432hz

[Julf]

You're right here, it's the most common usage, but it can also be used in the opposite way with e.g. Sony's 'élastique timestretch' feature.

Which is why it is important to make clear what we are talking about - preferably avoid ambiguous terms.

 

[GrO]

The thing is, that the Schumann resonance varies over time. So to take advantage of it if it had any relevance or magic power, we'd need a tuning device that allowed us to tune not to 432 but to whatever the multiple of the Schumann resonances leads to having the magic power at that time.

In other words, this is just more pseudoscientific bunkum. Put it away and just listen to the music as it was recorded.

I've never mentioned any magic related or Schumann, just some facts from the history.

430.54/432Hz were mainly used by Joseph Sauveur and Giuseppe Verdi. For most of the time in Europe musicians were using even lower tunings. The history also says that 440 was propagated by physicists (not musicians) and initiated by some silk manufacturer - isn't that a little weird?

We know that Johann Scheibler is that silk manufacturer. The funny thing is that Joseph Sauveur used his 'tonometer' but he actually preferred C4=256Hz (A4=430.54Hz). Then there was this Stuttgart Conference of 1834 organized by physicists but it failed to force the higher 440 tuning, and finally after many years it was forced by International Organization for Standardization in 1939.

So the question is: why did they want 440 so much and not 439, 435, 432, or 430?

 

[Julf]

I've never mentioned any magic related or Schumann

Not you, but most other proponents of a=432 Hz justify it by Schumann.

 

[Julf]

So the question is: why did they want 440 so much and not 439, 435, 432, or 430?

The 440 Hz standard was supposedly originally established in an international conference in London in 1939, and BBC used 440 Hz. The reason was that the Brits misinterpreted the French government 435 Hz standard from 1859, and thought it was temperature-dependent, and compensated for British climate to 439 Hz. As 439 Hz is a prime number, and hard to generate precisely with primitive electronics, so they rounded up to 440.

 

[GrO]

Not you, but most other proponents of a=432 Hz justify it by Schumann.

Yeah, true but I don't really know why Schumann and why 432 while there are many different tunings in the history of composers. Maybe I should know but I've never really followed this whole "magic" theory.

 

[Julf]

Yeah, true but I don't really know why Schumann and why 432 while there are many different tunings in the history of composers. Maybe I should know but I've never really followed this whole "magic" theory.

The simple answer is of course that 432 Hz is 54 times 8 Hz, the supposed Schumann resonance fundamental frequency (really 7.83 Hz). Beyond that, you don't want to go down that rabbit hole...

 

[LeftCoastTim]

I there's still that one unanswered question: why did they make so many efforts to set the standard at 440Hz while it wasn't really used by musicians then or earlier (at least not by the majority)?

It's not unknown or a mystery or a conspiracy. It was a call for cease fire on pitch inflation.

Not everyone plays at 440Hz. If your 200 year old church organ is tuned for 403Hz, the musicians that play with it don't really have a choice.

Also, in order to preserve (brass) instrument maker's sanity, the world decided to stick with 440Hz.

But hey, we have inches instead of centimeters here in the USA. I really hate these globalists shoving metric down our throats /s.

 

[GrO]

@LeftCoastTim could you try to make more precise quotes next time?

...and there's still that one unanswered question: why did they make so many efforts to set the standard at 440Hz while it wasn't really used by musicians then or earlier (at least not by the majority)?

It's not unknown or a mystery or a conspiracy. It was a call for cease fire on pitch inflation.

I've just asked a normal question, I didn't say anything about some conspiracy, but which theory we should accept now: the 'pitch inflation' or the value rounding due to primitive electronics and temperature-dependency?

The 440 Hz standard was supposedly originally established in an international conference in London in 1939, and BBC used 440 Hz. The reason was that the Brits misinterpreted the French government 435 Hz standard from 1859, and thought it was temperature-dependent, and compensated for British climate to 439 Hz. As 439 Hz is a prime number, and hard to generate precisely with primitive electronics, so they rounded up to 440.

