A History of Performing Pitch: The Story of 'A'

Bruce Haynes's A History of Performing Pitch, The Story of 'A', published by Scarecrow Press in 2002, is a scholarly musicological study tracing how the actual pitch standard for the note A has varied dramatically across regions and centuries, directly relevant to any claim that a specific historical frequency, such as 432 hertz, was the true or original tuning of ancient or sacred music. Haynes was a professional oboist and musicologist who built the study on primary evidence, surviving instruments, tuning forks and pitch pipes, rather than theoretical argument alone. Its strength is exactly that documentary grounding, showing concretely that pitch standards moved considerably even within documented European musical history, undercutting claims of one single ancient correct frequency. Its limit is that Haynes's evidence is concentrated in European art music history from roughly the Baroque period onward, so a claim about pitch standards in ancient Near Eastern, Vedic or other non-European sacred music traditions needs sources specific to those traditions, which this study does not cover.