Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (4:08)

And oftentimes the least flexible of all instruments will be the organ. You know, if you want to tune an organ, you have to change the length of the pipes. And so that's not something that anyone can do, right? You have to be an organ builder to do that.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (4:29)

Plus, the organs pitched that day would depend on whether it rained or whether it was hot or cold, which means the pitches varied a lot. According to music historians, a city in northern France in the year 1700 may have played an A note like this. That's 374 hertz, whereas a city in southern France might have played it at 563 Hz. For comparison, 440 Hz today's standard is this. Even into the 1800s, the city of Paris alone had at least six different tuning standards, depending on which opera house or which orchestra you were playing with. But by this time, France had reformed itself after the French Revolution. It no longer had a king appointed by God. It had a government ruled by rationalism. Goddammit. So why couldn't it create a rational standard for things that had previously been haphazard?

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (5:28)

Of course, the metric system is an invention of the revolution. And so one of the first scientists who proposes the adoption of a standard pigeon, indeed, one of the first voices to really, you know, articulate the idea that the nation should have something similar to the meter for music is a scientist who explicitly references the metric system.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (5:53)

Fanny says it was the first time that the conversation about pitch standards really took off and people were very anxious about it.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (6:00)

The moment when people have to decide, you know, what is our common, what is our shared, you know, point of departure to perform music? It has very deep implications, right? And it's a very antagonizing question, like what should our starting point be? And on what principles should we establish this starting point?

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (6:27)

Here's what makes musical standards so antagonizing. Music is not just Scientific. It's not just about picking a number that seems the most rational. It's also aesthetic. A slightly lower pitch makes it easier for a singer to access high notes. A slightly higher pitch might make a.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (6:44)

Wind instrument ring out a little more like opera. Singers will complain that makers of brass instruments, for instance, are trying to, you know, raise the pitch because it makes their instruments sound better. And even that, you know, without even discussing what the frequency should be. But what is the sort of philosophy that should guide this decision? This is incredibly controversial.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (7:15)

All of this coincided with a cultural shift in the mid-1800s. People were starting to embrace historical music, like stuff written by those guys we think of today as the greats, you.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (7:26)

Know, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (7:30)

The classical world today features a lot of music written by dead people. But this actually wasn't always the case. Fanny says up until that point, musicians mostly perform new stuff.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (7:40)

And so when this sort of modern relationship to music started to emerge, they started noticing that when they performed music that had been written, say, 50 years ago, they started noticing these discrepancies between what would have been the pitch at which they were performed in the past and the pitch of the instruments that were around at their time.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (8:05)

And as Fanny describes it, they were all extremely anxious that the pitch would continue to rise until everything the masters of classical had written was out of reach.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (8:17)

So one sort of interesting example in that regard is a very famous Arya in the history of classical music is the. The Queen of the Nights area in the Magic Flute. I can't really sing it, but maybe you can play it on the podcast.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (8:37)

But I was going to ask you to sing it. So thank you for clarifying that you don't want to.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (8:48)

And so people were quoting that as an example of saying these are the extreme, the most extremely high pitches that a human voice can produce. And 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?

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (9:14)

I mean, was this anxiety true, do you think? It's true that it would have led at some point to pitches being just so high that entire canons of music were out of reach?

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (9:23)

Well, the sort of surprising thing in these debates is the idea that pitch was this sort of autonomous phenomenon that was rising on its own, as if, again, it was some sort of thing that people had to try and keep under control, where, in fact, there were discrepancies between different musical scenes. And in some places, pitch was not rising at all.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (9:49)

Whether or not it was true. Didn't matter. In the end, this anxiety settled the debate. When the French government convened a commission to decide what is an A note, they set it at 435Hz. It was lower than what many places in Paris had been doing, but all the better to sing the classics. For a while, this French standard, a435, seemed to be gaining traction. It spread across Europe and then the United States. At the Boston Music hall in 1869, there was even a concert to unveil the French pitch, where the audience would get to hear all the musicians tuning down their instruments before the program started, which is so incredibly nerdy. Were everyday people interested in this, or was it really just like, the heads of orchestras and the instrument makers and kind of like the elites of the music world?

