Moveable Feast Cafe 2022/08/16 … Open Thread

Thank you Tommy Jensen, for the article. It explains why some music is so jarring.
The Chinese philosopher, Confucius stated –
“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.”
One wonders what he would have made of the 20th century phenomenon known as “world music”.

Music has always been an integral part of the human evolution, and history. Our human brain and nervous system can very well differentiate between music and noise, and respond to various tones, rhythm, and their repetition. Our moods also have a role in the kind of music we listen to. Good music benefits our physical and mental health.

I investigated the article you linked; thank you for the link.

Many of the historical claims in the article are debatable. I went to Ask Audio for references to do a general weed-clearing relative to recent European history and standard pitch.

The evidence concerning absolute pitch is saved in organ pipes, wind instruments with bored holes, and tuning forks, among other things. The first tuning fork is credited to English trumpeter John Shore ca. 1711, producing 423.5 hz. GF Händel’s tuning fork produces 422.5. Of particular interest to the discussion of absolute pitch and Mozart is the tuning fork of Viennese piano make Johann Andreas Stein, whose work would have been familiar and of interest to Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. It vibrates at 421.6 hz. I know of no other factual basis for a discussion of an absolute pitch preferred by Mozart.

Prior to this era, the absence of any attempt to standardize pitch over large geographic areas is pervasively evident. (Prior to unification in 1870, Germany comprised as many as 360 separate nominal states.) The complexity of the history of historically provable pitch standards is hinted at in this table by Alexander Ellis.

In Bach’s time, the differences of absolute tuning pitch between different communities of musicians in the same city were such that they required Bach to notate different orchestra parts in large musical groups at different pitches in order to try to bridge these discrepancies. Musical treatises of the era refer to distinct absolute tuning pitches for “chorton,” “kammerton,” and “orgelton.” Organs would tend to rise in pitch over their productive lifetimes, because the pipes were tuned to each other by alternatively flaring or crimping the ends to affect the pitch. Over time, the pipes would disintegrate under the wear and tear, and the “split ends” would have to be taken off, raising the pitch.

Stradivarius violins have no characteristic absolute tuning pitch. A stringed instrument has no inherent absolute tuning pitch; it can be fitted with strings of varying diameters to maintain a constant level of overall tension while accommodating a variety of tuning pitches. Historic strings have survived; there is no conversation about a pitch standard of A=432 hz associated with them.

Pitch has been known to inflate over time; the tendency for musicians in a competitive work environment to want to sound a little higher, louder and faster relative to everything else is an established historic and psychological trait. Even with the 440 hz standard, the NY Philharmonic now officially tunes to 442 hz, and I have heard that wind players who win the audition to play in Boston have to have new instruments made to accommodate the tuning standard there. The Berlin PO has tuned as high as 445 hz.

The idea of measuring Herz (hz), or cycles per second, is a creation of modern times.

The first second hand on a clock is from ca. 1560; Galileo’s use of a pendulum to measure time is from ca. 1600.

The ability to measure cycles per second goes back to ca. 1834, when Félix Savart invented the “Savart Wheel” and Johann Scheibler invented his “Tonometer” for this purpose.

Only then was it possible for a governing entity to dictate the idea of a standard pitch. In 1859, in order to constrain pitch inflation and save singer’s voices, the French government promulgated the “diapason normal” which set A=435 hz. This standard spread across Europe under names such as “French pitch,” “continental pitch” and “international pitch.” It became widespread after a conference in Vienna in 1885 and was installed as a “Convention” in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles between France and a defeated Germany.

Incidentally, it is only with the readings of the Savart Wheel and Tonometer that it became possible to produce the tables that allow tuners to tune pianos in twelve-tone equal temperament (12-tet) from around the turn of the 20th century; prior to that, tuning systems relied on the human ear and were collectively characterized as “unequal temperaments.” This all has to do with relative pitch and is only tangential to a discussion of absolute pitch, although the values of the numbers piano tuners use to conform to 12-tet would be affected by the absolute tuning standard.

