Forgotten Audiophile History This series explores little-known stories of twentieth century audio technology, sound experiences, and radio chicanery. There are some ideas so compelling that you want to drop everything and take up the cause full-time. The fact that it gives you a reason to drop all that job, house, and spouse baggage is an extra bonus. Ideas like this correspond to something akin to the hot-crazy-matrix, where the idea is so distractingly lovely that you may find yourself at a Berlin conference surrounded by neo-Nazis particularly interested in tuning forks. It happens. Words by Nan Pincus In 1989, Pavarotti, Birgit Nilsson, Joan Sutherland, and Plácido Domingo got seduced by one such idea, namely that if the international standard for middle C was lowered from 262 Hz to 256 Hz, (and correspondingly, the tuning for the A above middle C would be lowered from 440 Hz to 432 Hz) classical music would be restored to its place as the pinnacle of art and civilization, and the world would stop decaying like an antebellum tooth. In this case, the hot crazy lady was Helga Zepp-LaRouche, a German woman with no musical pedigree, who got the financial resources and the type of […]
