The story is as compelling as it is rather old. Back in the 17th century, there was no standard tuning for the note A and the pitch would vary from ensemble to ensemble with typical A4 tuning frequencies ranging from 405 to 421 Hz. Historical examples exist of tuning forks, or standards ranging from as low as A4 = 309Hz to A4 =455Hz. French acoustic physicist Joseph Saveur who himself was not a musician felt that this was somewhat unscientific and decided to put order to the madness and invented what was called the scientific pitch. As we will see, there really isn't anything more scientific about this pitch than any other pitch other than that it was devised by a scientist not a musician. His first approach was rather simple: He tried to keep things at whole numbers when it came to frequency and give some note to 100 Hz, because it was nice and easy. The most suitable note would be that of A and since frequencies double every octave, the A that people would tune to would be two octaves above 100Hz and thus 400Hz. Musicians hated it because it was too far off of what they were used to, so Saveur had to go back to the drawing board.
Another rather nice number for him was the number 1 and if some inaudibly low C was defined as 1Hz, C at 8 Octaves higher or C4 would be 265Hz, which he decided to call the philosophical pitch. By the math of the chromatic scale this put A4, roughly at 430.54 Hz. Giuseppe Verdi first proposed 435Hz but then settled for 432Hz and thus 432 Hz was born as a standard. Now 432 Hz is not exactly the 430.54Hz that Saveur suggested and that relates back to 1Hz for C, but it is attributed to the fact that Verdi was a better musician than mathematician and logarithms were a bummer to compute back in the day.
So far so good. In 1835, however, the Austrian government stirred the pot again by going back to suggesting 435 Hz and the American music industry established 440Hz and the International Organization for Standardization adopted 440Hz in 1956 and instrument makers were increasingly building around that standard.
While not universally accepted, notably the Vienna Philharmonics tune to 443Hz and 414 Hz is established as baroque pitch by some ensembles.
For all those of us not blessed with perfect pitch, this can be considered a minor nuisance, but there is an increasing amount of people who are upholding the belief that there is some sort of conspiracy at work to detune humanity for whatever reason and that those promoting that conspiracy want humanity to be detuned. Google finds 61,600 websites with the search term “432 Hz conspiracy”, so there is clearly a lot of people feeling that there is something wrong with 440Hz.
432Hz tuning has a strong following in all sorts of circles, few of them scientific, but many using scientific terminology to back up the claim that 432Hz is the frequency that is in tune with the cosmos, best synchs with the our brain waves, is in tune with the Earth's heartbeat and is generally a source of healing, harmony, and other such blessings. Now we will of course not discuss matters of taste, and if anyone has had a good experience re-pitching their music collection to 432Hz using one of the numerous tools available, then more power to him or her. The intention of this article is more to look at the science behind the allegation that 432Hz is somehow a more cosmically fundamental way to tune our instruments and 440Hz is a deliberate conspiracy to detune humanity away from a world of love, harmony and understanding.
The people depriving us from those blessings, according to the theories, are the usual suspects, including the Rockefellers, Josef Göebbels, The Iluminati, the new world order, and a whole array of evil-doers we can rightfully suspect to be up to no good. But let’s look at the science first:
One claim that is often heard is that A4 = 432 Hz is the frequency of the cosmos because it is based on C = 1Hz. Now, that raises an eyebrow for two reasons. First of all, that is not true. 430.54Hz relates to C= 1Hz on a chromatic scale. Everyone except for Guisppe Verdi, knows that; second, a Hertz is defined as one wave cycle per second and for 1 Hz to be somehow cosmically fundamental, the second must have some fundamental cosmic meaning as well. Well it does not. It was at some point arbitrarily defined as 1/86400th of a day, on whatever day it was defined at. A day, however, is earthly, not cosmic. Also it was soon noted that as the is turning slower and slower, that second would have to be redefined into something more constant and is now defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cesium 133 atom. Now that is well above my head, but what is not, is that neither 9,192,631,770 or 1/86400 are particularly fundamental in any way, but rather sound much like something that someone human once made up which we are now stuck with. We, you see, not the cosmos.
The second allegation is that A4 = 432 because it corresponds to the Earth’s heartbeat. Well, the Earth does have a frequency albeit not an acoustic one. Schumann resonances are the natural occurring electromagnetic frequencies that the atmosphere responds with when excited by lighting discharge. This frequency is 8HZ, so the story goes, and fits into 432 Hz exactly 54 times, hence 432is in synch with the Earth’s heart beat. Well. Schuman’s resonance is almost entirely 8Hz but not quite exactly: It is 7.83Hz. Multiplied by 54 we would be at 422Hz or closer to Baroque tuning. Take 55 and you get rather close to the 430.54 Hz that would be Verdi’s A had he been a better mathematician. Multiplied by 57, on the other hand you get 438.5Hz which in turn is somewhat close to our standard 440Hz. Also the Schumann resonance varies quite a bit depending on where you are on the planet, how often lighting strikes and what time of day it is, so if the Earth’s heartbeat can vary, why can’t our orchestras' tunings?
There are many more claims why 432 is somehow fundamental to our universe and this website collective-evolution.com seems to sum them all up nicely in only three sentence:
"432 Hz is said to be mathematically consistent with the patterns of the universe. It is said that 432 Hz vibrates with the universe’s golden mean PHI and unifies the properties of light, time, space, matter, gravity and magnetism with biology, the DNA code, and consciousness. When our atoms and DNA start to resonate in harmony with the spiraling pattern of nature, our sense of connection to nature is said to be magnified. The number 432 is also reflected in ratios of the sun, Earth, and moon, as well as the precession of the equinoxes, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge, and the Sri Yantra, among many other sacred sites."
A lot of that seems to be about someone saying something, but exactly what, I'm not sure. PHI or the golden mean is 1.61803398875... and so on, which is not really related to 432 in any more a meaningful way than 431 or perhaps 440. The golden mean, mathematically speaking, is an irrational number and they don't really relate to integers at all. Granted, the legendary violin builder Antonius Stradivari applied the Golden Ratio to define the location of the “f-holes” and proportions of his masterwork violins. But we might be able to agree that even a Stradivarius can be tuned to 440Hz or any other frequency. Most of the other claims that are about physical dimensions can be dismissed as they would again require the second as a unit to be fundamental and not arbitrary. And now, our DNA does not vibrate at 432Hz, nor do the Great Pyramids in Egypt, Stonehenge or other buildings that aren’t particularly wobbly by design.
So the whole thing probably comes down to people just saying things to make themselves seem interesting. Being interesting, is of course a viable source of income in the days of the internet and there might be little wrong with suspecting that the 432Hz ideology is best put in the basket with tinfoil hats or other esoteric products sold at 4 am on dubious shopping channels.
All that said, matters of taste remain, and I am definitely not one to argue with the brilliant composer of my favorite Opera Rigoletto. Verdi liked 432Hz and anyone else is certainly freely invited to do the same. Above you can find Led Zepplin converted to 432Hz for you. If you find love, unity and understanding, make sure you share the word. Enjoy a large collection of more songs here to check if you prefer a selection of songs tuned a little lower. If you do, then run with that. I personally am fine with what I hear now but also don't dislike 432 Hz either.
Arved Deecke is founder of the Danish / Mexican Loudspeaker company KVART & BØLGE that makes audiophile quarter wave loudspeakers and sound systems at a price anyone can afford. In his free time he blogs about all things related to sound, music and audio.
