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kitarist -> RE: A-440 vs 432 Hz?? (Sep. 27 2020 7:16:05)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Bulerias2005
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
WHo cares? so long as you play IN TUNE.
Actually, you'd be surprised just how much it matters to people beyond simply aesthetic reasons. My brother has perfect pitch and 440 Hz tuning makes him cringe and is profoundly disturbing because he grew up hearing music that was tuned to 432 Hz.
Right, but absolute pitch ("perfect pitch" was the specific name of a program to supposedly develop it and you can guess how well that worked) is more akin to having a fixed memory (recall) for pitch, at whatever frequencies one got exposed to early in life; and at some point got locked into them.
However, it does not mean recognizing a specific frequency; there is nothing magical about 440 or 432 or any other. What's more, orchestras in a long performance can start at reference 440 and by the end the string instruments could creep up by several cents just because the strings and instruments got significantly warmer.
There have been individuals with absolute pitch throughout history. However, for all but the last 100 years or so, the reference pitch has been varying wildly both geographically within the same time period, and at the same place across time.
As a quick summary, A varied from 374 to 567 Hz (!!) over the 14th to 17th century. Then the range got narrower but still significant, 377-423, in the 18th century.
Then, "During the nineteenth century the range was from about 424 to 494, a progressive rise being evident up to about 1887, reflecting no doubt, as always, a striving for increased brilliancy." And pitch generally got brought down occasionally because singers would complain that they cannot hit the notes anymore.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century the reference pitch range narrowed again, to about 435-443 Hz. Finally the 1939 conference adopted 440 internationally as shown above.
There are some papers from the 1880s that I am quoting from which contain long tables documenting tuning forks' actual pitches by year and location (which is where the numbers in the summary above are from) and a detailed discussion of factors that went into creating such a variability.
I can only conclude that whoever had absolute pitch back then was simply attuned to the prevailing frequencies (of time and/or geographic locality) that got imprinted into their brain - rather than to any special frequency.
In other words, absolute/perfect pitch is neither absolute nor perfect with respect to frequency - it is more like fixed pitch - stable recall of a random reference pitch that came about by happenstance (at least before 1940s).
One last point. Some years ago I was interested in relative vs. absolute pitch and read some journal papers. The sense from the then-latest research was that
(1) Likely everyone is born with absolute pitch;
(2) Early on, relative pitch abilities begin to develop as they are much more important, and the absolute pitch ability is usually lost by the age of 4;
(3) Absolute pitch can possibly be taught - more like preserved - if one is willing to subject their child to specific exercises in the window of 2-to-4 years of age; outside that window, very likely not possible to learn it, "perfect pitch" program notwithstanding.
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