Fanny Gribenski (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Physical Details: 280
Language: English
Tuning the World tells the unknown story of how the musical pitch A 440 became the global norm. Now commonly accepted as the point of reference for musicians in the Western world, A 440 hertz only became the standard pitch during an international conference held in 1939. The adoption of this norm was the result of decades of negotiations between countries, involving a diverse group of performers, composers, diplomats, physicists, and sound engineers. Although there is widespread awareness of the variability of musical pitches over time, as attested by the use of lower frequencies to perform early music repertoires, no study has fully explained the invention of our current concert pitch. In this book, Fanny Gribenski draws on a rich variety of previously unexplored archival sources and a unique combination of musicological perspectives, transnational history, and science studies to tell the unknown story of how A 440 became the global norm. Tuning the World demonstrates the aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and political contingencies underlying the construction of one of the most “natural” objects of contemporary musical performance and shows how this century-old effort was ultimately determined by the influence of a few powerful nations.
...MoreReview Roland Wittje (2023) Review of "Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859–1955". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 882-883).
Review Joeri Bruyninckx (2024) Review of "Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859–1955". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 127-129).
Similar Citations
Book
Fabio Bellissima;
(2022)
La scala musicale: una storia tra matematica e filosofia
Thesis
Portnow, Allison Kerbe;
(2011)
Einstein, Modernism, and Musical Life in America, 1921--1945
Article
Carpenter, Alexander;
(2010)
Towards a History of Operatic Psychoanalysis
Chapter
Wolff, Barbara;
(2005)
… völlig trunken und behext … Einstein und die Musik: ein jüdisches Thema?
Chapter
Ash, Mitchell;
(2008)
Multiple Modernisms? Episodes from the Sciences as Cultures, 1900--1945
Thesis
Mundy, Rachel;
(2010)
Nature's Music: Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening in the Twentieth Century
Article
Verena Lehmbrock;
(2023)
Paying attention to each other. An essay on the transnational intersections of industrial economy, subjectivity, and governance in East Germany's social-psychological training
Book
Bernard Lightman;
Sarah Qidwai;
(2023)
Evolutionary Theories and Religious Traditions: National, Transnational, and Global Perspectives, 1800–1920
Book
Kennaway, James Gordon;
(2014)
Music and the Nerves, 1700-1900
Article
Tan, YING JIA;
(May 2020)
Dreamscapes of Accelerated Development: Uses and Abuses iof Artist Impressions in John L. Savage's Yangtze Gorges Proposal, 1944-1946
Article
Schmidt, Michael J.;
(2014)
Visual Music: Jazz, Synaesthesia and the History of the Senses in the Weimar Republic
Thesis
Hui, Alexandra;
(2008)
Hearing Sound as Music: Psychophysical Studies of Sound Sensation and the Music Culture of Germany, 1860--1910
Thesis
Olenina, Ana;
(2012)
Psychomotor Aesthetics: Conceptions of Gesture and Affect in Russian and American Modernity, 1910's--1920's
Book
Elders, Willem;
(2013)
Josquin des Prez and His Musical Legacy: An Introductory Guide
Book
Dillon, Emma;
(2012)
The Sense of Sound: Musical Meanings in France, 1260--1330
Article
Ash, Mitchell G.;
(2008)
Wissenschaft und Musik -- Einführende Bemerkungen
Chapter
Austern, Linda Phyllis;
(2013)
Women, Gender, and Music
Article
Clifford J. Cunningham;
Barbara Bacik Case;
(2021)
The Seven Sisters: a Pleiades cantata
Book
Edwards, David;
(2008)
Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation
Article
Hui, A. E.;
(2011)
Instruments of Music, Instruments of Science: Hermann von Helmholtz's Musical Practices, His Classicism, and His Beethoven Sonata
Be the first to comment!