Let us consider the way in which fires were signaled at various times in various communities. For this work to be truly revealing it should be restricted to a single depth study in one culture, or else take the form of a temporal cross-section comparing the devices of many contemporaneous cultures; but I have not got the facts at my fingers to do this, so I can only touch on the theme in a general way.
In Mozart’s day (1756–91), Vienna was quiet enough that fire signals could be given by the shouts of a scout mounted atop St. Stefan’s Cathedral. In early North America, fire halls also had tall watchtowers for scouting. As early as 1647 the governor of New Amsterdam appointed wardens to patrol the streets of Manhattan at night, armed with rattles or ratchets to sound the alarm. (An interesting posthumous example of the same device was the ratchet with which each civil defense warden was armed in wartime London and which was to be sounded in the event of a German gas attack. The sound generated by such instruments is surprisingly loud and we have measured one at 96 dBA at 3½ meters.)
On English fire vehicles, gongs were originally employed. The bell came into use early in the twentieth century with the advent of motor-driven appliances.
The siren was introduced only after World War Two by some brigades but the bell continued to be the traditional audible warning for fire appliances in the British Fire Service. … However, during the 1960’s, due to worsening traffic conditions and the increasing use of larger and diesel-engined commercial vehicles … a number of tests were carried out using four different warning devices. … Following these tests it was decided to standardize on the use of a two-tone horn for fire appliances. This was subsequently adopted for other emergency service vehicles, i.e., police and ambulance, and its use is now restricted to vehicles of the emergency services.
In 1964 the familiar two-tone horn was adopted and the intensity fixed at not less than 88 dBA at a distance of 50 feet under calm conditions.
Two newspaper clippings in my file show that Canadian cities shifted from bell to siren at a considerably earlier date.
Clang! Clang! See the fire apparatus clashing, dashing by in a shower of sparks; firemen hastily donning their helmets and rubber coats, men whose hearts beat vigorous and warm in life, men whose prospects are filled with bright hopes and expectancy!
The wild plunge down the streets, the frantic speed of the horses, the drivers strapped to the seats, men clinging to the hose carts, ladder wagons and engines like flies!
That was an account of Vancouver’s first horse-drawn fire engine of 1899. But the motorized fire engines that emerged from the hall after 1907 were no longer the same.
A long wolf howl, a sudden stopping of traffic, and a motor fire truck goes screaming down the street, leaving behind a clear track into which people and vehicles pour as the waters of the Red Sea followed on the wake of the men of Israel. Over the steering wheel the driver bends. At his side crouches a man who whirls the crank of the siren, sending ahead its shivering cry of fear.
In North America the revolving disc siren is employed on all emergency vehicles: fire-fighting equipment, ambulances and police cars. Europe, on the other hand, relies on the two-tone siren, variously tuned to an interval of a minor third (common in Sweden), a perfect fourth (common in Germany) or a major second (common in England).
Since the introduction of the disc siren in North America, the principal change has been in the volume of sound output. We have measured the siren on a 1912 vintage vehicle at 88 to 96 dBA at 3½ meters. By 1960 siren intensity had risen to 102 dBA at 5 meters. In recent years a new type of yelping siren has been introduced for emergency vehicles, measuring 114 dBA at the same distance. The United States is now manufacturing a yelping siren for police car use which measures 122 dBA at 3½ meters. With such hectoring devices the police are hardly becoming more lovable.
Conclusions on the Value of Morphological Studies I hope the theme of morphological studies is suggestive enough that it will eventually inspire more systematic research. The tape recorder makes such work on the contemporary soundscape entirely feasible; and in connection ith laboratory analysis, recorded sounds could be assembled in sequence and their physical changes could easily be analyzed.
Sometimes changes seem to progress in a fairly orderly manner; at other times they are interrupted suddenly by what I can only call mutations. The replacement of the bell by the siren is an example. In view of the heavy symbolism which accrues to well-established sounds, the acoustic designer ought to weigh the matter very carefully before substituting a radically new sound for a traditional one.
Right now in many countries foghorns are being automated and the character of their sound is being quite transformed. The haunting bass of the familiar diaphone and typhon is to give way to an electric horn, higher in pitch, shorter in carrying power. Fishermen in Canada say they don’t like it and can’t hear it, but the Ministry of Transport has begun to dismantle the old horns on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Sometimes a new technique only partially transforms a familiar sound, as is the case with the electric siren which, while maintaining the same contour as the old disc siren, truncates the arc of its glissando by instant switch-on and switch-off. The tempo of the old siren is increased about fourfold in the yelp mode of the new electric model, and the grainy effect of the original device has disappeared as a new sound signal is gradually shaped out of the old.
It is still too early to know whether there are any morphological rules of soundscape change, such as have been observed in language development. Of equal value, as research proceeds, will be the detection of what might be called matrix sounds. I am thinking here of sounds with unvarying physical characteristics which occur in different cultures or recur throughout history, always with the same general meaning. A knowledge of matrix sounds could be as useful to the acoustic designer as a knowledge of geometrical forms is to the visual designer. Such sounds would also carry a powerful symbolism.