 

[Julf]

I've just asked a normal question, I didn't say anything about some conspiracy, but which theory we should accept now: the 'pitch inflation' or the value rounding due to primitive electronics and temperature-dependency?

This is a pretty good explanation: A brief history of the establishment of international standard pitch a=440 hertz

 

[MRC01]

Strange that the British adjusted pitch upward to compensate for a warmer temperature. Why strange? Perhaps "arbitrary" is a better word. The pitch of winds versus strings move opposite directions with temperature. Shifting it for winds made it worse/harder for strings. The British adjustment favored winds at the expense of strings. I wonder if they had a reason for that. The article doesn't explore this.

 

[mSpot]

The British adjustment favored winds at the expense of strings. I wonder if they had a reason for that.

Because the committee had 5 wind players but only 4 string players.

 

[j_j]

Because the committee had 5 wind players but only 4 string players.

You've spent time on a standards committee before, I take it?

 

[Galliardist]

Strange that the British adjusted pitch upward to compensate for a warmer temperature. Why strange? Perhaps "arbitrary" is a better word. The pitch of winds versus strings move opposite directions with temperature. Shifting it for winds made it worse/harder for strings. The British adjustment favored winds at the expense of strings. I wonder if they had a reason for that. The article doesn't explore this.

Actually, it's quite simple - string instruments can be adjusted through a much wider range of pitches than wind (or brass) instruments.

 

[j_j]

Actually, it's quite simple - string instruments can be adjusted through a much wider range of pitches than wind (or brass) instruments.

And when you adjust the pitch of one note on a wind instrument, the others do not follow in perfect ratio.

 

[MRC01]

And when you adjust the pitch of one note on a wind instrument, the others do not follow in perfect ratio.

True. This is explained & discussed earlier in this thread.

 

[Galliardist]

I've never mentioned any magic related or Schumann, just some facts from the history.

430.54/432Hz were mainly used by Joseph Sauveur and Giuseppe Verdi. For most of the time in Europe musicians were using even lower tunings. The history also says that 440 was propagated by physicists (not musicians) and initiated by some silk manufacturer - isn't that a little weird?

We know that Johann Scheibler is that silk manufacturer. The funny thing is that Joseph Sauveur used his 'tonometer' but he actually preferred C4=256Hz (A4=430.54Hz). Then there was this Stuttgart Conference of 1834 organized by physicists but it failed to force the higher 440 tuning, and finally after many years it was forced by International Organization for Standardization in 1939.

So the question is: why did they want 440 so much and not 439, 435, 432, or 430?

I see that I've joined the long list of people you've chosen to quote out of context in this thread, but never mind that, it happens.

Anyway, I went back to the first post, which refers to Maria Renold. Renold was a disciple of Rudolf Steiner, the famous esotericist. He was an advocate of A=432 because it was based on "the fundamental resonance of the Universe" - so yes, the Schumann resonance again. Previously. Steiner had advocated C-128 (which of course sets the C an octave higher at 256) for different, esoteric reasons. Both these ideas predate Steiner.

Verdi was convinced to switch from A=435 to A=432 by a theorist, Charles Meerens, who in turn supported A=432 because of a relationship with C=256 (which is not a direct relationship, but contrived) - again, attempting to unify these two esoteric pitches. Following Verdi's conversion to 432, it was adopted by the Italian armed forces and became known as "Italian pitch". Some Italian nationalists are still fighting this battle.

Returning to Renold, simply shifting pitch from 440 to 432 is a gross oversimplification of her work as well. it has to be placed in her work on temperament, which in itself looks in part to that relationship between A=432 and C=256, and proposes different temperaments to closer approach the relationship. You can't just "adopt" the full meaning of 432 without the temperament and the 256 relationship by forcing modern recordings into it.

It turns out that the "scientific" pitch of A=432 and the relationship to C=256 are about esoteric science, not what we would consider as physics today. In particular, some esoteric traditions relate 256 to those comments about calm being "sun-like".

