Tuning the World

Fanny Gribenski is assistant professor of music at New York University. She is the author of one book in French.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Tuning Forks and Global Politics1. Tuning the Nation: Aesthetics, Science, Industry, and the French Pitch2. Sounding the World: Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Travels of the French Pitch3. Retuning the World: Transatlanticism and the Defeat of the French Pitch4. “Pitch in Our Time”: International Concord and the Engineering of an Interwar Standard5. Postwar Aftermath: Confirming an Embattled StandardEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

“In pursuing the origin story of a single musical note, Gribenski shows us that nothing about the ways we hear, evaluate, or feel about music and musicians is ‘natural’ or ‘universal.’ Her virtuosic interdisciplinary research convincingly reveals how—as the battling forces of metaphysics, historical precedence, mathematics and experimental sciences, instrument construction, composition and repertoire, performers’ health, and aesthetic preference competed for attention—the relentless imperial ambitions of a few nations led to the pitch A’s designation as 440 hertz. Tuning the World is required reading for music scholars and practitioners, historians of science, and diplomats alike.”