TromboneChat

Wind intruments, at least in wind bands and when on their own, tune to Bb. String instruments in orchestras, tune to A. This is understandable, since the strings have A string while many wind instruments are pitched in Bb. But why do both types of instruments not tune using the same note?

(Edit - After seeing repiles I realized the ambiguity of the question. The question should rather be: why are both types of instruments not built to use the same tuning note?)

Or, more accurately, they did, but at some point in the past a switch occured, and when did it occur?

Some supporting evidences for this are:

1. The pitch of sackbut, which was described as being in A, D, and E, while modern trombone family is in Bb (tenor, bass, sopano, BBb contrabass), Eb (alto), and F (contrabass), curiously half step above.

2. Many horn parts in romantic period are in E, while modern horns are in F, also half step above.

3. The modern frequency of A above middle C is 440 Hz. However, some tuning forks before the standardization can go as high as 455 Hz, which can be considered as Bb if one use A = 429-430 Hz, still fairly in the middle of the range of tuning A in those periods (some extremes are A = 409 Hz and A = 455 Hz as mentioned).

4. Related to the above, high-pitch (around 456 Hz) and low-pitch (around 440 Hz) instruments.

5. There were evidences of pitch inflation, in which orchestras tuned higher and higher to achieve a brighter sound, austensibly more desirable in those times, until someone complained enough for the pitch to be lowered again.

My guess is that orchestras inflates the pitch until the winds got fed up with it, and permanently change the nominal home key of their instruments to be up a half step to Bb, while the strings, who can adjust the pitch upward more easily, stuck with A.

However, I cannot find any literature, at least in Google Scholar, that specify the time of the switch. It is likely to be gradual process and adoption might not be uniform, hence high- and low-pitch instruments.

Please help enlighten me on this issue.

Every orchestra I've ever played in tunes to A, winds included.

There was actually a convention held in Europe some time in the 19th Century where it was decided that the tuning standard be at A=440Hz, but the recommendation was voluntary. British tuning remained at "high pitch" until some time in the 1970s. In the U.S. the tuning was either high pitch or low pitch (a little below A=440 Hz) until some time in the 1930s.

Some orchestras tend to tune to a slightly higher pitch (A=442Hz or 444Hz) because the string players like the sound at these "brighter" frequencies.

Tuning to A on a trombone is really difficult as it is not a "closed" position, but some trombone players don't even play the common tuning note (Bb) in fully closed position either so it really doesn't matter. I used to tune off-stage and the tuning A at the start of the concert was all for show. For a while our conductor asked for a Bb for the trombones, but it really didn't improve overall intonation-- either you hear it or you don't.

I rail at a current fad in U.S. schools to tune to Bb on the 2nd line of the bass staff. This note is at a low extreme of the range being played and often the rest of the instrument becomes out of tune. I realize that Bb on top of the bass staff is near the upper limit of many of the younger students, but it should be made a normal part of their range.

The higher pitch also tightens the strings so they can play louder.

The switch to 440Hz was recommended in 1955 and formalized in 1975 (link).

OP is asking something a bit different, I think. He's assuming all winds and strings were in the same kind of open string tuning- A, E, etc., including trombones. He's not really asking about the "tuning note" but the pitch of the instruments themselves.

You are right, I was just completing Bruce's post.

Here in France (at least in the orchestras I have played or have listened to), it depends.
In community orchestras, I have seen a lot of variations from a mix of A and Bb to everyone on Bb.
In big bands, Bb for everyone.
In symphonic, A for strings and woodwinds and Bb for brass trumpets/trombones/tubas. For the french horns, I don't remember them tuning to Bb, only A, but I might me mistaken, I did not pay much attention to horns

It seems logical to have an A for strings (as the OP mentioned, they have an A string to tune to).
It is also very logical for modern trombones to tune to a Bb, because you know why.
But for the other brass instruments, it's another question... Why should I tune my C trumpet to a Bb ? Okay, it's a single valve compared to the A double-valve combination, but why not a C? You will mention (and be right) that the MD does not care about what trumpet I'm playing, but still...