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (10:53)

Well, I think it's not clear to me that it's always something that people could actually experience, but because, you know, it was talked about, they could read about these debates in newspapers, because sometimes there were concerts where pitch was staged as a controversial question. Pitch became this thing that people started to pay attention to. And, you know, people start to cultivate this idea that, you know, pitch is something that is very important and defining for musical aesthetics, whether they, you know, really hear it or not.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (11:31)

So it almost becomes like, because we're having a conversation about it, people notice it more, people place more importance on it, and then we have more of a conversation about it.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (11:40)

Exactly.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (11:44)

And this could be where the story ended. If French standard pitch had really taken off, we'd all be singing our favorite songs ever so slightly lower. But it turns out making a musical standard stick is even harder than deciding on one in the first place.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (11:59)

You know, when a standardization process succeeds, it pretty much means that we forget about it. There is no question it's an accepted kind of social item, Right?

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (12:11)

Take standards around time. We've decided that a standard day has two halves of 12 hours each. We've all accepted that's the way we do it. And even if you're a real contrarian and want to divide the day into multiples of nine, you're kinda on your own. You buy a clock, it has 12 numbers on it. The. But music is different because when you set a standard pitch, you need to convince the people playing the music to tune their instruments to your standard every single time.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (12:41)

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's something that only exists in its performance.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (12:55)

And so maybe it's not supposed to surprising. What happened next? Outside of France, people kept messing around with other standards. The British were getting into playing an a note at 439 hertz. And in America, this one guy named John Deegan became obsessed with a pitch that is ever so slightly higher. 440. I want to play for a second. The difference between 435Hz, 439 and 440. If you're not really paying attention, you don't even hear it. So how does that happen? How do you supersede a standard with something that's almost but not exactly the same?

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (13:48)

The history of this change between the two standards is very much a history of the new dominance of the United States and popular music in the debates.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (14:03)

In the 1800s, France had been an epicenter of arts and science. Opera was the cultural force. But by the 1900s, that changed. Now popular modern music was made in America. Vaudeville, jazz, scoring for movies like the this very fun Disney cartoon from 1929 featuring Mickey Mouse in a haunted house. The focus was less about the operatic voice and more on percussion instruments. And this guy Deegan, he was a percussion maker. He made bells and xylophones and marimbas, all of which produce a pitch. And they're also harder to tune than like a violin. So it's more likely that a musician playing it would just accept whatever pitch it comes with. Fanny did extensive research on Deegan for her book, and even she isn't entirely sure why he was obsessed with 440Hz. He made a lot of arguments about it, like how acoustics work, and he even claimed that Beethoven favored the pitch. But Fanny has a slightly more mercenary theory. Remember, Deacon was a businessman who sold instruments tuned to a certain pitch.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (15:14)

I mean, if he was able to convince American practitioners that the standard that should be used was not a European standard, but American standard, in other words, his own standard, then it was also a way of closing the market to his competitors. Right?

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (15:33)

And he did. Deakin convinced the American Federation of Musicians to adopt this new standard. So did the Piano Manufacturers association, the American Guild of Organization Organists, the Music Teachers National Association. Like an orchestra tuning against an oboe, all the official music organizations fell in line. A440 was the American way. We know now how hard it is to get a bunch of people on board with a musical standard. So this was pretty remarkable. But something even more unlikely happened later, when a bunch of enemy countries came together on the eve of World War II to decide whether to adopt the American standard. That's coming up after the break.

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Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (19:04)

Support.

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Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (19:38)

What are you listening to?

Podcast Host (Sponsor Reads) (19:39)

I'm locking in my starting note, a 440.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (19:45)

You really can't talk about the history of pitch standards without talking about, of all things, World War II.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (19:53)

May 1939. Right before the world is falling into this major conflict, you see all of these representatives from Germany, England, France, Netherlands.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (20:07)

Italy, all these European countries come together for a conference about pitch standardization because the US was full steam ahead on a 440. Should they do it too?

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (20:19)

The main institution that's very instrumental in bringing this agreement to sort of a final point is the BBC. And around the table are all these radio engineers from various European countries who are actually trying to get in tune with the United States.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (20:40)

Imagine the scene, if you will, at the BBC headquarters in London. Representatives from all these countries are sitting around the table talking music. In September, England will declare war on Germany. The next spring, the Nazis will invade the Netherlands, Italy will declare war on France. But here, all of them are in May, trying to find some harmony. Yeah, I mean, it just seems so unusual that all of these countries that are about to fight each other would come together on the eve of a world war to discuss, you know, musical frequencies.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (21:11)

Right.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (21:12)

Why do you think they did it?

