Say A

[Sjaak de Vos]

I stumbled over this :

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/music/rev_tuning_hist.html


A Brief History of Musical Tuning
by Jonathan Tennenbaum
Reprinted from FIDELIO Magazine,
Volume I, No. 1, Winter 1991-92

The first explicit reference to the tuning of middle C at 256 
oscillations per second was probably made by a contemporary of J.S. 
Bach. It was at that time that precise technical methods developed 
making it possible to determine the exact pitch of a given note in 
cycles per second. The first person said to have accomplished this was 
Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716), called the father of musical acoustics. He 
measured the pitches of organ pipes and vibrating strings, and defined 
the ``ut'' (nowadays known as ``do'') of the musical scale at 256 cycles 
per second.

J.S. Bach, as is well known, was an expert in organ construction and 
master of acoustics, and was in constant contact with instrument 
builders, scientists, and musicians all over Europe. So we can safely 
assume that he was familiar with Sauveur's work. In Beethoven's time, 
the leading acoustician was Ernst Chladni (1756-1827), whose textbook on 
the theory of music explicitly defined C=256 as the scientific tuning.Up 
through the middle of the present century, C=256 was widely recognized 
as the standard ``scientific'' or ``physical'' pitch (see Figures 13 and 
14).

In fact, A=440 has never been the international standard pitch, and the 
first international conference to impose A=440, which failed, was 
organized by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1939. 
Throughout the seventeeth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and in 
fact into the 1940s, all standard U.S. and European text books on 
physics, sound, and music took as a given the ``physical pitch'' or 
``scientific pitch'' of C=256, including Helmholtz's own texts 
themselves. Figures 13 and 14 show pages from two standard modern 
American textbooks, a 1931 standard phonetics text, and the official 
1944 physics manual of the U.S. War Department, which begin with the 
standard definition of musical pitch as C=256.[1]


Regarding composers, all ``early music'' scholars agree that Mozart 
tuned at precisely at C=256, as his A was in the range of A=427-430. 
Christopher Hogwood, Roger Norrington, and dozens of other directors of 
orginal-instrument orchestras' established the practice during the 
1980's of recording all Mozart works at precisely A=430, as well as most 
of Beethoven's symphonies and piano concertos. Hogwood, Norrington, and 
others have stated in dozens of interviews and record jackets, the 
pragmatic reason: German instruments of the period 1780-1827, and even 
replicas of those instruments, can only be tuned at A=430.


The demand by Czar Alexander, at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, for a 
``brighter'' sound, began the demand for a higher pitch from all the 
crowned heads of Europe. While Cclassical musicians resisted, the 
Romantic school, led by Friedrich Liszt and his son-in law Richard 
Wagner, championed the higher pitch during the 1830's and 1840's. Wagner 
even had the bassoon and many other instruments redesigned so as to be 
able to play only at A=440 and above. By 1850, chaos reigned, with major 
European theatres at pitches varying from A=420 to A=460, and even 
higher at Venice.


In the late 1850's, the French government, under the influence of a 
committee of composers led by bel canto proponent Giacomo Rossini, 
called for the first standardization of the pitch in modern times. 
France consequently passed a law in 1859 establishing A at 435, the 
lowest of the ranges of pitches (from A=434 to A=456) then in common use 
in France, and the highest possible pitch at which the soprano register 
shifts may be maintained close to their disposition at C=256. It was 
this French A to which Verdi later referred, in objecting to higher 
tunings then prevalent in Italy, under which circumstance ``we call A in 
Rome, what is B-flat in Paris.''

Following Verdi's 1884 efforts to insitutitionalize A=432 in Italy, a 
British-dominated conference in Vienna in 1885 ruled that no such pitch 
could be standardized. The French, the New York Metropolitan Opera, and 
many theatres in Europe and the U.S., continued to maintain their A at 
432-435, until World War II.


The first effort to institutionalize A=440 in fact was a conference 
organized by Joseph Goebbels in 1939, who had standardized A=440 as the 
official German pitch. Professor Robert Dussaut of the National 
Conservatory of Paris told the French press that: ``By September 1938, 
the Accoustic Committee of Radio Berlin requested the British Standard 
Association to organize a congress in London to adopt internationally 
the German Radio tuning of 440 periods. This congress did in fact occur 
in London, a very short time before the war, in May-June 1939. No French 
composer was invited. The decision to raise the pitch was thus taken 
without consulting French musicians, and against their will.'' The 
Anglo-Nazi agreement, given the outbreak of war, did not last, so that 
still A=440 did not stick as a standard pitch.


A second congress in London of the International Standardizing 
Organization met in October 1953, to again attempt to impose A=440 
internationally. This conference passed such a resolution; again no 
Continental musicians who opposed the rise in pitch were invited, and 
the resolution was widely ignored. Professor Dussaut of the Paris 
Conservatory wrote that British instrument makers catering to the U.S. 
jazz trade, which played at A=440 and above, had demanded the higher 
pitch, ``and it is shocking to me that our orchestra members and singers 
should thus be dependent upon jazz players.'' A referendum by Professor 
Dussaut of 23,000 French musicians voted overwhelmingly for A=432.


As recently as 1971, the European Community passed a recommendation 
calling for the still non-existent international pitch standard. The 
action was reported in ``The Pitch Game,'' Time magazine, Aug. 9, 1971. 
The article states that A=440, ``this supposedly international standard, 
is widely ignored.'' Lower tuning is common, including in Moscow, Time 
reported, ``where orchestras revel in a plushy, warm tone achieved by a 
larynx-relaxing A=435 cycles,'' and at a performance in London ``a few 
years ago,'' British church organs were still tuned a half-tone lower, 
about A=425, than the visiting Vienna Philharmonic, at A=450.

1. Charles E. Dull, {Physics Course 2: Heat, Sound, and Light: Education 
Manual 402} (New York: Henry Holt, April 1944).


Bron: http://www.schillerinstitute.org/music/rev_tuning_hist.html