The inner life
Concert pitch
Direct answer
Concert pitch is the agreed tuning of instruments, with the A above middle C at 440 hertz, settled at a conference in London in 1939 and made an international standard in 1955.
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At a glance
- Also called
- a440, standard pitch, 432 hz tuning, verdi tuning
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Frequency, Vibration, Binaural beats, Resonance
Concert pitch is the agreed tuning of instruments, with the A above middle C at 440 hertz, settled at a conference in London in 1939 and made an international standard in 1955.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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What is concert pitch?
Musicians need a shared reference so that instruments made in different places can play together. Concert pitch is that reference: the A above middle C, sounding at 440 vibrations a second. Everything else is tuned from it. It is a convention and not a law of nature, and many orchestras tune a little higher, to 442 or 443, for a brighter sound, while players of early music often tune to 415.
A widely repeated claim holds that 432 is the natural pitch, in tune with the body or the cosmos, and that 440 was imposed to stir unease. Nothing in the record supports either part. The standard was set by musicians, instrument makers and broadcasters for practical reasons, and the few small studies that compared the two tunings found slight differences at most.
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What sets Concert pitch apart
The standard is a number chosen by a committee, and its history is a tug between players and singers. Instrument makers pushed pitch up through the nineteenth century because higher strings and winds sound more brilliant; singers and their teachers pushed back, since the same aria had become harder to sing. Every figure proposed, 432, 435, 439, 440, was a compromise in that quarrel. Radio settled it: broadcasters needed one tuning signal, and 440 was easy to generate accurately by electrical means.
- Standard: A above middle C at 440 hertz (ISO 16)
- Agreed: London conference, May 1939; confirmed 1955 and 1975
- French pitch of 1859: 435, the diapason normal
- Baroque pitch today: 415, a convention of the early music revival
- 432 and 440 differ by: about 32 cents, under a third of a semitone
- 432 campaign: the Schiller Institute, from 1988
Often mistaken for something else: A frequency is a measured rate of vibration; a pitch standard is an agreement about which frequency musicians call A.
The story behind Concert pitch
Before the nineteenth century each town and organ had its own pitch, and surviving tuning forks range from about 400 to over 460. Pitch crept upward as makers sought brilliance, to the distress of singers. France set 435 by decree in 1859, and Giuseppe Verdi in 1884 urged Italy to follow it, accepting 432 when a commission proposed that figure. A conference in London in 1939 chose 440, already common in America and Britain, and the International Organization for Standardization confirmed it in 1955. The campaign to revive 432 dates from 1988 and came from a political movement, the Schiller Institute.
Why Concert pitch matters
Knowing that the standard is a practical agreement with a documented history takes the ground from under the stories told about it.
How to read Concert pitch
A reader turns to it on meeting a video or a recording that offers 432 tuning as a remedy, to learn what the number is and is not.
Concert pitch in practice: an example
Before a concert the oboe sounds an A and the whole orchestra tunes to it, each player matching the same 440.
Where readings of Concert pitch go wrong
No tuning has been shown to benefit health. A recording in another pitch may be enjoyed like any other, and is no remedy.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- a440, standard pitch, 432 hz tuning, verdi tuning, a 440 hz
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is concert pitch?
It is the standard tuning reference for instruments: the A above middle C at 440 hertz. Orchestras and instrument makers keep to it so that players anywhere can tune together.
Is 432 hertz more natural than 440?
No evidence supports that. Both are conventions. The difference is less than a third of a semitone, heard alone few listeners could say which is playing, and small studies found slight differences at most.
Was 440 hertz imposed to harm people?
No. It was agreed at an international conference of musicians, makers and broadcasters in London in 1939, for practical reasons, and confirmed as a standard in 1955. No document shows any other motive.
