The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World (2 page)

The home territory of soundscape studies will be the middle ground between science, society and the arts. From acoustics and psychoacoustics we will learn about the physical properties of sound and the way sound is interpreted by the human brain. From society we will learn how man behaves with sounds and how sounds affect and change his behavior. From the arts, particularly music, we will learn how man creates ideal soundscapes for that other life, the life of the imagination and psychic reflection. From these studies we will begin to lay the foundations of a new interdiscipline—acoustic design.

From Industrial Design to Acoustic Design
    The most important revolution is aesthetic education in the twentieth century was that accomplished by the Bauhaus, that celebrated German school of the twenties. Under the leadership of architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus collected some of the great painters and architects of the time (Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe), together with craftsmen of distinction. At first it seemed disappointing that the graduates of this school did not rise to rival their mentors as artists. But the purpose of the school was different. From the interdisciplinary synergy of faculty skills a whole new study field was created, for the school invented the subject of industrial design. The Bauhaus brought aesthetics to machinery and mass production.

It devolves on us now to invent a subject which we might call acoustic design, an interdiscipline in which musicians, acousticians, psychologists, sociologists and others would study the world soundscape together in order to make intelligent recommendations for its improvement. This study would consist of documenting important features, of noting differences, parallels and trends, of collecting sounds threatened with extinction, of studying the effects of new sounds before they are indiscriminate released into the environment, of studying the rich symbolism sounds have for man and of studying human behavior patterns in different sonic environments in order to use these insights in planning future environments for man. Cross-cultural evidence from around the world must be carefully assembled and interpreted. New methods of educating the public to the importance of environmental sound must be devised. The final question will be: is the soundscape of the world an indeterminate composition over which we have no control, or are
we
its composers and performers, responsible for giving it form and beauty?

Orchestration Is a Musician’s Business
    Throughout this book I am going to treat the world as a macrocosmic musical composition. This is an unusual idea but I am going to nudge it forward relentlessly. The definition of music has undergone radical change in recent years. In one of the more contemporary definitions, John Cage has declared: “Music is sounds, sounds around us whether we’re in or out of concert halls: cf. Thoreau.” The reference is to Thoreau’s
Walden
, where the author experiences in the sounds and sights of nature an inexhaustible entertainment.

To define music merely as
sounds
would have been unthinkable a few years ago, though today it is the more exclusive definitions that are proving unacceptable. Little by little throughout the twentieth century, all the conventional definitions of music have been exploded by the abundant activities of musicians themselves. First with the huge expansion of percussion instruments in our orchestras, many of which produce nonpitched and arhythmic sounds; then through the introduction of aleatoric procedures in which all attempts to organize the sounds of a composition rationally are surrendered to the “higher” laws of entropy; then through the opening-out of the time-and-space containers we call compositions and concert halls to allow the introduction of a whole new world of sounds outside them (in Cage’s
4’33” Silence
we hear only the sounds external to the composition itself, which is merely one protracted caesura); then in the practices of
musique concrete
, which inserts any sound from the environment into a composition via tape; and finally in electronic music, which has revealed a whole gamut of new musical sounds, many of them related to industrial and electric technology in the world at large.

Today all sounds belong to a continuous field of possibilities lying
within the comprehensive dominion of music
. Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe!

And the musicians: anyone and anything that sounds!

Dionysian Versus Apollonian Concepts of Music
    it is easier to see the responsibilities of the acoustical engineer or the audiologist toward the world soundscape than to understand the precise manner in which the contemporary musician is supposed to attach himself to this vast theme, so I am going to grind my axe on this point for a moment longer.

There are two basic ideas of what music is or ought to be. They may be seen most clearly in two Greek myths dealing with the origin of music. Pindar’s twelfth Pythian Ode tells how the art of aulos playing was invented by Athena when, after the beheading of Medusa, she was touched by the heart-rending cries of Medusa’s sisters and created a special
nomos
in their honor. In a Homeric hymn to Hermes an alternative origin is mentioned. The lyre is said to have been invented by Hermes when he surmised that the shell of the turtle, if used as a body of resonance, could produce sound.

In the first of these myths music arises as subjective emotion; in the second it arises with the discovery of sonic properties in the materials of the universe. These are the cornerstones on which all subsequent theories of music are founded. Characteristically the lyre is the instrument of Homer, of the epos, of serene contemplation of the universe; while the aulos (the reed oboe) is the instrument of exaltation and tragedy, the instrument of the dithyramb and of drama. The lyre is the instrument of Apollo, the aulos that of the Dionysian festivals. In the Dionysian myth, music is conceived as internal sound breaking forth from the human breast; in the Apollonian it is external sound, God-sent to remind us of the harmony of the universe. In the Apollonian view music is exact, serene, mathematical, associated with transcendental visions of Utopia and the Harmony of the Spheres. It is also the
anahata
of Indian theorists. It is the basis of Pythagoras’s speculations and those of the medieval theoreticians (where music was taught as a subject of the quadrivium, along with arithmetic, geometry and astronomy), as well as of Schoenberg’s twelve-note method of composition. Its methods of exposition are number theories. It seeks to harmonize the world through acoustic design. In the Dionysian view music is irrational and subjective. It employs expressive devices: tempo fluctuations, dynamic shadings, tonal colorings. It is the music of the operatic stage, of
bel canto
, and its reedy voice can also be heard in Bach’s Passions. Above all, it is the musical expression of the romantic artist, prevailing throughout the nineteenth century and on into the expressionism of the twentieth century. It also directs the training of the musician today.

