You didn't say anything about how musicians "knew what frequency they were playing at without a way to detected it, way back when", and this has nothing to do with "what ancients thought and expressed".

There is no magic to a tuning standard of "438", which happened to be one of many choices employed in the 19th century. There is no such thing as a frequency's "beneficial effect on the bodies cells" affecting music as "healthful and harmful frequencies alternate from the shuman resonance on up". That is gibberish. It is your own mysticism, not the "ancients'".

The choice of a pitch standard for tuning consistently is not a "Treaty of Versailles topic" and has nothing to do with the rest of that either. The reference to the treaty is only for the date when an attempt was made to set a standard in music, in contrast to the false historical claims previously made. 440Hz was progressively adopted professionally thereafter, not by political mandate.

This is not a political topic and Ayn Rand didn't try to turn everything into politics either. It has nothing to do with a "stealing of personal freedom".

Musicians adopt a tuning standard for objective requirements of the production of music, including the physical compatibility of the instruments, not to a "concession to Germans" and not for the preposterous Pythagorian number mysticism claiming an impossible "resonance" with a "heartbeat" or "cells".

The tuning standard is irrelevant to the sound of the music one chooses to produce and has nothing to do with Wagner's style. If you want it to sound differently due to pitch then play in whatever style you choose in a chosen octave and key relative to whatever the tuning standard is. You missed the whole point.

We have talked about everything else the leftest postmodernist have confounded.
I think most of us have complained about the music these days but thought it was just a generational thing like what we ourselves went through but now we have reason to think differently.
Another piece of the puzzle.

That is a question we should ask. Another question is, "What is this music being used for?" Almost all pop music is made for dancing; 150 years ago, operas took the place of today's movies - but they often had a waltz in the second act (so people could dance to it?).

Another type of modern music to consider is 'movie music', which is the only worthy successor to the earlier classical music. You can't dance to it, but people do listen to soundtracks a lot.

Good topic, Carl.

Jan

That was the best explanation of what I have failed to articulate for years. Now I have scientific proof. Modern music is terrible.

Yes, that would be very interesting.

As far as a de-evolutionary intention we look to how art and language was purposely confounded by the postmodernist and ask...why not music too! The video shows, at least in the short time frame investigated, that it was intentional on an economic scale but it still begs the question, was it part of our dumbing down or is it just an accidental consequence.

The video may be accurate, but it is incomplete. I think it represents a microscopic view to a phenomenon that requires a broader perspective.

The earliest body of music we have is from the Renaissance. This was dance music, or song, or very closely derived therefrom. The orchestras were simple, more of a garage band size, and the musicians were classed as 'high level servants' as opposed to professional entertainers. The music was highly repetitive (as is necessary for dancing and/or singing!).

Joseph Hayden moved music from the small band of Elizabethan era performance to what is now called the 'sonata form', which forms the basis of the symphonies of the next few centuries. He also increased the size of the band to that of a small orchestra. Similarly Bach's fugues and meditations move music from dance and song into pure music.

If the video had included music from the 17-18th centuries, it would have shown (I think) the rather simple and repetitive tunes from those eras giving way to the more complex Baroque and Classical works - the reverse of what he shows for the modern music.

After the Classical era, the Romantic era of music began, with huge orchestras playing complex music to a musically educated audience. Even workmen, going to lay bricks at their job, were whistling motifs from the symphonies or singing parts from the operas.

This era ended with the invention of recorded music, which made it socially unnecessary for 'everyman' to know how to play a musical instrument (hence decreasing overall musical knowledge). Increasingly distanced from the common audience, the early 20th century, Classical music drifted off into the appalling hinterlands of dissonance via Scriabin and other such composers, ending in the slo-mo-car-crash 'music' of the current classical music vogue.

It is no wonder that everyman turned away from this dissonance into pop music, which then became the hum and whistle music of everyman.

It is at this point that the video picks up, but if you were to extrapolate what the curve might have looked like were the past of music included, you would probably see a double wave-form, with high points of complexity and sophistication during the 19th Century (for classical music) and the 20th Century (for pop music). I suspect that the height of the wave for pop music is far lower than that of the classical. That would be interesting to investigate, but not so long as the researcher only took a tiny view of a short span of the history of music, as this video unfortunately did.

