The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World (46 page)

One of the more interesting utilizations of music in a public system was that of the French telephone. When one used to dial 10
(manuel Paris vers province)
, one heard the first measures of Gustave Charpentier’s opera
Louise
while the call was being connected; when one dialed 19
(automatique international)
, it was the first bars of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But on December 4, 1971, the music was replaced by a steady tone of 850 hertz. One of the strategists explains why:’This simplification will contribute to the development of the’télé-infor-matique’ by permitting the’télécommande’ of all calls under computer control, and besides this will facilitate the installation of punched-key ‘numérotation’ and the employment of automatic transmitters.” Did the public prefer 850 hertz to Beethoven? “The public has not reacted in any noteworthy manner to the recent change, which had already been announced to them well in advance on radio, television, and in the press.” The fact was that the music not only slowed down operational efficiency, but it also slowed down telephone users. “Even before the modification we realized that people telephoning in other parts of France, where there was no music, made their calls more quickly than the Parisians, who presumably were lulled by the fine music of
Louise
or the’Ode to Joy’ of Beethoven and paused to listen to it.”

The acoustic designer wants to redress some imbalances. He wants to slow things down. He wants to reduce the number of flat-line monotones and to reintroduce strong and exhilarating sounds. You say that he wouldn’t have been able to prevent Paris from converting to a monotone, but I say that until he injects himself into a position where he can effectively insist on the aesthetic losses of a one-tone telephone we will continue steering straight toward a social flatland. Who wants to defend Beethoven or Charpentier? Let us have a hundred, a thousand, a million sounds, one for each exchange, for each hamlet, for each customer the world over …!

Instead we are told to prepare for international standardization. On the new North American telephones, dialing is speeded up by a punch-number system. Each number on the dial is made up of two frequencies, a low and a high so that tunes are possible, and Beethoven (approximately) returns with the opening of his Fifth as 0005–8883.

Car Horns
     Car horns are another example of a sonic absolute bequeathed anonymously to the world by an inventor who took few music lessons. In North American cars the interval of the two horns is set at a major or minor third. The only three-note horns in use are on luxury Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals, an aristocratic touch which reminds us of the old days when the fattest princes had the biggest orchestras. The horn of the Lincoln Continental is tuned to sound an augmented triad (two superimposed major thirds).

In Turkish cars, horns are tuned to the interval of a major or minor second. While in some cultures this is considered an exceedingly dissonant diad, there are examples in the Balkans, for instance from certain regions of western Bulgaria, of folk singing in which two voices sing together in major or minor seconds, the singers considering this a consonant interval.

In the interest of preserving idiosyncracies in the world soundscape, some thought should be given to using the characteristic intervals and motifs of local musical cultures in tuning environmental signals of all kinds. In Java, for instance, it might be the unique “shortened” fifth that could serve for the car horn, for this interval is, I understand, found in no other culture, though it is basic to the tuning of Gamelan orchestras and is said to derive from the characteristic call of an island bird.

The Utopian Soundscape
     There are times for practical repair work and there are times for huge imaginative excursions into Utopia. It does not matter whether such dreams are directly realizable; they give elevation to the spirit, nobility to the mind.

One such Utopian dream was Charles Ives’s Universe Symphony. This was a work with hundreds or thousands of participants, spread out across the valleys, on hillsides and on mountaintops. It was to be so gigantic, so inclusive that no single individual could ever assume mastery or control of it. Anyone who wished to do so could add to it. It was only an idea then, but one which excites our imagination enormously. To imagine ourselves as participants in a Universe Symphony is to give more critical attention to our performance than is the case if we merely consider ourselves to be in a dumpyard. We analyze and criticize the music better; we recognize the soloists, the conductors, the prima donnas; we listen to the talents and faults of each. It is here that the acoustic designer can provide us with portions of the score to perform, as in fact has already been done in environmental compositions by numerous young composers.

Music is the key to the Utopian soundscape. By comparison, a study of the sounds in Utopian literature is disappointing. On the whole, the suggestions of the futurists have been tepid. About all we learn is that Sir Thomas More anticipated and approved of Moozak, or that Edward Bellamy, in
Looking Backward
, anticipated the radio. The most sustained and broadly conceived soundscape of the future was that of Francis Bacon’s
New Atlantis
, where he describes special houses devoted to the study of sounds.

We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds, extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps, which, set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.

Listening forward from
AD
. 1600, Francis Bacon heard, in his mind’s ear, most of the sound inventions of the next three hundred fifty years (recording and editing, modulation and transformation of sound, amplification, broadcasting, telephones, headphones and hearing aids). It was all there in embryo, waiting to be predicted by the thoughtful futurist.

But these instruments are now boring us to death. Now it is our turn to anticipate what lies ahead of our ears and minds. You who would design the future world, listen forward with immense leaps of the imagination and intellect, listen forward fifty, one hundred, a thousand years. What do you hear?

