cannot be a significant factor.

GRAPH4: Ratiosof totallengthto borelengthplottedagainstlogarithmof total

length.
CirclesarePraetorius's
recordersandsquaresbelowthemaresurvivingrecorders.
1.25 -

, . 1.20

1.15

0-a

o 1.10
0

' 1.05
.t *, XC

Logarithm of total length.

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 If the problem is with Praetorius'stotal lengths, they are either too
high or the slope of that regressionline is steeper than it should be,
making the pitch standardcalculation from total lengths too low to
match the bore-length value. If the problem is with Praetorius'sbore
lengths, they are either too low or the slope of that regressionline is
less steep than it should be, making the pitch standardcalculatedfrom
the bore lengths too high to match the total length value. It is unlikely
that the mean of a set of lengths is right but the regressionline slope is
wrong, or vice-versa, so examining the regression lines should be
sufficient.
Assuming that there was no essential difference in design between
Praetorius'sand the survivingrecorders,the slopes of the regressionlines
for measurementsof the same parametersshould be essentiallythe same.
If the source of the discrepancyis the total lengths, this would make the
slope of Praetorius'stotal-lengthregressionline steeper than that of the
survivingrecorders.On Table 1, Praetorius'saverageslope is -0.02504
with the Great Bass omitted and -0.02526 with the Great Bass in F,
while on Table2, the slope for survivingrecordersis -0.02531 (ifRoos's
1.1 is excluded). The steepnessof Praetorius'sslope is 1.1% and 0.2%
(respectively)less than the slope of the survivingrecorders.There is thus
no sign of Praetorius'sslope being too steep.
If the source of the discrepancyis the bore lengths, this would make
the slope of Praetorius'sbore-lengthregressionline less steep than that of
the survivingrecorders.On Table 1, Praetorius'sslope is -0.02618 with
the GreatBassomitted and -0.02635 with the GreatBassin F, while on
Table 2, the slope for surviving recordersis -0.02676 (if Roos's 1.1 is
excluded). The steepness of Praetorius'sslope is 2.2% and 1.5%
(respectively)less steep thanthat of the survivingrecorders.We here have
evidence for Praetorius'sbore measurementsslope being less steep thanit
should be. Thus the problem is much more likely to be with the bore
measurementsthanwith the measurementsof totallength.
A likely scenarioof how the problemoccurredneeds to be outlined.
There is evidence that Praetoriusused some accuratemeans (such as a
proportionalcompass)to transferone importantdimension(suchas total
length, body length or string stop) from the instrumentsthemselvesto
the drawing,and drew the restfreehandby eye. A mistakeof using total
length for the string stop led to the drawingof the large cittern that is
No. 3 on plate V to be much too big, so he didn'tfinish off the drawing
and gave the total length correctlyin the text. It is likely that the total
length of his recorderswas scaled accurately(except perhapsfor that of
the GreatBass), and the bore length was left for visual estimation (the
differencein rms deviationssupportsthis assumption).The estimation
would most probablybe of the head length (total length minus bore
length), which amountsto deciding how far down from the very top to
place the top of the window (andthe scribeline).
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 One possibility for how Praetorius got it wrong is that he cut his
recorder plate working from the smallest to the largest, and then assumed
that the head length was closer to being in proportion to the total length
than it really was, neglecting to check this detail with the instruments
themselves in time. Another possibility is that Praetorius estimated the
head length on the Great Bass from a Great Bass in D, and instead of
doing this independently for the other larger recorders, he visually
interpolated between the head length on the Great Bass and the head
lengths on the smaller recorders.
We need to consider the possibility that the apparent design difference
between Praetorius's recorders and surviving ones shown in Graph 4 is
real, and instruments with Praetorius's ratio of total to bore lengths are
not well represented in the selection of surviving instruments considered
here. To explore the likely consequences for the pitch-standard
calculation of a more Praetorius-like population of surviving recorders,
we need to look at those surviving recorders that have the most
Praetorius-like ratios.
The three surviving recorders closest to Praetorius's ratios are seen on
Graph 4 at logarithms of total length of 2.79 (Marvin's 6), 2.93 (Roos's
1.4) and 3.10 (Roos's 1.5). These appear on Graphs 2 and 3 at pitch
numbers 25, 19.7 and 12 respectively. Since there will be no design
difference between Praetorius's and surviving recorders in this case, the
two calculated pitch standardswould have to be within statistical error of
one another. With just three points, calculating the slope of regression
lines would be very inaccurate, but the pitch standard can be calculated
from the mean logarithms of lengths using the slopes given by
Praetorius's regression lines. The pitch standard results in cents above
modern are: for total lengths with the Great Bass omitted, 25, and with
the Great Bass in F, 10, and for bore lengths with the Great Bass omitted,
52, and with the Great Bass in F, 40. These figures are similar to those
given in Table 3, with an unacceptable difference between the total
length and bore length results. So switching to a more Praetorius-like
population doesn't help, and the only remaining likely possibility is
carelessness in Praetorius's drawings of bore lengths.