Jan, a fan of the 19th century's music

Good point.

Correct. Couldn't remember the history nor the exact time frame of the change. What really interested me is how they knew what frequency they were playing at without a way to detected it, way back when.

What is increasingly interesting though, is that there is some value to what the ancients thought and expressed. Not all of it was mystical thinking.

Agreed.

Rand would find such standards, were it actually for commercia benefit l, something to be worked out by the free markets, not by some treaty with Germany.
I see controlling hands of Germany and the UN as part of the equation, of predecessor to our current race relations, which they wanted to smooth out at the time.

Seems to me they did want uniformity. However, this choice seems more about uniformity and forced quality at German request, than about music, else why would it appear in a treaty. My father frequently spoke of the different hearing ranges of male vs female. He was acutely aware, women foun high sounds irritating in music. I think Rand would find forced music standards to be quite of interest.

I think Rand would be very much interested if this Treaty of Versailles topic were a concession to the Germans, a way to create equality among people. The fact UNESCO approved the matter years later, speaks volumes, considering their one world goal for the world, and cookie cutter approach to childhood thinking. My computer pal, did several experiments with the differences in music and his results supported what he had found. I stil find German Wagner's music very irritating. The composers of Europe were much more relaxing. Teh PULSE satellite radio station is grating in its's sound and alikeness of all the music. Do you also dismiss the effect of color on people? I worked for a corp. headqtrs, whcih decorated in red and tan, with eplyees facing red walls, Wtihin a few months, they were removed, as people's heath became worse, and disputes broke out. Then an all tan replacement restored harmony.. Hospitals are very careful as well about color and piped in music, and how to create calmness. Blood pressure if either is irritating. The Chinese have know about balance for years, and how it impacts heath. Look to the current rash of teen suicides, as follows teacher control and garbage sent into their heads. I think Rand would very much be concerned about such stealing of personal freedom, conscious or subconscious.

Agree! There is conjecture withing a hosrt period, only Toyota and Ford, 5-seater SUVs will be sold. I argued with the guy who had read it, comparing it to Gore's climate misconceptions. It might be what the UN and oligarchs would like to have happen, but people want that American uniqueness, or what is left of it. "Driving Passion" compared what people say they want, vs what they really want, when it comes to cars. What they say is what is politically correct. Ad say women want safety and ask of it first. I have always asked about the engine, hP!I hate tht kids are educated to be anti-auto, and all about pseudo science of climate. Brainwashing, no matter how you look at it. No Camaro, no Corvette, I keep my money.

Today's singers don't even have to stay on pitch, and they don't have to have any vocal strength with technology repairing or covering up their mistakes.
There still are some very talented performers though. They just aren't the ones that are foisted on the public as "pop stars."

One of my passions/obsessions has been collecting vinyl records. I am a child of the 50's/60's so you can imagine my favorites. But this exposed me to genre's I normally would not have chosen. There is some GREAT stuff from the 40's. Yard sales and estate sales were great sources. At one time I had close to 10,000 vinyl albums. In the past year or two I have sold a good part of the collection. Still have a couple of thousand. My CD collection has grown over the years also. It is still a lot of fun to dig into the stack and pull out an oldie and put it on the turntable.
The majority of todays "singers" are just screamers/yodelers.
I guess that is what my parents thought when I listened to Elvis and Bill Haley and the Comets.

Great or good musicians, of whatever sense of life, become commercial successes when the way they use their talent appeals to a large number of people, not entertainment corruption. There was nothing wrong with Loretta Lynn from the hills of Kentucky and even a Bob Dylan becoming commercially successful, and there is nothing wrong with the popular entertainers today becoming commercially successful -- the problem is the declining kind of taste of those who popularize them.

You want to execute musicians whose style you don't like for "treason"?

No, it doesn't "all come from the liberal mindsets in the MSM executives" and the solution is not "values of the past". Reason and a proper philosophy are required for choosing values, not "tradition".

None of that history is true, and neither are subjectivist claims attributing false causes relevant.

