Saturday, February 25, 2006
Beckett fact no. 46.
'We have even piano tuners up our sleeve', says the Unnamable, 'they strike A and hear G.'
Possibly he means the Galls, father and son, who come to 'choon the piano' in Watt.
A concert pitch A above middle C these days weighs in at 440 Hz. It hasn't always been that way: some eighteenth-century English organs were pitched as much as four semitones lower, but pitch (pitches?) began to rise through the nineteenth century, giving a much brighter
When the infant Murphy sang not 'the proper A of International Concert Pitch, with 435 double variations per second, but the double flat of this' it still had to rise the final 5 Hz agreed on at an international conference in 1939.
His rattle will make amends, as Beckett says.
The piano is doomed, Gall the younger says in Watt.
'The piano-tuner also, said the elder.
The pianist also, said the younger.'
Doomed, doomed, we're all doomed.