Nazis Mistuned Pianos

Sikeston Standard - Nov 10, 1944

This short note about Nazis mistuning French pianos ran in a number of papers in 1944. (The word 'turned' in the fourth line is evidently a typo and should be 'tuned'.) But I think there's more lurking beneath the surface of this story than one might suspect.

Time magazine (Oct 2, 1944) weighed in on the issue and suggested that "What they probably discovered were standard-pitched French pianos (A 435 vibrations a second), slightly jarring when played in combination with American-pitched instruments (A=440 vibrations a second)."

This then leads into the theory, popularized by Dr. Leonard Horowitz in his essay Musical Cult Control, that the modern adoption (in the mid-twentieth century) of A=440 Hz as the standard tuning frequency traces back to a plot in which Nazis, the Illuminati, and the Rockefellers collaborated. The aim of the plot was to herd populations into "greater aggression, psycho social agitation, and emotional distress predisposing people to physical illness" by making them listen to music tuned to a frequency that was both unnatural and jarring.

Horowitz advocated A=432 Hz as more natural and harmonious since it was "mathematically consistent with the Fibonacci series of numbers, and, therefore, universal design."

You can delve deeper into this rabbit hole of musical conspiracy theory here and here. Also check out the Skeptic's Dictionary article on Dr. Horowitz.