Kozo Hiramatsu

Keynote Lecutre (specific time undetermined)

Why Noise Was Defined as ‘Non-Musical Sound’ in the Mid-19th Century?

The modern concept of “noise” was defined as “non-musical sound” in the mid-19th century by von Helmholtz who called itGeräusch in German and differentiated it from the emotionally annoying noise, Lärm. Geräusch was an acoustics definition. Von Helmholtz implicitly assumed that musical sound consisted of harmonics presenting a line spectrum, and in contrast the wave of non-musical sound was irregular vibration with a broad spectrum. This definition was also supported in the music arena; for instance, Hanslick argued that the musical sound was the harmonious sound of Western music properly played. Surely, the music of the West is distinctively characterized by putting great emphasis on harmony as an essential material of music.

Recently, a theory has been proposed by HaCohen; the music of the West’s obsession with harmony was a response to the noisy Jewish sounds generated in the synagogue. She says that a certain anti-Semitism was a reflexive attempt to fill the sound of the Christian church with harmony.  

Since the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain and the subsequent brutal and cruel Inquisition, the most traumatic recorded events in European Jewish liturgical heritages … were those that befell the Jewish communities in the core countries in the wake of the Crusades. It is not coincidental that crucial … developments in church music took place at about that time and were symbolically canonized as hailing the church in its variety of holy missions.

No doubt, towns in medieval Europe were full of a diversity of daily life noises at least in the daytime. However, the noise generated by Jews in the Synagogue was extraordinary: One of the most typical characteristics of the authentic synagogue sound is heterophonic chant-mumbling, and the shofar’s (ram horn) strident blasts. HaCohen writes;

The nonsynchronized soundscape of the perfida synagoga (a sonic texture termed, in professional musicology, as “heterophony”) could not but become a symbol of offensive noise for ages to come: Lärm wie in einer Judenschule (noise/shouts/ado as in a synagogue). Noise is bad – a symptom of sin, decay, and of a God’s forsaken people; harmony is good, providential, and inextricably associated with sacrifice, compassion, and exclusion.

It would be safe to say that behind the reason why von Helmholtz cast light on musical sound and put noise aside in his research of hearing lay the hierarchy of sound in the Christian world. However, as a result of the Industrial Revolution going on at full speed in those days, streets were filled with the noises of engines and street musicians. The characteristics of noise problems had changed, and the real noise problem could no longer be confined to acoustics, which then acousticians failed to comprehend sticking to von Helmholtz. But there was a finishing blow to the acoustics noise definition; the ‘shell shock’ symptom that appeared among soldiers who served in the army in the Great War. People shared the pain and fear that noise was more than just annoying but harmful to the mind and brain. The noise became a toxin or pathogen spreading over society, having nothing to do with the Jews. The acoustics term Geräusch lost its raison d’etre in the face of the reality of noise. The time was the 1920s when acoustical engineering came into the world. And noise came to be re-defined as “unwanted sound.”

Dr. Eng., Professor Emeritus, at Kyoto University. Born in 1946 in Osaka, Japan. He majored in environmental engineering at Kyoto University. He started his research career in 1972 in noise research, both noise control engineering and the effects of noise on man. One of his topics in noise research is a large-scale epidemiology study of aircraft noise in Okinawa conducted from 1995 to 1999. In the middle of the 1980s, his interest broadened to acoustic ecology, and did fieldwork on the soundscape of Kyoto and its suburbs, Okinawa, Thailand, and Laos. Besides doing fieldwork, he published articles on the significance of acoustic ecology in understanding the acoustic environment. He is one of the earliest members of the Soundscape Association of Japan founded in 1993 and served as Director General of the association from 1993 to 2010.

🔗 The Other Keynote Speaker: Mark Katz

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