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.
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