Piero Cappuccilli - Ernani - Verdi tuning

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• published: 31 Mar 2009
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Piero Cappuccilli (baritone) demonstrates the difference between the scientific musical pitch of A=432 Hz (the so-called "Verdi tuning") and the higher, unnatural pitch of A=440. In this clip, he sings excerpts from Carlo's aria "Oh, de'verd'anni miei" from the opera "Ernani" by Giuseppe Verdi. If one uses the high tuning (which is more or less standard today), the baritone is forced to incorrectly pass the register before the E-natural, as a result of the effort on his vocal cords. This destroys the original color intended by Verdi, and is also harmful to the human singing voice in the long run (especially for less developed voices). Cappuccilli first sings with the piano tuned to A=432, and not passing register, as Verdi wanted, and then with the piano tuned to A=440, indicating to the audience with his hand when the early passage occurred on E-flat. "Watch out for those E-flats," he said before singing it. A REVOLUTION IN MUSIC No less than a revolution in musical history was unleashed on April 9, 1988 at the Casa Verdi in Milan, Italy, when 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, chairwoman of the Schiller Institute. 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. Read more: http://www.schillerinstitute.org/conf-iclc/1980s/conf_88_milan_tuning.html