432, Verdi Tuning and the Schiller Institute!
The Schiller Institute is described as an international political and economic think tank that aim to apply the ideas of the poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller to what they describe as the contemporary world crisis.
According to wikipedia, that is.
I do not know that much about them personally, except that they in 1988 started a campaign to introduce a new standard for instrument tuning. They wanted the standard 440 hz concert tuning replaced with what is known as Verdi tuning, sometimes also called scientific pitch, or philosophical pitch.
The most common perception of this is that it gives us a middle C tone at 256 hz, since it is the first tone and if we split it up in octaves, that is halving it, we will end up at the number 1. A natural place to start measuring the first note of the scale, I would say. Interestingly it also gives us a C tone at 8 hz which is roughly the Schumann Resonance, or the “tone” of earth itself if you will, but that will have to be another post…
The middle tone C at 256 hz will give us an A at, you guessed it, 432 hz, according to the institute, or rather, according to Verdi. Many argue that this is not correct and that the A tone will be 430,539 hz, but this depends on the temperament we use, and this is probably calculated from equal temperament. For example it is widely believed that Mozart tuned his C to 256 hz and that his A was exactly 430 hz because of his preferred temperament. As I have touched on before there are countless possibilities when it comes to musical temperament and pretty much all of them are better than the standard of today; equal temperament.
The scientific pitch have been known among composers and instrument builders for hundreds of years and the tuning standard have varied in equally many ways. Everybody seemed to have their own idea of what was the best system and for various different reasons, but that the middle C should be 256 seems to be one thing that most agreed upon. The best acoustician known in the time of Beethoven, for example, was Ernst Chladni. His writings have been preserved and he firmly states that the right pitch for middle C is 256 hz. Again, depending on the temperament, this gives us middle A tones varying from roughly 427 hz to 435 hz.
It is said that in the early 1800`s, Czar Alexander, one of those russian rulers, demanded a “brighter sound” from his musicians. This lead many to tune their instruments up and again instrument builders to build new instruments built for higher pitch. This new and brighter sound became quite popular and it spread like a wildfire across Europe. By 1850 the tuning standard for A ranged between 420 hz and 460 hz, making it very confusing for musicians everywhere…
The French government decided that they wanted to put an end to this chaos and called for a pitch standardization, and eventually they ended up with a standard of 435 hz. In France, that is…
The famous Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi objected to this and claimed it was too high. He reportedly said “what we call A in Rome, is what is called B-flat in Paris”
This caused another great debate and nothing was really agreed upon for the next hundred years. Some championed Verdis tuning at 432 hz A and some said that the French standard of 435 hz A was better and some again used completely different systems, and then in 1939 an international standard of 440 hz was proposed, and eventually, somehow, became accepted, despite loud protests by many, especially from singers who claimed, and still claims, that the pitch is way too high and that it is damaging to their voices.
Thankfully the Verdi tuning was not forgotten and as mentioned in the beginning of this post the Schiller Institute launched a campaign to have it set as a new international standard, claiming that it corresponds with the laws of physics, the Pythagorean tuning and the work of Johannes Kepler on the Harmonies of the World, stating that music is a universal language and that correct tuning of music is of utmost importance to the wellbeing of humanity. They got thousands of musicians onboard including many famous opera singers such as Piero Cappuccilli and Luciano Pavarotti himself!
I urge everyone to look into this campaign and have a look at the many interesting videos on the Schiller Institutes Youtube page! I have shared some of them on my own Facebook page which you will find a link to on the homepage of this site.
I share all this because it is important that everybody understands that the 432 tuning is universal and is backed up by all kinds of research and history, it is not only mystical and magical spiritual stuff. The work by The Schiller Institute does not mention sound healing once! Nor do the talk about time cycles or sacred Buddhist numbers or anything like that. It all just happens to correlate perfectly. 432 is a code. A key to understanding ourselves and the world we live in. Music tuned to any other key knocks us of balance. Detunes us. It is extremely important that we understand this!
Ok. Enough for now.
As always I appreciate you reading and I will be back next week with more.
Jonas
