Is 528 Hz frequency a myth?

Summary

Another issue worth clarifying

By Emmanuel Comte — Centre MedSon, Quebec

In its modern sense, the word solfège represents a field taught in music academies that has alienated many people from the original meaning of music. In French and Canadian conservatories, a child must undergo mandatory solfège lessons for at least a year without touching any instrument — the term has become synonymous with tedious classes that have permanently discouraged many children.

The name Solfeggio, given to these so-called therapeutic tuning forks, should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. Etymologically, it comes from the note names Sol and Fa, from which the verb « to sol-fa » was derived — a way of singing by naming the notes, which preceded the more recent method known as solmization.

As explained in our article on the 432 Hz ‘A’, there was no fixed reference in assigning note frequencies before a very recent era — and therefore, a fortiori, none in the Middle Ages. The fixed reference for the ‘A’ dates from 1859 (435 Hz), and the current standard tuning fork (ISO 440 Hz) from 1953 — barely half a century ago.

Latin sung is certainly a vibratory language, but we have serious reservations about the semantic content of Gregorian chants, whose Catholic lyrics are sometimes only distantly related to the original message of Christ — the true Gregorian chant is not necessarily the one transmitted by the Church, which has stripped away many original components.

The creators of the 528 Hz myth claim that biblical verses from the Book of Numbers (7, 12-83) reproduce « Pythagorean frequencies » — 174, 285, 396, 417, 528, 639, 741 and 852 Hz — which supposedly « repair our DNA » as well. No scientific evidence or clinical study supports such claims.

The passage in question is really just a long list of measurements and ritual offerings — a kind of « grocery list » recording the sacrifices of the twelve tribal princes of Israel, day after day, each one identical: a silver charger of 130 shekels, a silver bowl of 70 shekels, a gold spoon of 10 shekels, animals for the burnt offering and the sin offering.

Reducing a text to numbers is not a Pythagorean method — this is called numerology. Taking any random text, a phone book for example, one could just as easily draw numbers from it and construct an equally far-fetched frequency system.

These authors claim that these codes revealed a series of six electromagnetic frequencies, corresponding to six « missing » notes of an ancient scale called Solfeggio frequencies — a term coined by Leonard Horowitz and Joseph Puleo in 1999. It relates to a belief that six frequencies derived from numerology were used for centuries in Gregorian and Sanskrit chants (one wonders what Sanskrit has to do with any of this).

This is odd, since no reference frequency existed in antiquity or the Middle Ages — at most, low, mid-range and high tones, based on human vocal range. These frequencies therefore cannot have been « lost, » since they never existed in the sense we understand today.

No specific pitch was fixed in the Middle Ages or earlier, except in China under very limited conditions. The intervals given in this system are incorrect and do not even follow the Pythagorean logic these authors claim to invoke.

If 528 Hz is an E, the other listed frequencies follow no Pythagorean or Zarlinian ratio at all. If 528 Hz is a C (more logical given the pitch), one obtains an ‘A’ of 440 Hz in the Zarlinian system — the very frequency these authors claim to oppose, accusing it of « setting the mind out of tune » and being the product of an Illuminati conspiracy.