Tuning Up

Few things test an audience’s patience like a sloppy “tuning up” session—especially when the orchestra is amateur (and, yes, sometimes when it’s professional). Random scraping and blowing at full volume can jolt the nerves before the concert even starts, and it can take truly great playing to undo the damage.

Soloists can be just as guilty. One excellent Teutonic violinist in Boston, for example, could spend minutes fussing over pitch before he felt satisfied—perhaps to show how finely calibrated his ear was.

But there’s rarely any need for the public to endure it. Tuning can be done before the audience arrives; any last‑second touch‑ups should be as pianissimo as possible.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra once offered a model solution at the old Music Hall: an electrically driven tuning fork kept a continuous A sounding. Each player tuned on the way in, so when the orchestra assembled on stage everyone was ready—no agonizing pitch circus required.

Handel understood the value of being ready too, but a prank once turned his opening chord into pure chaos. After rehearsal the instruments had been in tune; before the performance someone had deliberately thrown them all out. When the downbeat came, the first fortissimo chord was discord itself. Handel exploded—leaping from the stand, upsetting the drums and even a double‑bass, losing his wig as he charged across the stage—snorting with rage and vowing revenge on whoever had taken such a “wicked liberty.”