Talk:A440

Mission?

See the Wikipedia article on Concert pitch. Crankery associated with musical pitch can be found, but not much of it. The alleged healing properties of Leonard Horowitz's "solfeggio frequencies" come to mind, as does Lyndon LaRouche's Schiller Institute and its shenanigans around "Verdi pitch."

I won't slap a mission tag on the article, but I don't see a lot of RW relevance here. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 04:47, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The A432 movement includes a great deal of gibbering crankery that makes it entirely missional - David Gerard (talk) 11:58, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

In which case the missional article would be A432, yes? For starters, I would add a section on the Schiller Institute's "Verdi pitch" crapola to Lyndon LaRouche, and redirect A432 to that page. But first, let me stash all my 440 tuning forks where the authorities can't find 'em. Also the metronome that beeps an A selectable from 440 to 445. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 19:00, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Never mind. I have come to believe that it suits the RW mission better to let this be the main article, and let A432 redirect here. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 16:55, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

If the specificity of the title/topic bothers you, perhaps this can be renamed to "tuning frequency" or "tuning standard" or something similar.--ZooGuard (talk) 16:59, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

That might help with confusion over the road from Malvern to Pershore! Doxys Midnight Runner (talk) 17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Hrmph. Wikpedia tells me that there is no longer an A440, and that the A432 connects Bristol with Old Sodbury, fittingly enough. For the moment, the present title is OK with me. I've redirected A432 to this page, as a poke in the conspiracists' general direction. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 00:42, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Solfeggio vs. "solfeggio frequencies"

For centuries, musicians have used solmization as an aid to memory, and for teaching the pitches and intervals of their own music traditions. Western musicians are familiar with "do re mi fa sol la ti do" which Julie Andrews memorably rendered as "doe, a deer, a female deer, ray, a drop of golden sun..." in The Sound of Music. A Hindu musician familiar with sargam could use "sa re ga ma pa dha ni sa" to sing the same major scale. Similar systems exist in Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, and Japanese music cultures. (Drummers in Japan and Western Africa use vocables to express the rudiments of their art, but that is another topic.)

What's the point? You may well ask. "Solfeggio," referring to a form of solmization, is a perfectly legitimate term in wide use, not subject to ridicule under the terms of the RationalWiki Mission (obeisances be made unto it.) "Solfeggio frequencies," on the other hand, are a modern bit of fakelore conjured up by one Leonard Horowitz, based not on any physical properties of sound or vibration, but on numerological manipulation of the decimal representation of fundamental frequencies in cycles per second. Note well, cps (now called Hz) are a recently contrived human means of describing frequency measurements, not magic at all. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 15:00, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

An important distinction indeed. The "Solfeggio frequencies" outlined by Horowitz involve an incorrect and nonsensical application of the terms UT RE MI FA SOL LA, which traditionally refer to the notes C D E F G A, but in his framework do not even remotely correspond with these notes either by absolute pitch or by interval. One of the many other signs that it's pure bunk is the fact that the "LA" (852 Hz) of the first octave is HIGHER than what should be the "UT" of the next octave up (396 Hz x 2 = 792 Hz). This is quite a detailed take-down of the whole thing: http://www.roelhollander.eu/en/tuning-frequency/Ancient-Solfeggio-Frequencies/ --Yisfidri (talk) 13:56, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

moar

Stuart Robbins has a podcast all about this, both physics and conspiracy. Worth cribbing - David Gerard (talk) 18:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Interesting, in a "physics for poets" sort of way. He gets it mostly right, in simplified terms, and yet... There were a few places where I twitched a bit, but upon further reflection came to understand that there was some sort of way to reconcile the complexities of the Big Picture^TM with his ELI5. Thanks, David. Alec Sanderson (talk) 19:27, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Official Mandates

Should it be noted that the Treaty of Versailles mandated A435 due to the frequency a specific tuning for played at 15°C in section 282. From what I read, it wasn't followed in Great Britain because they considered their concert halls warmer than 15°C. --TeamBeaker (talk) 19:48, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

The Treaty of Versailles (pg 171) [1] actually referred to the Austria convention in 1885 already mentioned in the article, re: "Convention of November 16 and 19, 1885, regarding the establishment of a concert pitch", and is merely applying it to both Germany "and thos of the Allied and Associated Powers party thereto".

To go more in depth, I'll quote this source on JSTOR [2] (page 342) regarding the 1885 conference.

"In the same year 1885, at the instigation of the Austrian Minister of Culture and Instruction, a conference was held in Vienna for the purpose of establishing a " standard diapason." The governments of Italy, Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and Wiirttemberg were represented. The conference was held from November 16 to 19, and the principal resolution unanimously adopted called for the establishment of "one international 'diapason normal' to be set at A= 435 cps. " The conference recommended governments to take steps for the adoption of this standard pitch for all musical purposes, and in all musical institutions, public and private."

Rationalwiki's focus is the woo involved in tuning so I doubt we need to be this detailed in the article. But there's some detail for ya, since I see a lot of mistakes on the web about this. :) BobJohnson (talk) 21:39, 21 August 2024 (UTC)