Today I Learned (TIL)

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TIL the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I also included a clause establishing concert pitch as A = 435 Hz (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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From pages 170 & 171:

[T]he multilateral treaties, conventions and agreements of an economic or technical character enumerated below … shall alone be applied as between Germany and those of the Allied and Associated Powers party thereto:

. . . .

(22) Convention of November 16 and 19, 1885, regarding the establishment of a concert pitch.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Well, you don't do that. You pick one frequency, in our case it was generally 442 Hz, and then you play the whole concert with that.

Re-tuning a piano can easily take an hour. And re-tuning an orchestra is just as well a multi-minute cacophonie. The audience would rather listen to a slightly too brilliant death march than that...