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“Ancient life was all silence. In the 19th Century, with the invention of machines,
Noise was born.” (Russolo, Luigi, 1913)
It is clear that the Industrial Revolution (19th Century) was one of the most significant
events in human history since the change from nomadic to agrarian life. It initiated the
transition from rural to urban life, from the agricultural work in the fields to the
standardized and repetitive work in the factories. The steam engine was invented, and
the locomotive became the symbol of the industrial era.
Along with factories, trains and new machinery and the new speed of living,
also came a new sound universe, never heard before, never so loud. The new voice of
machines! The so-called Noise. The world soundscape mutated. Now, urban life was
becoming cacophonic, lo-fi, for we began losing aural perspective, drowning in a
dense mass of sounds.
The Electric Revolution of the 20th Century aggravated the soundscape even
more. The speed of life significantly increased and transformed repetitive /rhythmic
noises in electric drones with the invention of the automobile, the jet plane, the
electric train…
Also, the electricity came to change sound radically, for it lost its physical and
acoustical source, its visual and material body. Loudspeakers and tape recorders were
invented, and sounds became just sounds – sonus: “The dissociation of seeing and
hearing here encourages another way of listening: we listen to sonorous forms,
without any aim other than that” (Schaeffer, Pierre, 1977). R Murray Schafer (1977)
nominated this phenomenon Schizophonia, i.e. where sounds are split from their
original sources by electroacoustical reproduction.
Electro-acoustics and magnetic tape, together with the new “noisy”
soundscape of the industrialized world, provoked a drastic change in the paradigms of
previous times. It originated a whole new way of thinking Sound and Music and its
composing methods, since they were not necessarily connected to its acoustical
source anymore, sounds could now be played, composed and manipulated as
independent objects.
Silence and The Soundscape
Poe, Edgar A, 1829. Al Aaraaf. In Schafer, R Murray, 1977. Our Sonic Environment
and THE SOUNDSCAPE: the Tuning of the World. Rochester: Destiny Books.
Scafer, R Murray, 1977. Our Sonic Environment and THE SOUNDSCAPE: the
Tuning of the World. Rochester: Destiny Books.
Schaeffer, Pierre, 1966. Traité des objects musicaux. Translated from French by
Daniel W Smith. In Cox, Christoph & Warner, Daniel eds., 2006. Audio Culture—Readings
in Modern Music. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.