Over the years there have been numerous attempts to standardize the tuning of musical instruments. An Italian law of 1989 establishes, for example, that ” the reference sound for the basic intonation of musical instruments is the note LA³, whose height must correspond to the frequency of 440 Hertz (Hz), measured at room temperature of 20 Celsius degrees”. The Pink Floyd, however, recorded their Dark Side of the Moon at 432 Hertz and the musician Giuseppe Verdi was a staunch supporter of the need to tune the instruments at this frequency. Reasons for this difference and the news of a conspiracy that, perhaps, does not exist at all
Two days ago I was contacted by a friend, Salvatore, sommelier and passionate about everything that is good food, expert in spirits, cheeses and cigars.
Salvatore manages the blog “Chi beve solo acqua” (Who drinks only water), from the phrase of Charles Baudelaire, very often well exposed in the most sought-after wine shops and wineries. For some time we wanted to create a sort of crosspost with Ritmodivino, but the opportunity, up to now, had not been found.
Salvatore shares on his Facebook page an article on the question of the tuning of musical instruments at 432 hertz. The latter escapes us and then Salvatore re-proposes it in private as a starting point for Ritmodivino.
Let’s read the article together and the idea is interesting. Much more than you can think of.
It seems to us one of those articles to share and deepen about Ritmodivino, given that, in weeks of study and passion, we who have set up this little creature, we have devised a “scientific” method to combine wine with music.
The article that is the starting point tells us of a sort of conspiracy in favor among the supporters of the 432-Hertz tuning and the supporters of the 440-strong one. The former model the validity of their thesis by the fact that the legendary Pink Floyd recorded at this frequency, already appreciated by Giuseppe Verdi, their album Dark Side of The Moon.
The latter, on the other hand, are not a group, but simply the rest of the world. Those, that is, that follow the musical standard for which the musical instruments agree to 440 Hz by definition.
440hz vs 432hz: who is right?
We dedicate a few days to a careful search on the net to the diatribe of 440hz vs 432hz, and we find that even someone has dared the existence of a proven Nazi plot that has set at 440hz the standard tuning of musical instruments.
It seems that, in the middle of the Nazi era, Rudolf Goebbels, driven by Hitler, had an epistolary correspondence with the Berlin Radio Acoustics Commission, so that the tuning of all instruments to 440hz was imposed, a frequency that was also that of the romantic school of Wagner.
Surely Wagner was a composer that the Fuhrer particularly loved.
However, it seems that the choice of 440hz was also dictated by the fact that this frequency, according to the Eastern philosophy that the Nazis knew very well, had the power to control the minds of the soldiers.
After the war, defeated Germany, a new congress was held in London, but the frequency chosen by the Nazis did not change. 440hz was and 440hz would remain.
This was, according to some, because even the British and Americans had every interest in controlling the minds of their soldiers, this time in anti-Soviet function. Indeed, someone would have dared that the 440hz would be chosen by the Rotschild / Rockfeller in secret.
Starting from this, the same people who saw a conspiracy in the discourse of 440hz began to propose to accord musical instruments at 432hz, a frequency that was connected to the heart chakra, capable of healing even the human organism. The latter gathered in a group of theorists of the “Omega Revolution” and took forward their idea by claiming that the difference between 440hz and 432hz, or 8hz, was also that of Schumann’s Resonance, the “heartbeat of the earth” .
Plot or not?
There is no doubt that the question is interesting and worthy of further study.
A definitive answer, however, we can not give it. Certainly the exchange of letters between Goebbels and the Berlin Radio Acoustics Committee has existed, as does the Schumann Resonance and the postwar confirmation of the 440hz frequency by the British and the Americans.
The problem is that since the time of Giuseppe Verdi, who died in 1901 and therefore well before the advent of Nazism, the question of 440hz and 432hz existed and was already a burning issue. The musician author of Aida, for example, preferred 432hz for purely aesthetic reasons. And 432hz was the same frequency as the tuning forks of “French intonation”.
As for the Resonance of Schumann, which is nothing but an electromagnetic oscillation of the frequency of the Earth’s ionosphere due to lightning and lightning, it is not always equal to 8hz, but variable between 7hz and 20hz.
Even the decision to choose 440hz despite the end of Nazism, in England, would be due to commercial needs, since American jazz musicians recorded their records at this frequency.
So?
We do not deny that the question 440hz – 432hz fascinated us.
Music is a universal language, so while we reflected among ourselves on this article that today has seen the light, we legitimately asked ourselves if even the nectar that we so much appreciate can change its organoleptic characteristics if stimulated by sounds at different frequencies.
To put it more simply: a wine changes its flavor if you match it with Pink Floyd registered at 432hz and those altered at 440hz?
It is up to a physicist to respond.
