The note A tuned to 440 Hz only became the norm for musical performance in 1939 after decades of international and interdisciplinary disputes. Fanny Gribenski retraces this rocky path.
This article examines mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-French relations through the prism of musical standardization. Bringing together perspectives from musicology, history of science, and political history, it demonstrates the holistic value of musical practices for the study of processes of political integration. In 1859, Napoléon III's government determined a national pitch to which musicians should tune their instruments. The following year, Britain's Society of Arts attempted to emulate this standard. Amid tense Anglo-French relations, British audiences interpreted the French pitch as a measure of the country's autocracy, and these political anxieties materialized through a redefinition of the standard. The challenges of introducing a musical pitch within a liberal political framework encountered in 1859 were subsequently echoed in debates over the reform of weights and measures following the 1860 free trade treaty between Britain and France. Both the economic and artistic integration of these countries involved the problem of how to regulate society within a laissez-faire state. Musical standardization has received little historiographical attention, but the regulation of this art offers insights into mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-French political culture. Entangled within complex network of industrial, institutional, and social structures, musical pitch demonstrates how problems of economic and social integration were inseparable from international and socio-political contexts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.