Some of the other absolute standards that were circulating in the period 1859-1939 (some standards were defined in terms of C1 [“middle C”], and are recalculated on the basis of 12-tet) were “scientific pitch” of 430.54 hz, the UK’s “old Philharmonic pitch” of 452.4 hz and “new Philharmonic pitch” of 439.

Johann Scheibler (see above) advocated for 440 hz, which was adopted by the 1834 Stuttgart conference of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, and thereafter known as “Stuttgart pitch” or “Scheibler pitch.”

The discrepancy between “Scheibler pitch” and “French pitch” has been explained as rooting in a French practice of maintaining concert halls at 60 degrees Fahrenheit during the era in question. Musicians know that temperature differences affect absolute pitch generated by musical instruments. Colder air is also denser, affecting wave transmission. I think this raises a philosophical question as to whether 432 hz “feels” the same at both cellar temperature and room temperature, among others, ceterus paribus.

At any rate, Scheibler pitch (440 hz) was widely accepted in the US by about 1926, and accepted by the American Standards Association in 1936. The International Organization of Standardization adopted Scheibler pitch in “R [“Recommendation”] 16″ in 1955, and solidified it in “ISO 16” in 1975. This latter step can be seen as an attempt to contain the rampant inflation in orchestral tuning pitches going on at the time, and up to now.

Verdi asked for French pitch for performance of his Requiem. His close involvement with high-level singers probably accounts for his sensitivity to the effects of pitch inflation on singers, and hence for his interest in paring down the then-widely standardized French pitch to an even more vocally manageable 432 hz. I know of no other proven historical basis to explain the origination of this as a pitch standard.

Lyndon LaRouche’s Schiller Institute lobbied for 432 hz since at least the 1980s.

Since that time, I have seen the widening standardization of Scheibler pitch attributed to the Rockefellers and the Nazis (the proper German ones) as part of a system of mind control, and I have seen it maintained that 432 hz was a standard and invariant tuning pitch for music of all times and cultures from the beginning, originating in the laws of nature. (The linked article states in paragraph six [Yandex english translation] that PJ Goebbels revised standard pitch to 440 hz in 1936, and, in paragraph eight, that tuning forks in Nazi Germany were tuned to 449 hz. Since this latter value is specifically contrasted to tuning forks at 440 hz in Russia/Soviet Union, it is hard to dismiss it as a mere typo. I think this is a fabrication.)

I think the factual claims propounded in this popular fad of 432 hz are generally unsubstantiated and reflect illiteracy in science and in the practice of music. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I believe that a person who is advancing an outlandish and incoherent historical and scientific hypothesis bears a higher standard of proof than the one who remains sceptical of it.

In spite of this, I can also can see that this fad is widespread and probably here to stay.

Hi Mr P,

(at Fuk) I do not understand how a Tsunami could have been arranged… Me too. I do not know how they did it. I do not have any proof. But they somehow timed it for March 11, indicating sabotage. Destruction and Numerology are among their lodestones.
(1) the year was very important. It was the year the US started the wave of the Arab Springs v.2 (after the Sykes-Picot) and was doubling down on the “Greater M.E.” They needed to settle other fronts and make lessons. Throw a captive Japanese against the wall to scare all. (2) Japan was making moves at the time too (I forget what, but risking vassal escape) and many were getting ideas those days too, with AZE bogged down in Afghan/Iraq. (3) China was rapidly rising.. So as the “[1945] Bomb was for Russia” maybe the “[2011] Fuku Bomb was for China” ?? Certainly the Chinese have remained inordinately circumspect and frankly meek since..

I saw we thought alike on the contrived design malfeasance. You note above, “I do, in a sense, agree that “it” was sabotage… When one builds such a plant on the cheap, with a defective design, well below the safe zone, and places the cooling uptake pump motors near sea level, then one has “lit the fuze” on the self-destruction of the plant…”

“I note that Tsunami also happens, from time to time, all along the US west coast, where, for example, Diablo Canyon is running in a dubious state”
The time is upon us where living near these ticking time bombs in Zone A is risky.. whether via loss of the grid, cooling water, tsunamis near the coast, lack of proper maintenance & engineers (remember Southern state engineers resigning en masse fleeing from mandates?), secondary health sequela (All Cause Mort), roaming brigands & militias, etc…. God help us. The Strangelovian way or the Fukushima way!!