An explanation I've read for why our trombones are built in Bb now instead of the fabled A of long-ago times is that they are both the same pitch or nearly so.

Pitches in Renaissance times varied widely, being both higher and lower than our A 440, depending on the locale.

According to the tale... the few places tooled to make trombones had a very high pitch, such that their A was much like a common Bb of the Nineteenth Century which is not far from the Bb in our A440 scheme. They made a tenor trombone in their "A". (Anyone who bought one and took it to a land with another pitch standard just did the best with it they could since they had no tuning slides.)

As trombone playing nearly disappeared in the baroque era, then rebounded in the classical era the notion of these trombones sounding an A was forgotten and they were deemed to be sounding a Bb.

So the story goes.

I find it plausible given that a trombone built to today's lower A would have a seventh position even farther to reach than on our Bb trombones... too far for tiny, malnourished, stunted, Renaissance people to make use of.

AFAIK, no actual Renaissance-era trombones survive to the modern day so measuring one to ascertain what pitch it was built in is not an option.

Bb in an A-440 tuning is 466 Hz. The High Tuning used in parts of Germany was A=465, which is nearly the same thing. So an A trombone built in Germany to their tuning would be in Bb where A is 440Hz.

Note that the earliest trombones available for evaluation are from the mid 1600's. These have been copied to produce the instruments used in groups like Maximilien's (Le Tromboniste). I'm not sure which pitch standard these instruments were built to.

Google says the oldest surviving trombone is from 1551 but the source it cites is just an informal website with no citations of its own.


I would be delighted if there is a trombone from 1551; who has it?

sirisobhakya wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 9:10 pm
2. Many horn parts in romantic period are in E, while modern horns are in F, also half step above.

The way composers thought about valved brass instruments, especially horns, evolved over the 19th Century.

I have read that, at first, many composers thought of the valves as just a way to quickly change tuning crooks on a natural horn. They didn't expect the horn to play freely chromatically until maybe the latter half of the century.

A composer writing a E horn part perhaps was still thinking in natural horn terms, and wanting open horn notes for music in E or a neighbor key.

robcat2075 wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 3:50 pm An explanation I've read for why our trombones are built in Bb now instead of the fabled A of long-ago times is that they are both the same pitch or nearly so.

Pitches in Renaissance times varied widely, being both higher and lower than our A 440, depending on the locale.

BGuttman wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 4:53 pm Bb in an A-440 tuning is 466 Hz. The High Tuning used in parts of Germany was A=465, which is nearly the same thing.

About right, but a bit more complex. 466 (or 465), like 415 for the low baroque pitch, is a modern standard exactly one half step higher than 440. In reality, pitch in churches in the Renaissance and early baroque was not standardized at all, and was really all over the place, with some regional tendencies. Very often higher than modern concert pitch, by a half step or more. Surviving organs and wind instruments are good evidence of these regional tendencies. There are many historical organs in northern Germany where the A is around 475 Hz for example, around ¾ of a tone higher than 440 and there are organs (and trombones and cornetts) in northern Italy that play as high as 490 Hz, almost a full whole tone higher than 440. The highest organ I've played with was in Bavaria, pitched at a=500 Hz! Some places favoured a lower pitch though, famous examples being Rome and Paris, with performance pitches around or even below 400 Hz. Although there again reality is much more complex, as even in Rome there were some very high organs cohabiting with the low ones. And you can find abut everything in-between, in different places. Quite a lot of organs can be found at pitches between 420 and 430, for example, or in the 450s and 460s. There really wasn't a standard, even among instruments by the same maker. Both organists and melodic instrumentalists were perfectly fluent in sight-transposing, and trombonists could also add crooks to the instrument to bring the pitch down, as an alternative to or in combination with sight-transposing.

