How A London Orchestra Broke International Law
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as an interesting explanation of how concert pitch ended up at exactly 440 Hz.
What it is
12tone tells the story of pitch inflation and how concert A came to be standardized at 440 Hz, including attempts at legal standards. It is a short music history explainer.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2020 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Recommends lillesvin · 2022-01 · on “Music Tuned to 440 Hz versus 432 Hz and the Health Effects”
Lots of people here mentioning that concert pitch wasn't always A = 440 Hz. Here's an interesting 12tone video explaining how we ended up at exactly that: [this video] (Spoiler: It involves nothing less than the Treaty of Versailles.)
Cites Tsiklon · 2020-01 · on “Loudness war”
I remember watching a video by a music theorist on YouTube (12Tone) where he mentioned that laws were made to define what Concert A would be - [this video]
Cites Jap2-0 · 2021-03 · on “ISO-8601 date format reference not publicly available”
Putting aside that notes don't really have to be in tune to be notes, this is not where A=440hz originated. Correction: upon further research, this is where 440hz originated. However, it was not the original standard (or where musical notes come from), and I find the history interesting, so I'm going to post it anyway. Tuning used to be based off of whatever instrument was not easily tunable (the piano or organ), or some other instrument (oboe?) if there was none. For much of musical history tuning was significantly lower than A=440, albeit with a lot more variation; however, it tended to rise[0][1] in order to create a more brilliant-sounding timbre (particularly in larger venues), especial