From John Pearn and Peter Bowler
We enjoyed the reference to the lowest note sung in opera, the low F in O Isis and Osiris from Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Letters, 31 October). Such deep notes convey a sensation of wonder, novelty, aesthetic beauty and menace. The 64-foot organ pipe (Gravissima) of the Hill Organ in the Sydney Town Hall is an example, with the frequency of one of its harmonics down to 8 hertz, which induces a mix of physical vibration as well as perceived sound. Elephants, moles and ferrets perceive, as sound, frequencies as low as or lower than 16 Hz.
The song Drinking by the German bass Ludwig Fischer was a favourite of the Australian basso profondo Malcolm McEachern. A 1930s English Pathé documentary film shows him singing it. Then, having plumbed the depths of the final deep F (43.6 Hz) at the end of the first verse, McEachern casually suggested to his pianist that they “see how low we really can go” – and sang it two tones lower, right down to the final note, D1 (36.7 Hz) which has a wavelength of 939.8 centimetres. Is this the lowest frequency achievable by the human voice?
South Brisbane, Australia