It's worth noting that Michael Praetorius writes that the trombone is the best instrument to take the pitch from and tune other instruments to, as, he writes, a well-built trombone from Nuremberg, with the slide extended two finger widths, produces a perfect A. That doesn't mean standardization of pitch however because in all likelihood, whoever ordered the trombone would have specified the length and note of their lowest organ pipes, and the Nuremberg maker would have made the trombone accordingly. But surviving trombones are invariably around the length of modern trombones or shorter. Where organs were low, if trombones were used they were likely tuned a whole step or even minor third higher than the organ and the player transposed at sight (for example, if a Roman organ was tuned at around 390Hz, a trombone at around 490 works perfectly with a minor third transposition – much better than attempting to play an instrument in A at 390).

robcat2075 wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 3:50 pm According to the tale... the few places tooled to make trombones had a very high pitch, such that their A was much like a common Bb of the Nineteenth Century which is not far from the Bb in our A440 scheme. They made a tenor trombone in their "A". (Anyone who bought one and took it to a land with another pitch standard just did the best with it they could since they had no tuning slides.)

As trombone playing nearly disappeared in the baroque era, then rebounded in the classical era the notion of these trombones sounding an A was forgotten and they were deemed to be sounding a Bb.

So the story goes.

BGuttman wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 4:53 pm So an A trombone built in Germany to their tuning would be in Bb where A is 440Hz.

Technically true but not how it happened in practice. The place where organs were around 440 would have have had trombones that matched this pitch, directly or via transposition. The Bb/A dichotomy is not the result of using trombones built for one pitch in a place that used another pitch, it's the result of the pitch suddenly changing at that place, by a half step. And the change didn't happen when trombones went out of use (they never did, there are places where there was continuous use from at least 1500 until today). There was definitely a time in some places, where trombonists' instruments in A became instruments in Bb pretty much overnight. It happened in the 18th century when a compromise pitch was adopted between the high pitch still used by the church brass and organs ("Chorton") and the low pitch originally favoured for playing in princely chambers ("Kammerton") but by then also used in church, that was preferred for strings (less tension) and reinforced by the importation of French "modern" woodwinds that were pitched lower. This pitch duality is why trombone and organ parts in Bach's cantatas are notated a tone lower than the other parts (Christ lag in Todesbanden is in E minor, but the original trombone and organ parts are in D minor, essentially treated as transposing instruments). This unification of pitches happened at different times in different places. For example, it seems to have happened as early as the first decade of the 1700s in Vienna, but, as late as 1783, when Mozart had his Mass in C minor premiered in Salzburg, he still had to provide transposed organ and trombone parts! But both Vienna and Salzburg had continuous use of trombones through that period.

robcat2075 wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 3:50 pm AFAIK, no actual Renaissance-era trombones survive to the modern day so measuring one to ascertain what pitch it was built in is not an option.

What? Who told you that? There are quite a few Renaissance and early-Baroque instruments in museums. There's literally a whole book dedicated to studying the surviving Renaissance trombones (not even all of them, just the ones made in Nuremberg), called "The Sixteenth-Century Trombone". I've personally measured, inspected and played 3 instruments from the 1570s.

BGuttman wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 4:53 pm Note that the earliest trombones available for evaluation are from the mid 1600's.

robcat2075 wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 7:08 pm Google says the oldest surviving trombone is from 1551 but the source it cites is just an informal website with no citations of its own.

I would be delighted if there is a trombone from 1551; who has it?

The earliest trombones available are indeed from the 16th century, not from the mid 1600s. The "oldest surviving trombone" is indeed technically the instrument by Erasmus Schnitzer dated 1551, held by the Germanisches National museum in Nuremberg. However only the bell is actually that old, and it's originally a trumpet bell around which a trombone was later assembled (trumpet and trombone bells at the time where often identical aside from the hole punched near the edge of trumpet bells, and made on the same mandrel – and some trumpets of the time even have wider bores than trombone's – so that trumpet bell worked perfectly fine later on to incorporate into a trombone). So that instrument'a existence as a trombone is old, but it's not really the oldest. There are a number of instruments from the 1570s, 80s and 90s, and then really quite a lot of instruments from 1600 onwards. The most common models of tenor sackbuts in use today are based on Schnitzer (1551), Anonymous Italian (1560s-70s), Schnitzer (1579), Drewelwecz (1593) and Hainlein (1632), and the most common basses are based on Ehe (1612) and Öller (1630s). All of them before 1650.

