I’m reading The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer.
A soundscape is a combination of sounds that lead to the immersive sonic environment. A soundscape is the accumulation of sounds that exist in space. The sonic features of an area of land. Or ‘the acoustic environment as percieved by humans, in context.’ (Wiki)
The relatively new term soundscape was popularised by R. Murray Schafer in 1977. It rolls off my tongue. The term has been criticized first for it’s vagueness and also it’s relation to the historical description of ‘landscape’: as an object percieved externally (where subject is detatched from object). Schafer wanted to protect the object of ‘soundscape’ from the excess noise of modern life/industrial civilization/mechanical noise. He describes the object as a dexterous fusion of natural sounds and human sounds, or biosphere and technosphere (Oliveros), which comes out of balance as civilization expands. The word ‘natural’ is prevelant in his writings.
It’s fascinating to read a book on the affect of new technologies, that was written in 1977. This era is pre-digital and pre-internet. Some criticisms that Schafer makes seem so imbedded into our lifestyle today that to be without them would require an impossible shift of human activity. Or, more accurately, to imagine their absence seems impossible. What is possible to imagine is that placing value on the high-fidelity of the acoustic world would be irrelevant to future urban populations. They may be reliant on noise-cancellation for navigation and communicative purposes. Schafer’s utopia of a human society politely and quietly blending with larger non-human ecosystems seems further away.
What is Schafer’s utopia? In claiming some noise as noise-pollution, does Schafer construct categories of natural and unnatural? Through the lens of critical theory we can begin to question his positionality and ability to claim a common utopia.
The book is heavily reliant on literature and the arts for the human experiences of the soundscape before the 20th century, which is a narrow representation of experience. The book contains uncomfortable quotes from old intellectuals like Tobias Smollett: “…I go to bed after midnight, jaded and restless from the dissipating of the day-I start every hour from my sleep, at the horrid noise of the watchmen bawling the hour through every street, and thundering at every door; a set of useless fellows, who serve no other purpose but that of disturbing the repose of the inhabitants.”
A painting is printed in the book, depicting an upper-class musician wearing full victorian attire, glaring with rage outside of his window at the hoard of children, women and beggars who seem to be making a racket. Schafer doesn’t comment. Unfortunately Schafer’s vision of a more peaceful world has reflections of countryside bourgeouisie aesthetics that were only possible due to surplus leisure time and luxuries. This bed of material wealth cannot exist in a more equal society.
I don’t disagree with Schafer’s urgency around noise-pollution. It is hard to untangle it from the classism of his sources, when class struggle is rarely mentioned in the book. Schafer does not ignore social issues but their exploration is premature. He is too quick to define what is natural.