Return to Verdi Tuning (Classical Revolution #3)

http://schillerinstitute.org - At the time of Verdi, the pitch was 432 Hz, and he wrote his operas for that pitch. Giuseppe Verdi was a very intelligent person, he knew the voices very well, and he wrote for the voices. Going back to the Verdi tuning, and thereby breaking the perverse trend of the last decades of tuning ever higher, is a matter of respect for the artistic will of the composer, for his idea of color, of sound, of color of the voice, and also respect for the vocal instrument.

This third "preview" of an upcoming DVD ("The Classical Revolution") features a number of leading proponents of going back to the Verdi pitch of A=432 Hz: soprano Renata Tebaldi, baritone Piero Cappuccilli, Lyndon LaRouche and Liliana Gorini (initiators of the Schiller Institute's campaign for the Verdi Tuning), soprano Antonella Banaudi and Maestro Daniel Lipton.

Some of the other leading singers who supported the campaign for the Verdi Tuning are: Placido Domingo (tenor), Luciano Pavarotti (tenor), Montserrat Caballé (soprano), Joan Sutherland (soprano), Carlo Bergonzi (tenor), Giuseppe di Stefano (tenor), Birgit Nilsson (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Kurt Moll (bass), Nikolai Ghiaurov (bass), Shirley Verrett (soprano), Fiorenza Cossotto (mezzo-soprano), Alfredo Kraus (tenor), Grace Bumbry (soprano), Edda Moser (soprano), Marilyn Horne (mezzo-soprano), Christa Ludwig (mezzosoprano), Peter Schreier (tenor), Sherrill Milnes (baritone), Renato Bruson (baritone), Ruggero Raimondi (bass), and many others.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• classical
• music
• verdi
• tuning
• pitch
• giuseppe verdi
• 432
• 432hz
• opera
• a432
• c256
• orchestra
• diapason
• concert
• schiller
• institute
• hertz
• renata tebaldi
• tebaldi
• piero cappuccilli
• cappuccilli
• pavarotti
• antonella banaudi
• banaudi
• daniel lipton
• aida
• ernani
• placido
• domingo
• larouche
• voice
• soprano
• tenor
• singing
• bel
• canto
• caballé
• sutherland

[LauraClaycombSoprano]

SO interesting!! Why we also think playing on steel strings is acceptable for this repertoire, instead of gut strings. I love what Lipton says here, "is it just brilliance we're looking for, or is it the essence of the way the music was written?" A434 makes so much more sense. We have brought the tuning up over the years in order to get more brilliance out of the strings - both having them steel AND tuned up so high brings a prominence to the orchestra that was not originally intended.

[Chanteuredelopera]

@Wahnfriedstudio "an entire planet of musical ears would need to be retrained to sing and play in tune" Really? There are copious amounts of professional singers and instrumentalists who go back and forth between A440 & Baroque pitch, as one day they sing a Baroque opera in the original tuning with period instruments and the next they sing a Mozart opera set to today's tuning of A440. So, you are incorrect. Do your ears need retraining when you sing in hundreds of different keys? Fallacious!

[Jeanne90275]

I'm going to side with Verdi (since he wrote for A=432 Hz)

and these famous singers. Why should the orchestra prevail?

i go to opera to hear the singing.This debate has been going on

for 30 years...wonder how many voices have been ruined and

careers cut short by tuning up to A=440Hz..

[OaklandLYM]

@Wahnfriedstudio So your issue is money instead of principle. Immaturity is sticking to a wrong idea, no matter how destructive it is, such as the insistance that nations have to sacrifice their populations for the sake of criminal speculators.