The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World by R. Murray Schafer
Authors: R. Murray Schafer
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for many towns and cities were carved out of virgin forest. (Wood had, of course, been an original keynote of Europe also; but the forests were depleted when wood was required for the smelting and forging of metals.) The special keynote of British Columbia is still wood. In the early days of Vancouver, wooden planks were used in the construction of sidewalks and streets as well as buildings.
The first streets were planked and, where necessary, as with the old Water Street, supported on pilings. Photos of the time fail to convey the rumble and roar that quickened the pulse as carriages sped over the timbers. Vancouver had little cobblestone to represent its early paving, and thus the original surface has long since been composted. The sidewalks too were of plank, spaced to the detriment of women’s shoe heels.
In those days (1870–1900) some of the Vancouver streets close to the seashore were also paved with clamshells. Wood, especially when elevated on pilings, is a musical surface, for each board gives its own pitch and resonance under boot heel or carriage wheel. Cobblestones possess this quality also, but the drudgery of asphalt and cement is uniform.
Wood meets stone in a combinatory keynote when casks are rolled over cobblestones, a sound which must have created a considerable disturbance in the old days. The city of Cape Town prohibits it (Police Offences Act, No. 27,1882, para. 27), and it is also prohibited in the Australian city of Adelaide (By-law No. IX, 1934, para. 25a).
A subtle keynote is offered by the sounds of light. Between the soft sniffing of the candle and the stationary hum of electricity a whole chapter in human social history could be written, for the way men light their lives is equally as influential as the way they tell time or write down their languages. (In attributing dynamic social change to the appearance and decline of the printing press, Marshall McLuhan developed only one of several fertile themes.) The potent invention of the mechanical clock is more immediate to our study, but the effect of lighting cannot be ignored.
In the special darkness of the northern winter, where life was centered in small pools of candlelight, beyond which shadows draped and flickered mysteriously, the mind explored the dark side of nature. The underworld creatures of northern mythology are always nocturnal. By candlelight the powers of sight are sharply reduced; the ear is supersensitized and the air stands poised to beat with the subtle vibrations of a strange tale or of ethereal music. …
Romanticism begins at twilight—and ends with electricity. By the era of electricity, the last romanticists had folded their wings. Music dismissed the nocturne and the Nachtstuck , and from the Impressionist salons of 1870 onward, painting emerged into twenty-four-hour daylight.
We will not expect to find striking confessions concerning the sounds of candles or torches among the ancients any more than we find elaborate descriptions among moderns of the 50- or 60-cycle hum; for although both sounds are inescapably there, they are keynotes; and, as I am taking repeated trouble to explain, keynotes are rarely listened to consciously by those who live among them, for they are the ground over which the figure of signals becomes conspicuous. Keynote sounds are, however, noticed when they change, and when they disappear altogether, they may even be remembered with affection. Thus I recall the vivid impression made on me when I first went to Vienna in 1956 and heard the whispering gas lights on the suburban streets; or, on another occasion, the huge hiss of the Coleman lamps in the unelectrified bazaars of the Middle East—which, in the late evening, quite overpowered the bubbling of the waterpipes. Similarly, in a reverse manner, when the heroine in Doctor Zhivago first arrived in Moscow after having spent her childhood in the Urals, she was “deafened by the gaudy window displays and glaring lights, as if they
The first streets were planked and, where necessary, as with the old Water Street, supported on pilings. Photos of the time fail to convey the rumble and roar that quickened the pulse as carriages sped over the timbers. Vancouver had little cobblestone to represent its early paving, and thus the original surface has long since been composted. The sidewalks too were of plank, spaced to the detriment of women’s shoe heels.
In those days (1870–1900) some of the Vancouver streets close to the seashore were also paved with clamshells. Wood, especially when elevated on pilings, is a musical surface, for each board gives its own pitch and resonance under boot heel or carriage wheel. Cobblestones possess this quality also, but the drudgery of asphalt and cement is uniform.
Wood meets stone in a combinatory keynote when casks are rolled over cobblestones, a sound which must have created a considerable disturbance in the old days. The city of Cape Town prohibits it (Police Offences Act, No. 27,1882, para. 27), and it is also prohibited in the Australian city of Adelaide (By-law No. IX, 1934, para. 25a).
A subtle keynote is offered by the sounds of light. Between the soft sniffing of the candle and the stationary hum of electricity a whole chapter in human social history could be written, for the way men light their lives is equally as influential as the way they tell time or write down their languages. (In attributing dynamic social change to the appearance and decline of the printing press, Marshall McLuhan developed only one of several fertile themes.) The potent invention of the mechanical clock is more immediate to our study, but the effect of lighting cannot be ignored.
In the special darkness of the northern winter, where life was centered in small pools of candlelight, beyond which shadows draped and flickered mysteriously, the mind explored the dark side of nature. The underworld creatures of northern mythology are always nocturnal. By candlelight the powers of sight are sharply reduced; the ear is supersensitized and the air stands poised to beat with the subtle vibrations of a strange tale or of ethereal music. …
Romanticism begins at twilight—and ends with electricity. By the era of electricity, the last romanticists had folded their wings. Music dismissed the nocturne and the Nachtstuck , and from the Impressionist salons of 1870 onward, painting emerged into twenty-four-hour daylight.
We will not expect to find striking confessions concerning the sounds of candles or torches among the ancients any more than we find elaborate descriptions among moderns of the 50- or 60-cycle hum; for although both sounds are inescapably there, they are keynotes; and, as I am taking repeated trouble to explain, keynotes are rarely listened to consciously by those who live among them, for they are the ground over which the figure of signals becomes conspicuous. Keynote sounds are, however, noticed when they change, and when they disappear altogether, they may even be remembered with affection. Thus I recall the vivid impression made on me when I first went to Vienna in 1956 and heard the whispering gas lights on the suburban streets; or, on another occasion, the huge hiss of the Coleman lamps in the unelectrified bazaars of the Middle East—which, in the late evening, quite overpowered the bubbling of the waterpipes. Similarly, in a reverse manner, when the heroine in Doctor Zhivago first arrived in Moscow after having spent her childhood in the Urals, she was “deafened by the gaudy window displays and glaring lights, as if they
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