Music: The A Standard

Symphony players get their pitch by sounding an A at the start of every concert. But A, the gold standard of music, has undergone a heady inflation in the past 100 years. The august London Philharmonic Society in 1813 tuned for its first concert from an oboe-sounded A set at 847 vibrations a second, two vibrations above the century-old tuning fork of George Handel. Then at the Congress of Vienna, military bands discovered that by raising the pitch of their instruments they could ring out sharper fortissimi during the day and crisper waltzes at night. By 1846 the London Philharmonic was...

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