Uploaded October 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
April 9, 1988 in Milan, Italy, the Schiller Institute brought together some of the world's most highly-regarded classical singers and instrumentalists, to demand a return to rationality in musical tuning and performance.
The demand was led by the top speakers at the conference, renowned operatic soprano Renata Tebaldi, baritone Piero Cappuccilli, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche. They and others called for an end to the high-pitched tuning, which has been literally destroying all but the most gifted voices during the past century, and for a return to the principles of classical aesthetics, according to which the process of musical composition is just as lawful as are the orbits of the planets in the solar system.
To underline this call, the conference resolved to introduce legislation into the Italian parliament which would require a return to the natural tuning at which middle-C equals precisely 256 cycles per second--significantly lower than the current tuning which sets A at 440 cps--or frequently even higher.
The fact that this is no mere professional detail, was underlined by the star-studded list of endorsers of the conference's aims. That list includes: Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballe, Swiss soprano Anneliese Rothenberger, Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus, Austrian violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan (former close associate of Wilhelm Furtwangler), German bass Kurt Moll, Mexican-Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, German soprano Edda Moser, and Italian tenors Luciano Pavarotti, Carlo Bergonzi, and Giuseppe Di Stefano.
The conference took place at the Casa Giuseppe Verdi, the Renaissance-style building which the great Italian composer had built for retired musicians, with French 'cellist Eliane Magnan and pianist Marie-Pierre Soma playing the "Allegro ma non troppo" of Beethoven's Sonata No. 3 in A Major.
April 9, 1988 in Milan, Italy, the Schiller Institute brought together some of the world's most highly-regarded classical singers and instrumentalists, to demand a return to rationality in musical tuning and performance.
The demand was led by the top speakers at the conference, renowned operatic soprano Renata Tebaldi, baritone Piero Cappuccilli, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche. They and others called for an end to the high-pitched tuning, which has been literally destroying all but the most gifted voices during the past century, and for a return to the principles of classical aesthetics, according to which the process of musical composition is just as lawful as are the orbits of the planets in the solar system.
To underline this call, the conference resolved to introduce legislation into the Italian parliament which would require a return to the natural tuning at which middle-C equals precisely 256 cycles per second--significantly lower than the current tuning which sets A at 440 cps--or frequently even higher.
The fact that this is no mere professional detail, was underlined by the star-studded list of endorsers of the conference's aims. That list includes: Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballe, Swiss soprano Anneliese Rothenberger, Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus, Austrian violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan (former close associate of Wilhelm Furtwangler), German bass Kurt Moll, Mexican-Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, German soprano Edda Moser, and Italian tenors Luciano Pavarotti, Carlo Bergonzi, and Giuseppe Di Stefano.
The conference took place at the Casa Giuseppe Verdi, the Renaissance-style building which the great Italian composer had built for retired musicians, with French 'cellist Eliane Magnan and pianist Marie-Pierre Soma playing the "Allegro ma non troppo" of Beethoven's Sonata No. 3 in A Major.
