Mondo Knows Facts
Orchestras tune to A at 440 hertz
That number was agreed internationally only in the twentieth century Before standardisation, pitch varied by city and even by hall, and instruments travelled badly between them. An international conference in 1939 recommended 440 hertz for A above middle C, and the standard was reaffirmed later. Some orchestras still tune slightly sharper for a brighter sound. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Orchestras tune to A at 440 hertz by international agreementThe standard was agreed in London in 1939Perfect pitch is rare in adultsRoughly one in ten thousand people can name a note without a referenceAuto-Tune was meant to hide mistakesThe 1997 software corrects pitch to the nearest note almost instantlyEqual temperament divides the octave into twelve equal stepsEach semitone multiplies frequency by the twelfth root of twoTwelve pure fifths overshoot seven octavesThe gap is called the Pythagorean comma, about 23 centsA guitar is tuned mostly in fourthsE, A, D and G are fourths apart, with a third gap before B
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Tags: tuning, pitch, standards
Orchestras tune to A at 440 hertz: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- That number was agreed internationally only in the twentieth century. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.