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What’s Changed in the Sound of the World?
Eénwielige motorfiets | Nationaal Archief
One of the arguments my book puts forward is that while the world may not be noisier today than it was 100 years ago, we are, paradoxically, living in a world with less silence. By this I mean that while in, say, late Victorian London one might well have been living nearer to a loud factory than any one in the developed west is likely to be living today, there were also more places one could walk to without great exertion where it was possible to find some escape from the din – places off the grid of commerce and infrastructure: a riverbank not closely bordered by a highway; a patch of land left to nature; etc. Professionals who work with urban sound issues speak of cities in the past having greater “acoustical contrast” than do typical metropolitan areas today.
I came across a reference to an article written by Michel F. Phillippot several decades ago for a journal called New Paterns of Musical Behavior that points to further evidence for the diminished availability of quiet spaces — and the rise of incessant low frequency ambient noise.
Philippot analyzes reports of the noisiness of 17th century Paris, describing the taxonomy of different sounds that residents described: “shouting, carts and carriages, horses, bells, artisans at work.” Thinking about the nature of these sounds, Philippot writes that “the average sound level must have shown marked fluctuations, that its envelope must have had peaks and lows so that it was actually ‘cut up.’ He also points out that this noise “must have been very poor in low frequencies” since the different sources Parisians described were all in the medium to medium-high frequency range. However in recent times “with the invention of the automobile, the noise became more continuous and the lower frequencies were strongly increasing,” Philippot writes, “(the deep rumbling of urban traffic, the continuous noise of cars that are driving, the broad spectrum and long envelope of approaching and departing planes.) The ‘modern’ ambient noise might be briefly characterised as heavy and continuous, with slow fluctuations that are difficult to identify and locate, as this kind of noise tends to encompass us.” Philippot extrapolates eloquently from a remark the mathematician and philosopher d’Alembert made near the end of his life, “I stop talking, when a car drives by…” We know from this that d’Alembert “could still enjoy moments of silence between two cars, a blessing of which the victims of the low and continuous noise in big towns have meanwhile been deprived.”
This is why, rather than just telling obnoxious noisemakers to pipe down, I think we have to make a larger societal commitment to upping the quotient of spaces in which moments of silence can still happen. As the work of the urban planners I write about in London, Scandanavia and elsewhere proves, it’s not a utopian fantasy to think that by taking advantage of our expanding understanding of psychoacoustics, along with technological advances in noise abatement, these spaces could be created even under today’s economic conditions. Here’s the thing: we could get rid of all the boom cars, leaf blowers, jet skis and Harleys and still find we didn’t have a moment’s respite from the “heavy and continuous,” physiologically degrading effects of “modern” ambient noise.
