Podcast Summary: Unexplainable – "What’s A"

Date: September 24, 2025
Host: Emily Siner (Vox)
Featured Guest: Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian, Author of Tuning the World)

Overview

This episode of Unexplainable explores the surprising history and controversy behind the musical note "A" and its journey to becoming the global standard of 440 Hz. Host Emily Siner and music historian Fanny Grebensky dive deep into how scientific, aesthetic, and cultural considerations created, fractured, and continue to challenge this "universal" standard. The episode uses the story of “A” to illuminate how scientific standards are created, the messy human parts of standardization, and why the quest for harmony is rarely as perfect as it seems.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Ritual of the “A” Note

• Opening Scene: Emily Siner describes the familiar concert ritual where the oboe plays an “A” for the orchestra to tune to.
• Fanny Grebensky: Unpacks how this ritual represents musicians’ need to agree on a starting point.

  “All of the other instruments will pick this note to tune to it... It's become so usual that we don't even pay attention to it.” — Fanny Grebensky (01:48)

Early Chaos: Pitch Without Standards

• Historical Context:
  • Before universal pitch, musicians tuned to the most inflexible instrument available, often the organ, which would change pitch with humidity or temperature.
  • Wildly different pitch standards existed—even within a single country or city.
  • Example: In 1700 France, “A” could be 374 Hz in the north and 563 Hz in the south, compared to today’s 440 Hz (04:29).
• Historical Consequences:
  • This disunity led to chaos, confusion, and rising anxiety among musicians, especially as music traveled and older works became revered.

The Drive for Rational Standardization

• French Revolution’s Rationalism:

  • The spread of the metric system influenced the push for a standardized pitch.
  • Fanny highlights how the first attempts mirrored national pursuits for measurement and order:

    “One of the first scientists who proposes the adoption of a standard... explicitly references the metric system.” — Fanny Grebensky (05:28)

• Tension Between Science and Aesthetics:

  • Standardizing pitch was about more than physics—it had major implications for performance and aesthetic tradition.

    “It’s a very antagonizing question... what should our starting point be? And on what principles should we establish this starting point?” — Fanny Grebensky (06:00)

  • Changes in pitch made some music unplayable or extremely difficult, driving anxiety about losing the “canons” of classical music (08:05).

The First Attempts at Standardization

• France Sets A435:
  • In the 19th century, France set "A" at 435 Hz. This “French standard” spread but didn’t stick everywhere.
  • Fanny notes how the mere discussion of pitch made people more aware and invested in the matter, even if most couldn’t discern the difference in practice (10:53, 11:31).

Why Musical Standards Are So Slippery

• The Need for Human Buy-In:

  • Unlike the clock or metric system, pitch can’t just be imposed; every musician must continually choose to tune to it.

    “With music, you always need the collaboration of musicians, right? Like, music is not something that stands out there ready to be grabbed at any point... it only exists in its performance.” — Fanny Grebensky (12:41)

• Rise of Competing Standards:

  • America and Britain introduced their own standards (439 Hz, 440 Hz), often for practical or commercial reasons.
  • Percussion maker John Deegan in the US lobbied for A440—possibly to corner the instrument market.

    “If he was able to convince American practitioners that the standard...should be his own standard, then it was also a way of closing the market to his competitors.” — Fanny Grebensky (15:14)

The American Standard and Global Adoption

• A440 Takes Over:
  • American musicians, instrument makers, and organizations adopted A440.
  • The US set a new global trend, dovetailing with the country’s rising influence in music and culture.

World War II: The Unexpected Standard-Setting Summit

• European Conference, May 1939:

  • Representatives from soon-to-be warring nations (Germany, England, France, Italy, Netherlands) met at the BBC to unify pitch standards.
  • Strikingly, their aim was to foster unity in a tense, fractured Europe:

    “There is this idea that if we can create a community of listeners... this will help foster peace. Wow. And of course, they failed, obviously.” — Fanny Grebensky (21:14)

  • In the end, Europe agreed to follow A440—the American standard.

• Technological and Political Power:

  • The “tech bros” of the BBC—engineers and broadcasters—wielded increasing influence as music shifted into the electroacoustic era (22:22).

Is Standardization Final?

• Persistent Resistance & Modern Debates:

  • Despite global adoption, A440 is far from absolute:
    • Musicians routinely use tunings like A432 for historical ensembles.
    • Online communities and conspiracy theorists claim A440 is unnatural, or even sinister, sometimes invoking anti-Semitic tropes (24:27).
  • Fanny and Emily dispel these myths, clarifying the real, mundane, and political motivations behind the standard.

• The Nature of Musical Standards:

  “Standards are created for people to, you know, to mess around with them essentially. Like there is no standard that is like strictly be adapted and just enforced as is.” — Fanny Grebensky (26:07)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Pitch Anxieties:

  “If the pitch rises, we will never be able to perform this opera again. What are we going to do if our standards of performance do no longer accommodate musics from the past that have become increasingly valuable?” — Fanny Grebensky (08:48)

• On the Collusion of Technology and Culture:

  “It’s a really good question, and I think the answer is technological power...these are the people who know about controlling wavelengths, who have this sort of infrastructure to govern frequencies. And this moment of empowerment of the broadcasting world...has to do with a redefinition of sound.” — Fanny Grebensky (22:22)

• Summing Up Standardization:

  “Fanny’s hot take after all her research is that standard pitch doesn’t really matter because there’s no performance in which every note is played exactly in tune anyway. The pitch itself can fluctuate as the room warms up or if someone goes out of tune, music is just too fluid to standardize.” — Emily Siner (26:20)

Timestamps of Key Segments

• 01:12 – The concert ritual of tuning with the “A”
• 04:29 – Historical chaos in pitch standards
• 05:28 – The metric system and France’s first pitch standardization efforts
• 08:05 – The anxiety over rising pitch and “losing” classical music
• 10:53 – How public conversation raised the profile of pitch standards
• 12:41 – Why musical standards are hard to enforce
• 15:14 – John Deegan and American commercial motivations for A440
• 19:45 – The pre-WWII BBC pitch conference
• 21:14 – The utopian hope and realpolitik of the 1939 pitch conference
• 22:22 – The role of technological power in setting the standard
• 24:27 – Modern debates, alternative tunings, and conspiracy theories
• 26:07 – The enduring fluidity of musical standards

Conclusion: Standards Ask Us to Harmonize—Not to Conform

Emily Siner concludes that even the most “universal” standards in music, like A440, are ultimately negotiated moments of temporary agreement—less about cold, fixed truths and more about consensus, practicality, and human messiness. The opening A in a concert isn’t a metaphysical decree: it’s a gentle, communal starting point for making music together—just for that moment, just for that room.