Ink Tea Stone Leaf

On Friday afternoon I was listening to music while I worked on revising my novel. I do that a lot, it’s not in the least bit noteworthy. However, I heard a song that I enjoyed very much. When I got up to use the bathroom a few minutes later, I searched for the song on Youtube so that I could pay closer attention to its various intricacies, in the privacy of… the bathroom.

The first version that I found was labeled “432 Hz,” a designation I gave no thought to at first; I didn’t notice any real difference. But while the song played I looked through the video description, and discovered the essential claim: music at 432 hertz is more calming to human ears, promoting wellness in all sorts of ill-defined ways.

Of course, anybody who knows anything about music knows that the entire concept of melody depends on the vibrations of air arriving in our ears at more than one frequency. So I needed to learn more about what what it meant to say that an entire song was in this one frequency, if it didn’t mean that the song consisted of a single flat tone.

A search engine query brought me a list of sites that made claims about 432 Hz being the Earth’s frequency, or the frequency of the human heartbeat, as well as one site that informed me of even more dubious claims by announcing its intent to debunk them. I didn’t read any of these sites though, because I could not be bothered. I went to Wikipedia instead, to read about this miraculous pitch and why it had become the darling of the kind of person who believes the entire Earth is vibrating at a single frequency.

What I learned is that 432 Hz is an alternative tuning standard, and to understand that you need to understand some key concepts in physics and music theory. Notes in the musical octave are relative pitches, without absolute definitions in terms of frequency. An A note is an A note because its frequency is double that of the next lowest note which is also called an A note, and half that of the next highest note which is also called an A note.

In order for musicians to harmonize for each other, however, they need to agree on a frequency to serve as the basis of their relative pitches. For that purpose, a standard frequency has been broadly agreed upon: that the first A above Middle C is 440 Hz. Consequently, the next A above that would be 880 HZ, and the one above that would be 1760 Hz, and so on and so on. The next A below 440 Hz would be 220 Hz, and then 110 Hz, and then 55 Hz, 27.5 Hz, 13.75, and you can just keep shrinking them like that. You can’t actually hear frequencies below about 20 Hz, but if they fit in that sequence they are still A notes, according to this convention.

(What is a Hz, or hertz? It’s the SI unit for frequency, otherwise defined as one per second. Anything that happens a single time every second is happening at a frequency of 1 Hz; an A note in standard tuning happens when the sound waves in the air oscillate 440 times every second).

But an A note just above Middle C does not have to be 440 Hz; that’s just a convention. There were multiple variable standards before 440 became standardized in Western music through the 19th and 20th century, because of course there were; most musicians throughout history tuned by ear, and the ability to measure audible vibrations with such accuracy has not been available for more than a few centuries. The French standard (influential throughout Europe) prior to the adoption of 440 Hz was slightly lower, at 435 Hz. The renowned opera composer Giuseppe Verdi advocated an even lower standard: in at least one instance, he suggested 432 Hz.

There are, of course, practical and aesthetic considerations in selecting a higher or lower pitch standard. Higher frequencies are more difficult to sing, but they tend to produce a brighter, more impressive sound in concert. 440 for A is standard in North America and the UK, but many orchestras in Europe go as high as 444. In the end, most orchestras are really just tuning by ear, trusting the oboe players to establish where exactly A above Middle C lives. This is mostly fine, because musical pitch is relative. The numbers are made up, and only the ratios actually matter as far as harmony is concerned.

I looked up a pitch generator so I could compare 440 Hz with 432Hz. If your ears are properly sensitive, you will probably be able to tell that one tone is lower than the other. It’s not a big difference though; if 440 Hz is A, then the next note down the chromatic scale (A flat/G sharp) is about 415.305 Hz. That is three times the difference between 440 and 432! In an ensemble using standard tuning, a singer who sang an A at exactly 432 Hz probably wouldn’t even be perceived as flat by most listeners. Differences this small (also known as microtones) can be musically meaningful, especially in traditions other than traditional Western music, but the idea that it can make the difference between music that is good for you and music that isn’t strains credulity.

Giuseppe Verdi also proposed another solution to the problem of pitch standards rising too damn high: a standard known as scientific pitch. This standard is not actually used widely, but it is convenient for research purposes because it is defined in terms of Middle C itself, rather than A above Middle C. Furthermore, the number of Hz designated for Middle C is 256, which has the virtue making the frequency of all C notes into powers of two. Very useful, if you don’t want to divide anything but whole numbers! Incidentally, the value of A above Middle C in scientific pitch is about 430.54 Hz.

You may note that 430.54 is not 432. That’s because this is where the whole thing starts to become infuriating. The 432 Hz fad seems to have originated in 1988, when an organization called the Schiller Institute began to promote what it called “scientific pitch,” alternately referred to as “Verdi tuning,” likely because they hoped to appeal to that old informal logical fallacy known as the Appeal to Authority. If it’s favored by Giuseppe, it must be the ideal, no matter the opinion of any other number of musicians throughout history. Verdi is a name people know! But what the Schiller Institute called scientific pitch was not A at 430.54, but A at 432, which apparently still works if you are willing to play fast and loose with how semitones are divided.

Who are the Schiller Institute, anyway? I won’t keep you in suspense: they are an organ of the antisemitic cult, or “movement,” founded by the late Lyndon LaRouche, one of the most notorious conspiracy theorists of all time. LaRouche was a crank who blended Marxism, fascism, and ahistorical nonsense in all kinds of nauseating ways throughout his life, and attributed just about all opposition to his program to a Satanic conspiracy of darkness.

How many of the sort of people who tout the mystical, healing properties of 432 Hz know that they are echoing the views of a man who believed that jazz music was invented by former slave holders to subjugate Black people, or that rock music was invented by the British government to brainwash the youth to favor the USSR? Probably not many, because those sort of people don’t really know anything about history and tend to stop thinking critically once somebody tells them how to do one weird trick.

Frankly, I did not expect my effort to listen to a favored song on the toilet to send me down a rabbit hole with Lyndon LaRouche’s nasty corpse at the bottom. This is my bad though, because that is usually exactly what I find when I try to figure out the origin of some esoteric and implausible wellness belief. I really should have seen it coming. If it’s not LaRouche, it’s some other incoherent thought-scrambler who thinks that the reason we aren’t living in a golden age is because the correct arbitrary standard was suppressed by advocates of a different, obviously inferior arbitrary standard.

The problem with believing that 432 Hz is a magic pitch that clears your skin and waters your crops is that it raises an uncomfortable question: why is the official standard 8 Hz higher? It would be easy enough to lower the pitch; anybody with the right software and a Youtube account can do it. If it isn’t that low to begin with, then some malevolent entity must not want your skin cleared, or your crops watered. A above Middle C is a shrill, screeching 440 Hz, instead of a soothing, dulcet 432 Hz, because somebody who understands more about music than you wants to hurt you.

But that never occurred to you! You just wanted to use one weird trick to enhance your meditation! You never meant to think about any of this! And that is why a person with enough projected confidence can claim literally anything about anything, and gather enough followers thereby to undermine serious reflections of reality. This same line of thinking is the reason why the United States has the highest number of measles cases this year since the disease was “eliminated” from this country in 2000; too many gullible people with the best of intentions committed themselves to utter nonsense that flattered their prejudices and insecurities, instead of making a sincere effort to understand the scientific consensus.

The stakes in musical conventions are not nearly as high as they are for vaccinations. There is nothing wrong with using 432 Hz as the standard for tuning. In fact, in 99% of most people’s experience with music, it makes absolutely no difference. Please do not let the kind of people who depend on your ignorance to enhance their agenda convince you otherwise.