Question: Why has Lyndon LaRouche rented the Lisner Auditorium for tomorrow night? Answer: He wants to change the way people sing. Strictly speaking, the rental was made not by LaRouche, who is currently residing in the Alexandria city jail, but by the Schiller Institute, the cultural wing of his right wing political organization. But the institute, founded by LaRouche's wife, soprano Helga Zepp-Larouche, will be promoting his publicly stated ideas tomorrow night in Foggy Bottom, when it sponsors a benefit concert labeled "In Defense of the Human Singing Voice." The purpose of the concert, according to the institute's advertising, is "to support the international campaign to lower tuning pitch to A=432." This is not as sinister as some of the things that have been associated with or attributed to LaRouche, but perhaps it deserves a few minutes of thoughtful attention. What the audience will hear in exchange for its $15 tickets on Sunday night will be scenes from "Aida," "Don Carlos," "Rigoletto" and other operas sung slightly and consistently off-key -- as a matter of principle. Members of the Lubo Opera Company (the odd name is the Bulgarian word for love) perform at what they call "Verdi's pitch," with the A above middle C (the second space on the treble staff) tuned to 432 cycles per second, a fraction of a half-tone below the current standard pitch of A=440. At an international conference held in Milan last year by the Schiller Institute, it was stated that this was the pitch favored by Verdi and therefore the pitch that should be used in his operas. This is a simplification and perhaps a deliberate distortion, according to Stefan Zucker, publisher and primary writer of Opera Fanatic magazine, an aptly titled periodical published at irregular intervals from an address on Manhattan's Riverside Drive. Issue No. 3 of Opera Fanatic, dated simply "1989," devotes 14 pages to an exhaustive discussion of pitch and LaRouche. According to Zucker's research, Verdi gave his approval to various pitch standards at different times and was interested primarily in establishing a single, universal standard. "I would like one single tuning pitch to be adopted for the entire world," says a letter written by Verdi in 1884 and quoted in Opera Fanatic. "The language of music is universal; why then should the note that has the name 'A' in Paris or Milan become a B-flat in Rome?" In 1862, according to Opera Fanatic, Verdi had said that A=435 was "too low," but in 1886 he insisted on a tuning of A=435 for performances of his "Otello." The Schiller Institute, working through two friendly legislators, has introduced a law in the Italian Parliament to make A=432 the mandatory pitch standard for all Italian music schools, opera houses, orchestras, public radio and television and other musical organizations "in any way subsidized by the State or public agencies." Use of tuning forks, etc., that do not conform to this standard would be punishable by fines ranging from 100,000 to 1 million lire (approximately $75 to $750) and "confiscation of the non-standard object." At last report, the bill was running into complications in committee. A list of those who have endorsed the bill reads like a "Who's Who" of opera singers. The Schiller Institute has collected more than 300 distinguished names, including Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Joan Sutherland, Peter Schreier, Montserrat Caballe', Marilyn Horne, Birgit Nilsson, Carlo Bergonzi, Sherrill Milnes, Christa Ludwig, Renata Tebaldi, Fedora Barbieri and Ruggero Raimondi. Some of the singers may agree with LaRouche's politics; Tebaldi and Barbieri are running for the European Parliament on his Patriots for Italy ticket, according to Zucker. But most seem simply interested in putting the high notes in easier reach. "When one feels the physical strain in the high notes ... that means that the tuning pitch is not natural," said Bergonzi in a statement distributed by the institute. Domingo is quoted by the institute in a complaint that contemporary tuning "no longer allows for us to use the chest voice." Many musicians interested in lower tunings are unconnected with LaRouche or the institute. Specialists in historic performance have reached a widespread consensus on tuning at A=415 (a half-step below A=440) for 18th-century music, though a few mavericks tune to A=420 or slightly higher. Violinist Joseph Swensen, who has just finished a series of performances with the National Symphony Orchestra, tunes to standard modern pitch but would favor a universal adoption of A=415 for the benefit of old violins (by Stradivari, Amati, Guarneri, etc.), which were made when lower tunings were standard. "The great violins of the 17th and 18th centuries were not made to be tuned this high and it's very dangerous," Swensen said in a recent interview. "In a relatively short time, we will see the great violins turn to dust, primarily because of pollution but secondarily because the pitch continues to go up ... We are destroying these instruments, which are great works of art, because of the desire of the music community at large to sound more and more brilliant ... It's difficult for me to see any value in that. There is also something very beautiful about the sound of the violin when it is tuned to the pitch at which it was made to be played." Spokesmen for the Schiller Institute say that the organization's interest in the question is humanitarian -- to restore authenticity in musical interpretation and to pitch the voice at a point where singing is more comfortable and natural. Also involved, apparently, is a sort of number mystique that finds this tuning in harmony with the period of the earth's rotation. Zucker has taken a firm lead in opposing the legislation. "Irrespective of authorship," he says in Opera Fanatic, "the bill should be defeated." His stated reasons include the feeling that artistic questions of this kind should not be the subject of legislation ("there is something oddly dissonant between such laws and democracy"), that no single pitch standard is appropriate for music of all periods and places, and that A=432 is too low for music of the last 150 years and too high for music of the 18th century. The current standard, A=440, is "a consensus developed after years of theorization, discussion and experimentation -- a consensus that has endured since the beginning of the century," Zucker insists. Musically, Zucker's strongest argument is that a lowered tuning would "diminish the brilliance and excitement" of music composed in the last 150 years. This argument may be an index of his own interest in the question of pitch. He is a tenor proud of the heights his voice can negotiate with ease, using forgotten techniques he traces back to tenors Giacomo Davide in the 18th century and Giovanni Battista Rubini in the 19th. An ad for his own recording in Opera Fanatic bills him as "The World's Highest Tenor." In contrast, he notes in Opera Fanatic that "because of the vocal techniques in use today, few singers manage the high notes of early 19th-century Italian opera comfortably. Most would be thankful if the A were lowered." There never has been a universally accepted standard pitch, though A=440, which began to be the norm in some places as early as the 1830s, is almost universally used today except in historic-instrument performances. In the 18th century, from studies of organs, tuning forks, pitch pipes and unaltered wind instruments, scholars have traced tunings for A that ranged from under 400 to over 450. A=415 seems a reasonable compromise because it is compatible with modern tuning. When A is set at 440, A-flat is 415.3, close enough so that an organ tuned to the modern standard can be used a half-tone down without retuning. It is also fairly close to the pitches found in tuning forks used by well-known 18th-century composers. Handel had one that put A at 422.5, while Mozart's registered A=421.6. In the 19th century, the fluctuation was equally wide, though efforts at standardization became strong toward the end of the century. Today, although A=440 is proclaimed standard, some of the world's most respected orchestras tune higher. The Boston Symphony uses A=445 -- a practice that produced some jarring discords at a concert in the Kennedy Center in the 1970s when the orchestra played a concerto with a piano tuned at A=440. The Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan reportedly tuned regularly at around A=448, and the Vienna Philharmonic reportedly tunes at around A=444. All these figures refer, moreover, to the pitch at the beginning of a concert. By the end, the pitch has frequently gone up perceptibly because pitch tends to rise along with the temperature in the room.