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” = in our era of comic-book sensibilities, it is now called Who watches the Watchers? The Watchmen are a heavily messaged Illuminati fare, replete with soppy justification for nuclear war. (A cameo by Dr. Heinz K at the end!)

“re the Shoigu and Putin speeches (available and discussed @ Saker)” It is hard to keep up. I was still digesting the VVP speech in the hours preceding the start of the SMO! Both sides keep upping the ante.. This will be the year that shapes countless generations to come. Mr P we should have few regrets, being part of such living History.

Mr P – All things considered, most of the magic with NPR is the medium. I used to listen to it for some of my misspent youth, especially on long commute drives.. Although I suppose it is OK to return to it now to “earball” the drift of the Propaganda.. Radio to many is more mesmerizing than TV. Only one sense is attuned. So one really focuses. If the right gravely sedate and measured tone is selected, esp in the setting where trust has not been broken, it is devastatingly hypnotic. If the listener lacks sufficient education (and most do) than anything can be seeded. Radio was for some generations like tuning into the very Voice of God.. Some say this is why FDR was the most striking US President of the last century. The magic of his kind authoritative fatherly voice in the aether.

“I see RT has story to-day claiming 404 has plan to do heavy stuff at NPS-Z on Friday” Yes. RT also notes:

In a separate statement on Thursday, Igor Kirillov, who heads Russia’s Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defense Troops, said his directorate has modeled possible scenarios for a disaster at the Zaporozhye plant. A plume of radioactive materials from the site may reach Poland, Slovakia and Germany, he warned.

Kirillov, head of Russian NBC, further notes here:

It is also predicted that radionuclides will reach Moldova and Romania.
As Kirillov noted, if 25% of the core contents of at least one of the six reactors of the ZNPP are released, the radioactive “tongue” will cover the Baltic States and the Scandinavian Peninsula.

“Europa Delenda Est.” So the wind dispersion is largely westward. This is a stacked function. Not merely to harm Russia and its reputation, but to empty Europe too, as we’ve discussed over last 10 months ad nauseam. As Uncle Bob and many raise the point, what will Russia do??? Looking dispassionately, as with starting the SMO, they appear to be maneuvering the Russians into making unwilling steps to strike first each time.. war isn’t Tango – it only takes one

It may be, Tom, that satire escapes some people. Obviously it’s in bad taste. It’s not, clearly not, argument, merely funny, maybe pathetic..and classical, as Tacitus’ put it “step by step they are led to things that dispose to vice, the toga, the bath, the elegant bath…etc etc.” (Old Mr T was being polite, he meant precisely sodomy, gluttony, drunkenness, sex as licentious sport, often with slaves, or animals, and all that might be imagined, and “so forth”.)

I myself think that the (German) SS Leibstandarte doing a Busby Berkeley routine is hilarious. As you say, it’s embarrassing as well. I wonder, how did the SS fellas we see in cited film do when they faced the Red Army? Did the survivors (if any) regret dancing on film in drag? Or did they develop perverted longings? Did they chat about it in the Soviet labor camps? I wonder how the Great Military Genius the “Z-fella” will feel about dancing in drag in high heels when he faces a Court… Film shot, I expect, in 1941, and how many died in Russia just 2, 3, or 4 years later?

Speaking of vice> (note the wide open eyes!) https://twitter.com/i/status/1560566152622907392 (Sanna Marin, Finnish PM, presumably cuckolding her husband “in (very) bad taste!)

More seriously, how, one might ask, does all that coke find its way to a “party”? (see Tacitus!)…Who, precisely, supplies dope to That Fine Gentleman, The Hunter-B, and to the “leadership”?

Hegemon in decline correlates to a (evidently) massive supply of dope to the satrapies’ Quisling “leaders”… being led, step by step…to vice. Just like in Reich # 3, so it was in Rome, and so it is to-day in Reich #4…vice is the harbinger of collapse of the Moral Law, and attends hegemonic collapse.

I am sorry if the film upset you, that was not the idea, Friend… Don’t take satire and so on as argument, it’s ridicule.