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (21:14)

So the conference is opened by the head of the BBC at the time, who gives this very, very political, very emotional speech. He's talking about the fact that in an age of discord, at a time of political tension, the work of broadcasters who are trying to unite essentially European soundscapes is very important and very key in trying to prevent what people are increasingly aware that is going to happen. There is this idea that if we can create a community of listeners that are united by common musical tastes, a common experience, this will help foster peace. Wow. And of course, they failed, obviously.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (22:08)

Yeah. I mean, that's so sweet. That's so lovely to think about. But also part of me is like, who made these guys the king of music? Why do they get to decide what everyone in the Western world experiences?

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (22:22)

It's a really good question, and I think the answer is technological power, if you want. I mean, 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 in the negotiations has to do with sort of a redefinition of sound. As this electroacoustic phenomenon, things shift to the benefit of engineers. And this side of the industry, it's.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (23:02)

Like they were the Tech Bros Of.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (23:04)

Right.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (23:05)

The interwar period, pretty much. When the Tech Bros emerged from the BBC headquarters in 1939, they had not figured out world peace but they did figure out something. They announced to the world all of Europe would now match the United States. 440Hz was now the standard.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (23:23)

And yet, let's tune my violin down to 432.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (23:27)

See if you notice.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (23:28)

See how I feel. See how you feel.

Podcast Host (Sponsor Reads) (23:31)

We actually believe that 440 hertz is just not in sync with our bodies.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (23:36)

Modern music is tuned to a 440.

Podcast Host (Sponsor Reads) (23:39)

Hz distortion frequency that is meant to scramble coherence.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (23:43)

But if you shift to today, if you google what is an A note, you'll get the answer that the Tech Bros. Came up with in 1939. 440Hz. If you buy a digital tuner, it will use the standard. But for something that's now supposed to be universal, I've been surprised to find how many examples there are of musicians not using it. Like There's a whole YouTube channel that just takes pop music that wasn't recorded in a 440 and repitches it so that it's easier to play along with at home. Some classical ensembles today intentionally play in much lower tunings because that's how they think it was written way back in the day. And then there are the conspiracy theories.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (24:27)

A440 might be this Nazi standard.

Sponsor Representative (Alnylam/Mercury) (24:31)

Yeah, Hitler is the one that definitely used the 440 frequency. He had a certain tempo and mannerism and things to do with that. But he also used the 440 frequency.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (24:39)

This standard that is harmful is something that has been created to manipulate the bodies of audiences or to harm the bodies of listeners. People reported an increase of negative mood after listening to music tuned to 440 hertz.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (24:59)

One particularly confusing theory I saw online blamed the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking family, which is a notorious anti Semitic trope, and also said that the Rothschilds were funding Nazi officials in promoting 440Hz, which doesn't even make sense because the Nazis hated Jews. Anyway. Just to recap, people from the Nazi government were at the table in 1939, but it was actually the British who led the charge. And they were just agreeing to what the American music industry had already decided. At no point in Fanny's extensive research did she find anything about a desire to inflict bodily or societal harm. If anything, it was intended to unite a fractured world. Still today, there are lots of people who say we should set a different standard for an A note. And as we've seen, this could happen. But it would be a long and complicated path. You'd have to decide whose perspective matters and whose doesn't. You'd need to convince the people in the room to get on board with each other and then have enough power and cachet to convince everyone else to play along, literally. And then as soon as you set a new standard, you open yourself up to the backlash.

Fanny Grebensky (Music Historian/Expert) (26:07)

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.

Emily Siner (Host/Narrator) (26:20)

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. I like to think of it like this. When you hear the oboe playing an A note at the beginning of a concert, it's not really about getting everyone to conform to a universal standard. It's to make sure that all the musicians in the room are playing in tune with each other. This is an A note, the oboe says. Just for us in this room at this moment, whatever it is, this is it. This episode was produced by me, Emily Siner. We had editing from Jorge Just and from Julia Longoria, mixing and sound design from Erica Wong and Christian Ayala, music from Noam Hassenfeld and from Erica Wong, and fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. Meredith Haddonott runs the show, Julia Longoria is our editorial director and Bird Pinkerton opened the wooden chest and pulled out a small winged boomerang. She walked to the center of the Runway and she took her position. As always, thank you to Brian Resnick for co creating the show and if you have any thoughts about our show, please send us an email. We're@ unexplainableox.com we really love hearing from you and we read every email. We'd also love it if you could leave a review or a rating wherever you listen. It actually does help us find new listeners. You can also support this show and all of Vox's journalism by joining our membership program. Program. You can go to vox.commembers to get ad free podcasts and a whole bunch of other goodies. And if you do become a member because of Unexplainable, let us know. It would make us really happy. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and we'll be back next week.

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