Tuning the World - The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859-1955

"Tuning the World tells the unknown story of how the musical pitch A 440 became the global norm. Now commonly accepted as the point of reference for musicians in the Western world, A 440 Hertz only became the standard pitch during an international conference held in 1939. The adoption of this norm was the result of decades of negotiations between countries involving performers, composers, diplomats, physicists, and sound engineers. Although musicians and musicologists are aware of the variability of musical pitches over time, as attested by the use of lower frequencies to perform early music repertoires, no study has fully explained the invention of our current concert pitch. In this book, Fanny Gribenski draws on a rich variety of previously unexplored archival sources and a unique combination of musicological perspectives, transnational history, and science studies. Tuning the World demonstrates the aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and political contingencies underlying the construction of one of the most "natural" objects of contemporary musical performance, itself the result of a cacophony of competing views and interests"--

About the author

Fanny Gribenski is assistant professor of music at New York University. She is the author of one book in French.

Product details

• Authors: Fanny Gribenski
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.01.2023
• EAN: 9780226823263
• ISBN: 978-0-226-82326-3
• No. of pages: 280
• Series: New Material Histories of Music; New Material Histories of Musi
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > Music theory; MUSIC / History & Criticism, SCIENCE / Acoustics & Sound, MUSIC / Philosophy & Social Aspects, Theory of music & musicology, Theory of music and musicology