I've just been reading a book on baroque music. Apparently we have Handel's original tuning fork, and its frequency is 422.5.

Yes (so the book), 415 is a modern convention, deliberately exactly a semitone below 440 specifically so that specially constructed keyboards for harpsichords and organs can slide down a semitone to the next string/pipe. If that's already in Wiki, I apologise.

"Chorton" is not pronounced as in "carton"! It's Chor Ton = Choir Tone! (a spondee, not a trochee)

ELCBK said

So, an old tuning fork of Mozart's (besides Handel's) was discovered from 1780 - 421.6 Hz.

Close enough to Handel's 422.5 (only just noticed you mentioned Handel, but I'll let it stand anyway.)

I don't know the history of 432, but it was an established frequency, not a mystical one. So much so that more than one of my ukulele forum members has come across an A432 tuning fork, and at least one has filed it down to sharpen it to 440.

I suspect it was just an early attempt to discover a baroque norm for informed performance and has now ceded to 415 for other reasons, as mentioned above.

ELCBK said

Pathagoras did NOT base anything on frequencies. 

Currently, "It is generally agreed that baroque music is to be played at around A=415Hz, classical and early romantic eras at around 425 Hz and later repertoire at 440 Hz and up". 

...but, do many Orchestras really play Classical & Romantic era music at around 425 Hz?  

The book I read is part of a three part set, the other two parts being Classical and Romantic. When I've read them, I'll keep you informed.

I've ranted about Pythagoras before.

We have absolutely nothing directly written by Pythagoras and only one indirect potential quote in Plato's Laches.

It is important to note that Pythagoras the man lived one or two hundred years before the Pythagoreans, who simply followed his religion.

Pythagoras if anything discovered that an octave required the resonant object to be halved in length and the ratios for the fifth and the fourth were 2/3 and 3/4 respectively. That is all. He did not invent music. He didn't know what a frequency was.

That 4/3 frequency ratio (inversion of the 3/4 wavelength) is already a problem, as the harmonic series's ratios all have denominators that are a power of 2 (1/2, 1/4, 1/8). They are not compatible with x/3.

The harmonic major third is 5/4, for example. The Pythagoreans discovered that. They theorised that the numerator had to be one greater than the denominator. e.g. 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, 6/5 (their minor third), 9/8 (tone), 10/9 (semitone).

Pythagoras was a mystic, and they felt that that system was mystical.

Musicians told them they were out of their tiny little minds because the system gave intervals that were all wrong to the ear.

As for temperament, it is possible that, since no modern piano uses strict ET (my old head of music claimed to be able to detect the different tonalities between say Db major and A major on a piano), we are still actually using what is no more than a slightly tighter form of Bach's well temperament. (ET is one of many well tempered systems - the only one where there are genuine enharmonics). I don't know if today's modified ET system has a name (e.g. Bach's was probably one of Werckmeister's).

But the pitch question is still unanswered, except in that string instruments acquired more tension in order to generate more volume of sound and so pitch rose accordingly?

The pitch would have risen due to the higher tension, Emily. 

As to what I prefer, it doesn't matter to me - if an orchestra plays something a semitone flat, I probably wouldn't notice. The music might be more mellow, but I often listen to baroque for mellowness already, so the pitch might be masked by the mood.

On the other hand, accompanying the extra mellowness might be worse intonation, so it's swings and roundabouts.

This sounds as though it's in E, but I wouldn't have known without checking.

Nor would I have known that it was written in F.

Yes, that's what I was saying.

I'm not convinced by those horns being held in the air - it would be more comfortable to hold them downwards. Maybe they saw it in a painting.

In ancient Rome infantry used long straight trumpets and rested them on the shoulder of the man in front.

The rounded version was for cavalry to sling over their head and shoulder.

It makes more sense.