Del i serien New Material Histories of Music

Tuning the World

The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859–1955

Inbunden, Engelska, 2023

619 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar. Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-01-26
Mått152 x 229 x 28 mm
Vikt513 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieNew Material Histories of Music
Antal sidor280
FörlagThe University of Chicago Press
ISBN9780226823263

Tillhör följande kategorier

Musikvetenskap inom Kultur

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.”