Daniel Walden

According to Daniel Walden, a PhD candidate in music theory, there was something in the air in the late 19th century. “There was this dream of a universal form of expression that would bring people together,” he explains. In language, the result of this dream was Esperanto, developed with the idea that if everyone spoke the same language, peace and understanding would follow. “Just Intonation, a universal tuning system, is the musical analogy of that,” Walden says.

“Tuning is the science that conceives and locates musical tones on the acoustical spectrum,” Walden explains. Similar to the visible spectrum, which goes from light to dark, the acoustical spectrum goes from very, very low frequencies to very high frequencies. “When you tune an instrument, you have to pick what frequency you want,” he says. The isolated way tuning systems were developed throughout the world meant that a musician from one culture wouldn’t necessarily be able to pick up an instrument and play in tune with someone from another. “A group of music theorists became interested in developing what you would call a musical Esperanto,” Walden says. This universal tuning system, known as Just Intonation, already existed, and in the 19th century it was adapted for the global stage.

Like Esperanto, Just Intonation was wrapped in a dreamy, everyone-will-speak-the-same-language rhetoric. Walden points out, however, that this hid an authoritarian and colonialist underbelly. Indian and English music theorists, for instance, corresponded extensively about Just Intonation, but there were ulterior motives “In England, a lot of political progressives were really into this system because they thought if choirs sang together in perfect harmony, they would then live in perfect harmony,” Walden says. But when it came to developing and implementing this universal system, the power was not balanced. “Schools in India that were supported by the English government taught this system, ultimately with the idea of replacing local traditions,” Walden explains. “If anything, this universal intonation system entrenched this power imbalance.”