BGuttman wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 4:53 pm I'm not sure which pitch standard these instruments were built to.

Varies, and sometimes impossible to tell because of later modifications or repairs. But very often they are somewhere around A=460-470, and sometimes yet higher. The Accademia Filarmonica di Verona instrument collection contains three trombones (one Schnitzer from Nuremberg, one anonymous Italian instrument and a third, also likely Italian and of unknown maker because the bell flare is missing) that have belonged to the institution and haven't changed hands since the 1580s or 90s. All three are pitched around a=488 with the slide all the way in, which gives about 482 with the slide extended 2 fingers width as described by Praetorius.

robcat2075 wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 9:19 pm

sirisobhakya wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 9:10 pm
2. Many horn parts in romantic period are in E, while modern horns are in F, also half step above.

The way composers thought about valved brass instruments, especially horns, evolved over the 19th Century.

I have read that, at first, many composers thought of the valves as just a way to quickly change tuning crooks on a natural horn. They didn't expect the horn to play freely chromatically until maybe the latter half of the century.

A composer writing a E horn part perhaps was still thinking in natural horn terms, and wanting open horn notes for music in E or a neighbor key.

Yes for the second part, but AFAIK for the first it's the other way around. Early valve horn designs still used crooks (as Vienna horns do to this day!) for different tunings, like natural horn. What differed was the way you get the diatonic and chromatic notes with the valved horn, allowing one to not necessarily have to use hand-stopping (but one still could choose to use hand-stopping, or a combination). A part for horn in E might be equally playable on a natural or valved horn, both using the E crook, so that the open (and best-sounding) notes are the E major chord, useful if the piece itself is in E or A, for example. It's somewhat less important with a valved horn, but with some of the early designs, it was still better to have the horn pitched in the right key, sound-wise. The horn became fixed in F only later. And even then, tradition and older instruments still being in use meant the way of writing did not change.

LeTromboniste wrote: Tue Oct 07, 2025 4:18 am

robcat2075 wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 3:50 pm AFAIK, no actual Renaissance-era trombones survive to the modern day so measuring one to ascertain what pitch it was built in is not an option.

What? Who told you that?

It's something I read in the last few years. IIRC that writer asserted that no brass instruments earlier than the 1700s survived.

I don't recall the occasion, but perhaps the writer was more skeptical of the authenticity of the very oldest claimants. Fake and reproduction objects in museums is a widespread problem among all genres of artifacts beyond just oil paintings by notable artists.

Note how the 1551 trombone example you describe has no trombone parts from 1551.

Old brass instruments probably have not have gotten the the same scrutiny that more-desired art objects get.


But instruments made in the latter half of the 1500s are just sneaking into the tail end of the Renaissance anyway and only because we regard "Renaissance" in music as ending much later than the Renaissance Era everyone else speaks.

I've noticed that in art. Renaissance painting ends about a century before Renaissance music!

robcat2075 wrote: Tue Oct 07, 2025 9:06 am It's something I read in the last few years. IIRC that writer asserted that no brass instruments earlier than the 1700s survived.

I don't recall the occasion, but perhaps the writer was more skeptical of the authenticity of the very oldest claimants. Fake and reproduction objects in museums is a widespread problem among all genres of artifacts beyond just oil paintings by notable artists.


Old brass instruments probably have not have gotten the the same scrutiny that more-desired art objects get.

Yeah that's just...not true. There are relatively few surviving brass instruments from the time (a few dozen), and because of that relative scarcity, most of them have received a lot of detailed attention and study. Also some, as in the case of the three instruments in Verona, have not changed hands in hundreds of years. In that particular case we know from 16th century inventories when at the latest they were added to the collection, and they haven't moved from there since. Other instruments can be associated with contemporary order letters or inventories. Several instruments have undergone metallurgic analysis to analyse the contents of the brass alloy use, and these are not modern material, they are brass alloys with imperfections that match what you'd expect from the extraction and alloying we know they used back then.

