Regarding the Possible Consequences of Tunings Which Exceed the Standard A440

...It becomes very serious. As you go up in pitch, the strain on the stringed instruments increases markedly. There is real risk of bowing, if not collapse. In a small group, this risks merely financial disaster. In a large ensemble, where mass is sufficient to sustain a chain-reaction, this can actually result in implosion.

Such an event occurred in Pittsburgh in 1862, at a performance of the Pittsburgh Symphonic Society. Spurred by their conductor, Fritz 'High Strung' von Boenhaufer, to tune the entire symphony orchestra to A=450, the performance was doomed before it ended. Things were okay, albeit strained, when the violins, violas, and cellos tuned up. And as the double-basses cranked their pegs, there were moments of fear, but nothing happened. Even when the piano and harp were tunedhigher, all was well.

Disaster struck, however, when Fritz, a stickler for detail, demanded that the tympanis be brightened up as well.

At this point, critical mass was reached, and there was a great rumble throughout the hall. A skin drum-head creaked... ...and snapped. The report strck the harp first, which abruptly disengaged its frame members from one another. Strings made rather a mess of the harpist. As if on cue, over-strained instruments began to... ...implode.

The audience of Pittsburgh's finest citizens barely had time to gasp as orchestra, stage, lamps, then seats were drawn into the melee, carrying all and sundry, young and rold, rich and poor into a singularity which was forming where Fritz had stood just seconds before.

Fed by the mass of the citizenry, the singularity next devoured the entire hall, leaving only an empty field and some bits of foundation.

At this point, being formed of Classical Music, in which any form of excess is the greatest of sins, the singularity ceased its expansion. In the next morning's newspaper, a passer-by who witnessed the affair reported that he heard, at this point, something which resembled a belch. Then silence.

Independent confirmation of the belch was never possible.

However, to this day, on that corner, it is known that a coin, dropped casually on the sidewalk will disappear within an hour. Except should that coin be a copper penny. The latter phenomenon is the subject of an extensive investigation as to what unknown principle of nuclear physics should cause this unique phenomenon of nature, which scientists have termed a 'latent singularity' to fail to draw into it things which are made of copper.

(c) Copyright 1995 Greg Bullough. All rights reserved.

Email to: (greg@bullough.org)