Tuning to 432 Hz has become a phenomenon. Every now and then an article will go around the internet describing that today people “tune” to 440Hz, which is terribly unhealthy and that one should tune to 432Hz correctly, because that is “in harmony”. We can sum it up as “idiocy”, but for the reader who wants to know why, I will describe it.
Let’s avoid the fact that the equal-tempered tuning, which we take for granted, was introduced only by J.S. Bach, because I write about it elsewhere and it is quite complicated. For a layman, it is enough if he is willing to accept that the piano is practically a little out of tune, trumpets are tuned according to one physical principle and that it does not coincide with the principle according to which strings are tuned (that is why only the most cynical jokers will write a piece for piano, violin and French horn) and for the violin, a Moravian playing a dulcimer will play completely different intervals than an AMU graduate in a symphony orchestra. But let’s save this joke for another time.
The current tuning was not ordered by the Freemasons, Goebbels or the Atlanteans. 440Hz as a tone frequency and became established through practice during the 19th century. The reason was simple: Playing in a large orchestra requires that everyone is tuned the same, the possibility of musicians moving between orchestras requires that different orchestras also tune the same, and the construction of instruments requires that the instrument be built to the measure of its tuning. Moreover, singers also need the certainty that what they learned from A will be from A and not from C, because they would most likely not sing that (and vice versa). This consensus was reached gradually, generically, and it was a tuning that, among other things, suited the aesthetics of the time.
432 Hz has never worked as a generally accepted standard, and if it has any physical connections with the Earth’s rotation, the geomagnetic field, the interval of the Space People’s flight over our planet, etc., I would rather let a physicist comment. For music, it is simply a chamber tuning tuned down by a quarter tone, nothing more. A trained musician – if he does not have an immediate comparison – will recognize it exceptionally, a layman will not recognize it with absolute certainty.
Until roughly the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, musicians mostly tuned a little lower than they do today, because at that time the aesthetics of the time demanded a slightly different sound of instruments and gut strings did not give much room for overdubs. “A little lower” practically means most often about a semitone to a = 415 Hz. The word most often is important. In fact, the norm a = 415 Hz is used as a standard mainly by contemporary musicians who honestly try to interpret the Baroque. Baroque musicians of the period mostly tuned very differently and it was usually true that in one city the musicians would agree on one common tuning, but in another city this may no longer be the case. According to a study of preserved instruments, a oscillated between 380 and 460 Hz, and in northern Germany in the 17th century it climbed to a 571 Hz. Therefore, for example, in Florence or Paris in the 18th century it was more or less true that a = about 415 Hz, but in many other cities it was different and for example in Venice it was customary to tune a = about 460 Hz – which is about a tone higher. For the period from, say, the mid-16th to the end of the 18th century, tuning was very different, although the most common was about a = 415 Hz. Even that about is important. They had no way of measuring the frequency, they tuned the instruments so that they sounded good, and whether it was 415 or 418, you really can’t hear.
We don’t know for sure what it was like before, we just interpolate from written records and the construction of preserved instruments. Probably a little lower. Today we interpret “a little lower” as meaning that it was 392 Hz. We have some period organs and other instruments and it seems that they oscillate around that tuning. It’s actually another semitone lower. So today’s C sounds like a D back then. But that’s again a standard that has been adopted by today’s musicians honestly trying to authentically interpret early music, because we need some standard for practical reasons. We today. Until the sixteenth century, almost every ensemble (there weren’t many of them) tuned in its own way and each soloist simply tuned as he pleased – and while we are stuck to 392, it could oscillate +-1-2 tones – easily 380-480 Hz depending on the circumstances.
Some examples:
- 376 Hz Organ in a hospice in Lille, France, from 1700
- 392 Hz Klavichord by Leonard Euler in St. Petersburg from 1739
- 396 Hz Organ in Versailles from 1789
- 401 Hz Mersenne spinet from 1648
- 404 Hz Chamber A of the Paris Opera from 1699
- 407 Hz Organ in St. Michael’s Church in Hamburg
- 409 Hz Spinet maker Pascal Taskin’s tuner from 1783
- 415 Hz Organ in St. Sophia in Dresden from 1722
- 422 Hz Tuning of W. A. Mozart from 1780
- 423 Hz Tuning of G. F. Handel from 1751
- 426 Hz Piano of the Paris Opera from 1829
- 432 Hz Tuning proposed by the Italian Ministry of War in 1884
- 435 Hz French tuning in the 19th century
- 440 Hz Tuning proposed in Stuttgart in 1834
- 451 Hz Tuning of the La Scala Opera in Milan in 1867
- 452 Hz Tuning of the British Philharmonic in the 19th century
- 456 Hz Tuning of the Piano Makers’ Guild from 1857
- 457 Hz Tuning of the New York piano manufacturer Steinway from 1879
- 460 Hz Tuning prevalent in the USA around 1875
- 474 Hz Organ in the Chapel Royal, London, 1708
- 481 Hz Organ in St. Catherine’s Church, Hamburg, 1543 and 1879
- 506 Hz Mersenne Cathedral tuning in Paris, 1636
- 571 Hz North German chamber tuning from 1619
List taken from an Jiří Holubec article in Reflex
Besides, tuning in early music is much more complicated and I will dedicate other articles to it. But let’s get back to it: Most people tuned a little deeper than today.
