ABSTRACT
In the baroque era, both pitch and the relative tuning system, or temperament, varied considerably. Even within a given city, church organs were tuned to different pitches, and music for the opera or other secular uses was performed at different pitches too. Given the variety of pitches that were used and the difficulty of documenting practices of the baroque era, it is not surprising that certain problems of interpretation remain. Choirs and chamber ensembles often adapt the temperament by inflecting certain pitches to make some chords sound more in tune than they are in equal temperament, or to increase their "pull" in a harmonic context. At a higher pitch, the instruments project better and are more brilliant and agile, while the lower-pitched woodwind instruments produce a mellower, softer tone which blends especially well with other instruments. Various combinations of instruments may pose difficulties and even necessitate substitutions in instrumentation depending upon the pitch and temperament.