EIGHTEEN

The Soniferous Garden

A garden is a place where nature is cultivated. It is a humanized treatment of landscape. Trees, fruit, flowers, grass are sculpted organically from the wilderness by art and science. Sometimes the garden is drastically clipped and manicured, as in the harshly classical gardens of Versailles and Vienna; elsewhere man has restricted his touch to assisting certain characteristic features of the landscape to flourish.

A true garden is a feast for all the senses. Here is a description of a medieval garden in Baghdad.

The gate was arched, and over it were vines with grapes of different colours; the red, like rubies; and the black, like ebony. They entered a bower, and found within it fruits growing in clusters and singly, and the birds were warbling their various notes upon the branches: the nightingale was pouring forth its melodious sounds; and the turtledove filled the place with its cooing; and the blackbird, in its singing, resembled a human being; and the ring-dove, a person exhilarated by wine. The fruits upon the trees, comprising every description that was good to eat, had ripened … and the place beamed with the charms of spring; the river murmured by while the birds sang, and the wind whistled among the trees; the season was temperate, and the zephyr was languishing.

A park is a public garden into which various community recreations are introduced. Theater, music, athletic events, picnics, all or any of these may be possible in the well-designed park. But parks today are not well designed and that is the problem. In modern cities parks are too often leftover pieces of real estate, belted by what is euphemistically called a parkway, which spits its smell and noise over a site chosen by sight. In older cities, the highways have often been added later, invading once- prized sanctuaries with their filth. This can be seen clearly on isobel maps we made for three Viennese parks: Burggarten, Stadtpark and Belvedere Garten. All are today situated beside busy streets. In none does the ambient level drop below 48 dBA and the average is closer to
55
dBA, which is several decibels above the established Speech Interference Level for normal conversation at four meters.

With good reason then do we insist on the necessity today to throw the emphasis back to the acoustically designed park, or what we might more poetically call the soniferous garden. There is but one principle to guide us in this purpose: always to let nature speak for itself. Water, wind, birds, wood and stone, these are the natural materials which like the trees and shrubs must be organically molded and shaped to bring forth their most characteristic harmonies.

A garden may also be a place of human artifacts such as a bench, a trellis or a swing, but they must harmonize with their natural surroundings, indeed appear to have grown out of them. Thus, if synthetic sounds are introduced into the soniferous garden, they should be sympathetic vibrations of the garden’s original notes. There is no place for the wired-in music system, such as I have heard in Ankara’s beautifully expansive Genclik Park, and elsewhere. Nor should other electroacoustic tricks, no matter how clever, find their place here. An American sculptor once demonstrated for me a bridge of high-tension cables, to which he had attached contact microphones and an extensive amplifier and loudspeaker system. Every time a fly landed on one of the cables the sound of a howitzer thundered through the forest. One gasped at the prospect of a crow or a gopher entertaining the whole state of Utah.

Let nature speak with its own authentic voices. That is the grand and simple theme of the acoustic designer. The following notes are reflections on past and prospective solutions to this problem.

The Eloquence Of Water
      It was in the Italian gardens of the Renaissance and the Baroque era that water was given a special elegance and beauty, for its coolness provided a delicious contrast to the outer glare of the summer heat. The Casino of Pope Pius IV, the Villa Lante, the Villa of Val San Zibio—each has its own romance with water, told in endless fountains, streams, reflecting pools and ingenious water jets, through which the gardens shimmered in fine mists of spray. In the Villa Pliniana a foaming mountain torrent from the Val di Calore pours directly through the central apartment. The old house is saturated with freshness and the bare vaulted rooms reverberate with its joyful sound. But nowhere did water surpass the magnificence it achieved in the gardens of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, near Rome.

From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channelling thstone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conchs, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks. The whole length of the second terrace is edged by a deep stone channel, into which the stream drips by countless outlets over a quivering fringe of maidenhair. Every side path or flight of steps is accompanied by its sparkling rill, every niche in the retaining-walls has its water-pouring nymph or gushing urn; the solemn depths of green reverberate with the tumult of innumerable streams.

At the Villa d’Este, water throbs through the garden like the inmost vital principle of the whole. But water was not only used organically in these gardens, it was also used with great artifice and cunning in numerous water sculptures. When John Evelyn visited the Villa d’Este in 1645, these water sculptures were still intact and functioning.

In another garden, is a noble aviary, the birds artificial, and singing till an owl appears, on which they suddenly change their notes. Near this is the fountain of dragons, casting out large streams of water with great noise. In another grotto, called Grotto di Natura, is an hydraulic organ; and below this are divers stews and fish ponds, in one of which is the statue of Neptune in his chariot on a seahorse, in another a Triton; and lastly, a garden of simples.