Your history misses out other conventions and results, such as the Vienna convention of 1885 which adopted A=435, the French supported pitch of the time.

So, we have a mixture of esoteric beliefs, Schumann resonance, Steiner and Italian nationalism behind pretty much all advocacy of 432 - just so you understand the origins of what you are supporting. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with any of this: obviously I'm not a believer, but composers and musicians were, and some still are, influenced and inspired by such ideas in their art, and would have been more so in the high Romantic era.

On the other hand, there is no reason in any of this to start wrecking the work of modern musicians playing at A=440 (or in the case of the Berlin Philharmoniker, A=445 - and other orchestras, I read, also push things up slightly) to fit to these alternative notions of tuning.

If you want to support A=432, then why not play or support the playing of relevant or new music in that tuning yourself with like-minded musicians? For me, that would be a proper expression of the belief.

 

[Robin L]

I see that I've joined the long list of people you've chosen to quote out of context in this thread, but never mind that, it happens.

Anyway, I went back to the first post, which refers to Maria Renold. Renold was a disciple of Rudolf Steiner, the famous esotericist. He was an advocate of A=432 because it was based on "the fundamental resonance of the Universe" - so yes, the Schumann resonance again. Previously. Steiner had advocated C-128 (which of course sets the C an octave higher at 256) for different, esoteric reasons. Both these ideas predate Steiner.

Verdi was convinced to switch from A=435 to A=432 by a theorist, Charles Meerens, who in turn supported A=432 because of a relationship with C=256 (which is not a direct relationship, but contrived) - again, attempting to unify these two esoteric pitches. Following Verdi's conversion to 432, it was adopted by the Italian armed forces and became known as "Italian pitch". Some Italian nationalists are still fighting this battle.

Returning to Renold, simply shifting pitch from 440 to 432 is a gross oversimplification of her work as well. it has to be placed in her work on temperament, which in itself looks in part to that relationship between A=432 and C=256, and proposes different temperaments to closer approach the relationship. You can't just "adopt" the full meaning of 432 without the temperament and the 256 relationship by forcing modern recordings into it.

It turns out that the "scientific" pitch of A=432 and the relationship to C=256 are about esoteric science, not what we would consider as physics today. In particular, some esoteric traditions relate 256 to those comments about calm being "sun-like".

Your history misses out other conventions and results, such as the Vienna convention of 1885 which adopted A=435, the French supported pitch of the time.

So, we have a mixture of esoteric beliefs, Schumann resonance, Steiner and Italian nationalism behind pretty much all advocacy of 432 - just so you understand the origins of what you are supporting. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with any of this: obviously I'm not a believer, but composers and musicians were, and some still are, influenced and inspired by such ideas in their art, and would have been more so in the high Romantic era.

On the other hand, there is no reason in any of this to start wrecking the work of modern musicians playing at A=440 (or in the case of the Berlin Philharmoniker, A=445 - and other orchestras, I read, also push things up slightly) to fit to these alternative notions of tuning.

If you want to support A=432, then why not play or support the playing of relevant or new music in that tuning yourself with like-minded musicians? For me, that would be a proper expression of the belief.

Of course, ultimately, it's all relative, innit?

 

[LeftCoastTim]

Nobody here is mentioning that nice round numbers like 256, 128, 432 are all in Hertz, or cycles per second.

Yet the definition of a second is pretty arbitrary too.

 

[danadam]

Nobody here is mentioning that nice round numbers like 256, 128, 432 are all in Hertz, or cycles per second.

Yet the definition of a second is pretty arbitrary too.

Adam Neely did in the video on the first page of this thread.
See 9:40

 

[Julf]

Nobody here is mentioning that nice round numbers like 256, 128, 432 are all in Hertz, or cycles per second.

Yet the definition of a second is pretty arbitrary too.

What? 31,556,925.9747 is not at all arbitrary, but very clearly a number of great planetary and emotional meaning! So is 9,192,631,770!