Pitch Battles: How a paranoid fringe group made musical tuning an international issue.
http://longform.org/stories/pitch-battles...
The petition had its origins in one of the strangest conflicts to have overtaken classical music in the past thirty years, and many of these luminaries were completely unaware of what theyd gotten themselves into. The sponsor of both the petition and the conference that featured Tebaldi was an organization called the Schiller Institute, dedicated to, among other things, lowering standard musical pitch. At the time, the New York Times identified it as an organization that promotes a strong alliance between the United States and Western Europe; its website defines the organization as working to defend the rights of all humanity to progressmaterial, moral and intellectual.
But behind this respectable front lurks a strange mélange of conspiracy, demagoguery, and cultish behavior. At its founding in 1984, its chairman Helga Zepp-LaRouche laid out the Institutes role in surprisingly apocalyptic terms: The clock of mankind has advanced to a point where the old lackluster ways will no longer work. According to all established criteria, mankind has gambled away all its chances for survival. Too many catastrophes are crowding in upon us, the entropic process has proceeded too far and the rift between the U.S.A. and Western Europe is all but accomplished.
Far more extreme is Lyndon LaRouche, Helga's husband and the intellectual heart of the Schiller Institute. LaRouche, who has run for United States president eight times, and whose followers can often be found handing out pamphlets on college campuses, has been in the news on and off for the past four decadesa former labor advocate who shifted radically to the fringe of the hard-right in the 70s and whose work has increasingly focused on bizarre conspiracies involving both Jews and the Queen of England (who, according to him, controls an international drug cartel), and international monetary policy (like many Libertarians, LaRouche is in favor of returning to the gold standard). As the Schiller Institute petition was going before the Italian Parliament, LaRouche was going to trialsince 1986, the government had been building a case against him for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, part of a scheme to embezzle over $30 million through defaulted loans.
This is absolutely fascinating, at least to this former music theory teacher... I used to advocate A 400 but this is putting me back in the 440 camp.
antigop
(12,778 posts)MuseRider
(34,111 posts)Interesting. I have always suspected our oboist tunes higher just for the trumpets! I believe we pretty much go with 440. Can't wait to get home and read this.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,321 posts)So that any C is a power of 2, right down to the infrasonic limit (and beyond). However, if there's an ISO ruling that 440 Hz is already the standard since 1955, and that comes from a 1939 international agreement, then it seems better to stick to that. It means that all the musicians in the second half of the 20th century grew up with it.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The difference wasn't as great as the difference of doing just intonation (which can be amazing with those high major thirds), but you could definitely feel it.
I miss early music. "What's that?" "My sackbutt." "Huh?"
Also, the powers-of-two bit is really interesting, especially from a DSP standpoint.
dhill926
(16,343 posts)thanks for this....
Heidi
(58,237 posts)Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)??????