Why did this shift occur? Metal strings gradually accelerated the fundamental change. In Europe, sheep intestines were the dominant material for making strings for centuries. Gut strings were the standard for most stringed instruments from ancient times to the 19th century. They have their own sonic charms (those who play educated early music still use them today), but they also have their own problems – they don’t last long, they are terribly expensive today, any change in temperature or humidity leads to detuning, etc. Gut strings are inherently sensitive to tension, so you have to be careful not to tune them too high, as they will break. In Europe, metal strings began to appear on instruments such as lutes and harpsichords during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
The spread of metal strings was linked to the development of technology. In the 16th century, they were rare and very expensive (paradoxically, much more expensive than gut at the time – but they made up for it with their durability and longevity). They were used mainly for bass strings, where metal was wound around a core (usually gut) to achieve a deeper tone. On stringed instruments such as violins, began to appear wound metal strings around the 17th century. But they began to prevail only during the 19th century. In the 19th century, with the development of the industrial revolution and the availability of steel, metal strings became the standard for many instruments, including guitars, harps and pianos. And the main reason for their use is practical – they do not go out of tune, they crack less, they have a longer life. For us in this article, it is important that they can withstand more tension and therefore higher tuning – and if you tune the string a little higher, it is louder. So the material of the strings participated in the formation of the tuning standard in the 19th century.
Yes, since 1940, when DuPont began to industrially produce nylon and the famous string manufacturer Albert Augustine, in collaboration with chemists from DuPont, developed the first usable nylon strings for classical guitars. Nylon strings, which try to return the sound to the gut, but add the durability of metal. In both cases they are halfway, they only resemble the sound of gut strings from a great distance. Of course, today it is standard to play flamenco and classical music on them, but we are talking about a time when tuning standards are more or less generally accepted.
So where did the frequency 432 Hz come from? In fact, I only find it in ezo articles. So, if it makes you happy to take a tuning lever and tune your piano a quarter tone down, I won’t talk you out of it, it’s excellent, for a beginner it’s a few days of Zen practice, but it has nothing to do with old music.
Since I get some reactions that I have trouble labeling as anything other than extraterrestrial, I’ll try to be as half-hearted as possible:
You can tune a lawnmower, a vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer to 432 Hz, but that’s probably not what you mean. Although that would be one of the few ways to actually hear the 432 Hz frequency. When you tune a piano, an orchestra, and I don’t know what else to a standard where a = 432 Hz, to the disappointment of many people, this does not mean that the music will sound at 432 Hz. It won’t. 432 Hz will sound just that little a. You can’t take a recording and tune it to 432 Hz. Unless it’s an ultra-minimalist symphony, where the entire orchestra will play only and only little a in all voices for 35 minutes. (Ha, I think I’m going to write a symphony!) And please, without vibrato! Because even a nice, tasteful vibrato on a violin will turn 432 Hz into something that will oscillate between 420-440 Hz.
Because each note will sound at a different frequency, and we haven’t even started talking about tempered tuning and its pitfalls.
It may be sad, but people who offer you to “convert” music to 432 Hz either have no basic idea about acoustics, or are simply lying to you for selfish reasons and just want to get money out of you. They may lower the songs a little, but no other tone than the minor and you will not hear it at 432 Hz even after that. If you sing to the guitar, it is likely that the minor and = 432 Hz will not be heard in your songs even once in the whole evening, even if you sing yourself hoarse, unless you are a soprano, and unless you are a skilled guitarist who is used to playing chords in the fifth position, you will not even play it.
When it is written that 440 Hz is a disharmonious sound and 432 is harmonious, it is evidence of a misunderstanding of the content of the concept of harmony and disharmony. No tone is harmonious or disharmonious in itself, only harmony or disharmonious is harmonious or disharmonious. It is quite possible that the author of this nonsense connection heard something about the fact that tempered tuning is disharmonious, which is true, but with a low frequency and that has no connection.
To understand: Let’s say that we are used to referring to the wavelength of 800 nm (375 THz) as “red”. If I decide that this is an ugly red and that the correct red is 750 nm, I will not make this color more or less harmonious. (Of course, the correct color is only the one at 432 THz! ) I will simply shift the meaning of the word red. In fact, the untrained eye will not even see it. Just as the untrained ear has no chance of distinguishing a song where a = 440 Hz from one where a = 432 Hz. And now imagine that, within the framework of my conviction that 800 nm is a disharmonious color, I say that painters should finally start painting at 750 nm. That it’s nonsense? Exactly the same as the debate about the disharmoniousness of tuning to 440 Hz in music. And if someone offers you to “convert” all your photos from red=800nnm to red=750 nm for a low price, you’ll think they’re ripping you off. It’s strange how many people don’t realize that the same nonsense is the debate about the ugly a=440Hz and the “harmonic” a=432 Hz.
And if you want to continue reading about tuning for advanced users, continue to the article about modal tuning: http://sedmavlna.cz/modalni-ladeni/