Most instruments were repaired or modified in later periods to allow continuous use. Some also underwent restoration in the 19th century, and trust me, it's very often immediately obvious to someone who knows what to look for which parts are original and which are later restorations. The truth is 18th century craftsmen didn't care about precisely imitating the original 16th and 17th century makers' techniques with precision, they just use the techniques of their time to make the repairs and change necessary for the instrument to remain usable. And 19th century restorers usually had no idea what they were doing, producing chimeras out of different parts of different instruments, or replacing missing parts with industrial-grade extruded tubing, not unlike the chimeras of 19th century naturalists who assembled skeleton fossils without realizing they were confusing body parts and even mixing multiple species. At the time many of these instruments were collected there simply wasn't the ability or knowledge required to produce the instruments that survive. There aren't many, but there are also enough, found all across Europe and collected over a very large period of time, that the idea that every single one (or even just a majority) could be a fake is simply ludicrous.

robcat2075 wrote: Tue Oct 07, 2025 9:06 am Note how the 1551 trombone example you describe has no trombone parts from 1551.

That's not a fake though. It's an actual trombone made and used during the baroque period, as a trombone. It's just, as a trombone, not as early as the date on the bell. It's an example of a part of an instrument being recycled and repurposed.

robcat2075 wrote: Tue Oct 07, 2025 9:06 am

But instruments made in the latter half of the 1500s are just sneaking into the tail end of the Renaissance anyway and only because we regard "Renaissance" in music as ending much later than the Renaissance Era everyone else speaks.

I've noticed that in art. Renaissance painting ends about a century before Renaissance music!

The different eras/movement all happen in visual arts and architecture first and music later. Same with roccoco, classicism, romantisme, impressionism, expressionism, etc.

Late 1500s in music is perhaps late Renaissance, but very much Renaissance. Even the music of the early 17th century, despite its innovations and departures still has way lot in common with the Renaissance than it has with, say, Bach or Handel.

We do lack trombones from the early Renaissance. Or for that matter, almost any brass instrument. There's only one brass instrument, of any kind, that survives from the 14th century (also very much not a fake. The details of what slide trumpets and early trombones truly looked like will always stay a hypothesis. But there are absolutely instruments from the late Renaissance, and many more from the early and mid baroque. Including trumpets, trombones and cornetts, we're talking several dozen instruments made before 1700. Just a couple years ago, an old shipwreck was found in the Adriatic. As part of its cargo, the ship carried a load of over a dozen Nuremberg-made trumpets and mouthpieces.

Why are both types of instruments not built to use the same tuning note?

Like a lot of people have already said, orchestras tune to A because the strings all have an A as part of their standard tuning.

I’m speculating here, but I believe there are several reasons why bands tune to B-flat, not A:

• Convention. It’s always been done that way, so people will continue until/unless it doesn’t work anymore or a different way is proposed and accepted.

• Most modern wind and brass instruments have a good, stable B-flat* that can be used as a reference point.

• Wind and brass music tends towards flat keys, as opposed to strings and orchestral music which tends towards sharp keys.

• This is in part due to the fact that string players make additional notes/pitches on their instruments by shortening the length of the vibrating element (the string). Winds in general, but especially brass, tend to approach their instruments by lengthening the vibrating element (the air column).

For the trombone, 1st position is “home base,” and everything after that is “longer.” Open on the trumpet, horn, euphonium, and tuba is “home base,” and every valve combination lengthens the vibrating air column.

For winds, most of them have a B-flat that is a stable pitch,* and is easily played, i.e., the fingers are aligned on the primary key holes, and if any auxiliary keys are used then the pitch is stable and fairly true. It’s also stable* in terms of posture: the hands and fingers easily hold the instruments when playing a B-flat, so the instrument is physically stable.

***

I’ve noticed that some bands, especially concert bands and wind ensembles, are starting to tune a little differently: an A for flutes and clarinets, a B-flat for the brass, an A for E-flat saxophones, and a D (E?) for B-flat saxophones.

Maybe in future we’ll all tune to C.