Unexplainable What’s A
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Sep 24, 2025 Fanny Gribenski, a historical musicologist and author of Tuning the World, dives into the fascinating and complex history of musical pitch standards. She explores why orchestras tune to an oboe and the historical variations of the A note. Discover the aesthetic and political debates surrounding pitch, from France's attempts for a rational standard to the U.S. push for A440. Fanny also discusses the 1939 BBC conference, the cultural anxieties surrounding pitch changes, and how modern conspiracies still grapple with these age-old standards.
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Pitch Is A Social Construction
- Musical pitch is socially constructed and required collective agreement to exist as a standard.
- Fanny Gribenski shows that deciding 'what is A' is political, technological, and aesthetic, not purely natural.
Historical Pitch Variability
- In 1700s France different cities used wildly different A pitches: one at 374 Hz, another at 563 Hz.
- Paris alone in the 1800s had at least six tuning standards across venues.
Rationalism Drove Standardization Push
- The French Revolution's rationalism inspired calls to standardize pitch like the metric system.
- Debates over pitch mixed scientific impulses with aesthetic and cultural values about performance.