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 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The total lengths and bore lengths of nine recorders (with two views of
each of two recorders) in Praetorius's Plate IX woodcut were measured
and scaled. When the logarithms of these measurements were plotted
against pitch number (semitones above C) on a graph, the points show
no tendency other than to scatter about a straight line. Best-fit straight
lines were calculated by regression analysis. The logarithms of
measurements of these lengths by Bob Marvin (twelve recorders) and
Wilhelm Roos (five recorders) on surviving instruments, when plotted
against pitch number, showed the same tendency, and best-fit straight
lines were similarly calculated.
We can come to clearer conclusions if we reject rogue measurements
where pitch is uncertain (Praetorius's Great Bass assumed to be in D
instead of F, and the unplayable Roos's 1.1). Both for Praetorius's
recorders and the surviving recorders, the root mean square deviations of
the logarithms of total length from the regression (best fit) line is less than
that measure of deviations of the logarithms of bore length. Also, the
slopes of the regression lines for the logarithms of total length are in both
cases very close to the theoretical slope for harmonic relationship, i.e. a
doubling of length for each octave lowering in pitch, while those for the
bore length are about 5% steeper. These points are interpreted as
implying that Renaissance recorder makers deliberately adjusted the total
lengths of their instruments to reflect the pitches at which they blew, so
total length is a more consistent indicator of pitch than bore length.
If the slopes of the corresponding regression lines of Praetorius's and
surviving recorders were identical, a pitch standard can be calculated
from the pitch difference between them. This is not precisely the case,
but the differences are not serious enough to invalidate the procedure.
When the calculation is done, the pitch standard derived from
measurements of total lengths is a' = 434-445 Hz, while that from bore
length measurements is a' = 450-457 Hz. There can only be one pitch
standard and it would come out of both calculations if Praetorius's
recorders and the surviving ones were of the same design. The difference
is not a statistical accident, and is due to an apparent difference of design,
where the bore lengths of Praetorius's large recorders are apparently
smaller than those of surviving recorders of the same length.
If this difference in design was real, we should get the same calculated
pitch standard using Praetorius's data and just those surviving recorders
that appear to have the same design. Similar differences result, so
this is not likely the case. The other possibility is that there was
carelessness in Praetorius's drawing. Considering the regression line
slopes, the difference in pitch standards shows that the problem is most
probably not with the total lengths but with the bore lengths, so the
carelessness was with positioning the tops of the windows. Thus the

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calculation of pitch standard from bore lengths is invalid and the
conclusion is a' = 434-445 Hz.
The popular contention that the lengths of Praetorius's recorders
support the hypothesis that his pitch standard was a' = 460 Hz is shown
in this study to be untrue. His pitch standard calculates to a' = 440
+ 5 Hz. This assumes that in the intervening four centuries, the resonant
pitch ranges of the surviving recorders, and where in those ranges the
player decides to blow, are unchanged. There is reason to believe that age
contraction (primarily across the bore) has raised the resonant pitches
slightly, and that the modern style of blowing wind instruments picks a
higher pitch in the available range than early blowing style. Each of these
effects would make the original pitch standard lower than that measured
here. Consequently, this study is fully consistent with the determination
of the original pitch standard as a' = 430 + 5 Hz made from repro-
ductions of (and calculations from) Praetorius's Pfefflin diagram of a set of
organ pitch pipes.

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