The "400 Hz or 432 Hz" Debate

A school of thought in the music world believes that a certain note in the musical scale is tuned to “warp the consciousness of the masses,” perpetrated by the Nazis for mind control purposes.  Worst of all, the Nazi influence has made its way into the record labels of today, which still utilize this hypnotizing frequency.  Of course, this school of thought happens to fall under the umbrella term “conspiracy theorists,” but the tuning conundrum is indeed real, and rooted in history dating back to the era of classical composers.

The note in question is the A just before middle C, known to audiophiles as the frequency 440 Hz.  Sure enough, this precise quantity has been subject to variation over the years: 19^th century France and Austria tuned the note at 435 Hz, composer Giuseppe Verdi advocated an A at 432 Hz, and Pleyel pianos, most notably used by Chopin, tuned their A at 446 Hz.  The most divergent of the now-standard 440 Hz is Mozart, whose A was tuned at approximately 421.6 Hz – almost G sharp!  This erratic tuning eventually led to the adoption of an official standard imposed by the American Standards Association in 1936.  Since then, the A has been set firmly at 440 Hz.

At this point, the question still stands: which way is better?  Ardent believers insist that music with A tuned to 432 Hz gives off positive energies, not to mention it made classical compositions more wholesome and chromatically-rich.  Some even go as far as to examine the harmonic overtones!  The author of the source article actually conducted a listening test: utilizing software that automatically tunes the 440 Hz frequency down to 432 Hz, he listened to an assortment of songs from a variety of genres.  His findings note that the lower tuning suited softer music, while the higher tuning worked well with louder and harder songs.  Music made prior to the 440 Hz standard sounded (for the most part) better at 432 Hz.  Of course, it’s all subject to opinion, as most listening tests out there on the Internet leave the frequency preference to the interpretation of the viewer.   Feel free to try for yourself!

Reference:

Gioia, T. (2015, June 6). Are We All Mistuning Our Instruments, and Can We Blame the Nazis? Retrieved June 7, 2015, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/06/are-we-all-mistuning-our-instruments-and-can-we-blame-the-nazis.html