The history and significance are not what OldUglyCarl says. His pronouncements are the typical mystical and subjectivist dogma that make no sense at all. There is no such thing as a frequency's "beneficial effect on the bodies cells" affecting music as "healthful and harmful frequencies alternate from the shuman resonance on up". It is gibberish.

The single frequency of a tuning standard alleged to have killed music has nothing whatsoever to do with the changing styles (due primarily to sense of life) or the large number of factors that go into making musical sounds and their relations, which are much more than a single frequency or associated perceived pitch within a range spanning octaves.

Likewise for the "computer guy" claiming to have shown that "the beat had intentionally been changed to go against what was natural to the heartbeat". A moment's reflection tells you that the human heartbeat varies dramatically between individuals and within the same individual, measured in beats per minute, and that the tuning standard is a single pure tone measured in cycles per second. Claims of his pronouncements are the typical mystical and subjectivist dogma that make no sense.

The "computer guy's" pronouncement, along with similar dogma from mystics appealing to “the heartbeat of Earth” and claims that "432Hz resonates with the golden ratio" are all no better than primitive Pythgorean number mysticism in a new age of irrationalism creeping for dominance in the 21st century as people gravitate to the mystical with no concept of causality and explanation. Please, not on an Ayn Rand forum.

The standards for tuning have varied enormously throughout history. Until around the time of Galileo no standard was possible because there were no accurate clocks and no means to measure the frequencies.

Once comparisons were possible, several different "standards" coexisted in different regions, with some differences so large as to literally cause a clash at the level of playing in different keys, at least a half tone away (one sharp or flat difference).

The frequency standard for tuning -- today 440Hz, adopted by the American Federation of Musicians in 1917, by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and then progressively more accepted -- is a relative standard for consistency, not a departure in 1940 from an alleged Perfection of a mystical "338" as the source of "modern music killing music". One French standard adopting a popular pitch in the mid 1800s was 435, while German orchestras and bands was soon at 440 and the British royal standard was above 1850 and rising during the last half the 19th century.

There are many books on the physics and psychology of music, the role of chord ratios, overtones, different scales, etc., and you can read a summary of the history of the pitch standard in particular at http://capionlarsen.com/history-pitch/

If your father was playing in Big Bands in the 1940s he would be familiar with the early 20th century incompatible "high" 440 and "low" 452-457 pitches for which instruments were built. Brass bands especially were still playing the "high" pitch, and "high" pitch instruments used in jazz were still common. English and Salvation Army brass bands used the "high" pitch until 1964 when production of the instruments stopped. If you buy an antique or old classic instrument today you still have to be careful of what pitch you are getting. (I have a 1911 Holton cornet with two sets of slides and a 19th century French LaLeur sheperd's crook cornet that was professionally modified with longer tubing to drop the pitch.)

But the mystical dogmatism evangelizing for an irrelevant magic "438" has no rational place here and nothing to offer a discussion of musical qualities. The relative standard to which a group of instruments are tuned for consistency has nothing to do with the musical sound characteristics, other than the simple up or down, and which depend on physics and the style and ability of playing, not mystical "resonance with the heartbeat" and other such nonsense.

Sound quality differences due to tuning alone depends on the methods of tuning, including multiple degrees of freedom of the instruments and the nonlinear variations with frequency, temperature, and loudness, which are subtle but can be noticeable, not a Pythagorean mystic's magic number.

They said they wanted uniformity throughout the world with all musicians tuning to the same frequency...why not leave it at 432, much of the world was using that standard but they changed it to 440 for all.
It's a little hard to detect but I noticed that when musicians played at 432 here at Hospice...I was more at ease and the music sounded somehow better...I didn't know at first that they were not tuned to 440...I learned that later.

Wish my big band dad was still alive to discuss this with. Did they say why or how the change came about?

I would agree. As long as they accept I am not into their god thing, I can accept they believe in one. Same with the jews

Laughing...true that!

Current music has an interesting beat and bassline. If you check you blood pressure before, during and after you may find the current beat to be captivating and aggravate to your nervous system. I don't need music to elevate my blood pressure. We have Pelosi and Schumer for that.