Because the production of sounds is so much a subjective matter with modern man, the contemporary soundscape is notable for its dynamic hedonism. The research I am about to describe represents a reaffirmation of music as a search for the harmonizing influence of sounds in the world about us. In Robert Fludd’s
Utruisque Cosmi Historia
there is an illustration entitled “The Tuning of the World” in which the earth forms the body of an instrument across which strings are stretched and are tuned by a divine hand. We must try once again to find the secret of that tuning.

Music, the Soundscape and Social Welfare
    In Hermann Hesse’s
The Glass Bead Game
there is an arresting idea. Hesse claims to be repeating a theory of the relationship between music and the state from an ancient Chinese source: “Therefore the music of a well-ordered age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restive age is excited and fierce, and its government is perverted. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad, and its government is imperiled.”

Such a theory would suggest that the egalitarian and enlightened reign of Maria Theresa (for instance, as expressed in her unified criminal code of 1768) and the grace and balance of Mozart’s music are not accidental. Or that the sentimental vagaries of Richard Strauss are perfectly consistent with the waning of the same Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Gustav Mahler we find, etched in an acid Jewish hand, marches and German dances of such sarcasm as to give us a presentiment of the political
dance macabre
soon to follow.

The thesis is also borne out well in tribal societies where, under the strict control of the flourishing community, music is tightly structured, while in detribalized areas the individual sings appallingly sentimental songs. Any ethnomusicologist will confirm this. There can be little doubt then that music is an indicator of the age, revealing, for those who know how to read its symptomatic messages, a means of fixing social and even political events.

For some time I have also believed that the general acoustic environment of a society can be read as an indicator of social conditions which produce it and may tell us much about the trending and evolution of that society. Throughout this book I will suggest many such relationships, and though it is probably in my nature to do this emphatically, I hope the reader may continue to regard the method as valid even if some of the equations seem disagreeable. They are all open to further testing.

The Notation of Soundscapes (Sonography)
    The soundscape is any acoustic field of study. We may speak of a musical composition as a soundscape, or a radio program as a soundscape or an acoustic environment as a soundscape. We can isolate an acoustic environment as a field of study just as we can study the characteristics of a given landscape. However, it is less easy to formulate an exact impression of a soundscape than of a landscape. There is nothing in sonography corresponding to the instantaneous impression which photography can create. With a camera it is possible to catch the salient features of a visual panorama to create an impression that is immediately evident. The microphone does not operate this way. It samples details. It gives the close-up but nothing corresponding to aerial photography.

Similarly, while everyone has had some experience reading maps, and many can draw at least significant information from other schematics of the visual landscape, such as architects’ drawings or geographers’ contour maps, few can read the sophisticated charts used by phoneticians, acousticians or musicians. To give a totally convincing image of a soundscape would involve extraordinary skill and patience: thousands of recordings would have to be made; tens of thousands of measurements would have to be taken; and a new means of description would have to be devised.

A soundscape consists of events
heard
not objects
seen
. Beyond aural perception is the notation and photography of sound, which, being silent, presents certain problems that will be discussed in a special chapter in the Analysis section of the book. Through the misfortune of having to present data on silent pages, we will be forced to use some types of visual projection as well as musical notation, in advance of this discussion, and these will only be useful if they assist in opening ears and stimulating clairaudience.

We are also disadvantaged in the pursuit of a historical perspective. While we may have numerous photographs taken at different times, and before them drawings and maps to show us how a scene changed over the ages, we must make inferences as to the changes of the soundscape. We may know exactly how many new buildings went up in a given area in a decade or how the population has risen, but we do not know by how many decibels the ambient noise level may have risen for a comparable period of time. More than this, sounds may alter or disappear with scarcely a comment even from the most sensitive of historians. Thus, while we may utilize the techniques of modern recording and analysis to study contemporary soundscapes, for the foundation of historical perspectives, we will have to turn to earwitness accounts from literature and mythology, as well as to anthropological and historical records.

Earwitness
    The first part of the book will be particularly indebted to such accounts. I have always attempted to go directly to sources. Thus, a writer is trustworthy only when writing about sounds directly experienced and intimately known. Writing about other places and times usually results in counterfeit descriptions. To take an obvious instance, when Jonathan Swift describes Niagara Falls as making “a terrible squash” we know he never visited the place; but when Chateaubriand tells us that in 1791 he heard the roar of Niagara eight to ten miles away, he provides us with useful information about the ambient sound level, against which that of today could be measured. When a writer writes uncounterfeitingly about directly apprehended experiences, the ears may sometimes play tricks on the brain, as Erich Maria Remarque discovered in the trenches during the First World War when he heard shells exploding about him followed by the rumble of the distant guns that fired them. This aural illusion is perfectly accountable, for as the shells were traveling at super-sonic speeds they arrived in advance of the sounds of their original detonations; but only someone trained in acoustics could have predicted this.
All Quiet on the Western Front
is convincing because the author was there. And we trust him when he describes other unusual sound events—for instance, the sounds made by dead bodies. “The days are hot and the dead lie unburied. We cannot fetch them all in, if we did we should not know what to do with them. The shells will bury them. Many have their bellies swollen up like balloons. They hiss, belch, and make movements. The gases in them make noises.” William Faulkner also knew the noise of corpses, which he described as “little trickling bursts of secret and murmurous bubbling.”