TWELVE
Symbolism
The sounds of the environment have referential meanings. For the soundscape researcher they are not merely abstract acoustical events, but must be investigated as acoustic signs, signals and symbols. A sign is any representation of a physical reality (the note C in a musical score, the on or off switch on a radio, etc.). A sign does not sound but merely indicates. A signal is a sound with a specific meaning, and it often stimulates a direct response (telephone bell, siren, etc.). A symbol, however, has richer connotations.
"A word or an image is symbolic,” writes C. G. Jung, “when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider ‘unconscious’ aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained.” A sound event is symbolic when it stirs in us emotions or thoughts beyond its mechanical sensations or signaling function, when it has a numinosity or reverberation that rings through the deeper recesses of the psyche.
In his book Psychological Types, Jung speaks of certain types of “symbols, which can arise autochthonously in every corner of the earth and are none the less identical, just because they are fashioned out of the same world-wide human unconscious, whose contents are infinitely less variable than are races and individuals.” To these “first form” symbols, Jung gave the name “archetypes.” These are the inherited, primordial patterns of experience, reaching back to the beginning of time. They have no sensible extensions themselves, but may be given expression in dreams, works of art and fantasy.
In this chapter I am going to try to show how certain sounds possess strong symbolic character and how some of the most ancient may act to invoke archetypal symbols.
Return to the Sea Of all sounds, water, the original life element, has the most splendid symbolism, and so we loop back to pick up the first theme of Chapter One. Rain, a stream, a fountain, a river, a waterfall, the sea, each makes its unique sound but all share a rich symbolism. They speak of cleansing, of purification, of refreshment and renewal.
The sea has always been one of man�
�s primary symbols in literature, myth and art. It is symbolic of eternity: its ceaseless presence. It is symbolic of change: the tides; the ebb and flow of the waves. Heraclitus said, “You never go down to the same water twice.” It illustrates the law of the conservation of energy: from the sea, water evaporates, becomes rain, then brooks and rivers, and finally is returned to the sea. It is symbolic of reincarnation: water never dies. Nor does water respect the law of gravity, for it flows downward and evaporates upward. When angry it symbolizes, in the words of W. H. Auden, “that state of barbaric vagueness and disorder out of which civilization has emerged and into which, unless saved by the effort of gods and men, it is always liable to relapse.” Auden continues: “The sea is where the decisive events, the moments of eternal choice, of temptation, fall, and redemption occur.”
"For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.” (Jonah 2:3.) To be saved from the clutches of corruption and chaos, as Jonah was, is always interpreted as a rebirth; for the miracle of water is that it is at once both the eternal destroyer and the grand deliverer. Jung remarks: “Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious. … Psychologically, therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious. … The descent into the depths always seems to precede the ascent.”
The Greeks distinguished between Pontos, the mapped and navigable, and Okeanos, the infinite universe of water. Pontos corresponds to the closed world of Euclidean geometry, Okeanos to mystery and tempestuousness—for a storm on an unknown sea could swallow up a ship without warning or trace. The primal chaos of Okeanos is well served by the sound of a stormy sea. When the sea is worked into anger, it possesses equal energy across the entire audible spectrum; it is full-frequencied white noise. Yet the spectrum always seems to be changing; for a moment deep vibrations predominate, then high whistling effects, though neither is ever really absent, and all that changes is their relative intensity. The impression is one of immense and oppressive power expressed as a continuous flow of acoustic energy. In a storm at sea, the sound is not articulated into waves. It is only in a boat that wave motion becomes audible, for the bulkheads groan and shudder violently as the ship rolls and pitches. (By this means I once timed the waves at between 6 and 11 seconds in a gale on the Pacific.)
The sea symbolizes brute power; the land, safety and comfort. The ension between them is made audible in the crashing of the breakers. No sound unites continuity and discreteness so effectively within its signature. Thus, as we move back to the shoreline, power gives way to regular beating and, in a miraculous manner, the sea begins to suggest its opposite—the discrete side of its signature—rhythmic order. Rhythm replaces chaos as the sea becomes benign. Finally, the sea hangs over the horizon as an expiring murmur, blending with the gentler expressions of music. Here is how Thomas Mann, born on the Baltic, recalled it in Tonio KrÖger:
… he played the violin—and made the tones, brought out as softly as ever he knew how, mingle with the plashing of the fountain that leaped and danced down there in the garden beneath the branches of the old walnut tree. The fountain, the old walnut tree, his fiddle, and away in the distance the North Sea, within sound of whose summer murmurings he spent his holidays—these were the things he loved, within these he enfolded his spirit, among these things his inner life took its course.
Modern man is moving away from the sea. Ocean travel has given way to air travel. The sea, which is down from everywhere, has come to be treated as a trough into which pollutants are dumped. Avoiding “the sea’s green crying towers,” modern man, landlocked and with untroubled heart, imagines the sea a sound romance. (Our Sound Preference Survey showed this clearly; see pages 147–148 and Appendix II.) He believes that the ebb and push of the waves on the summer beach exist merely to rhyme with relaxed breathing. But modern man is losing touch with the suprabiological rhythms that make the sea so notorious as a trembling presence in ancient art and ritual. Do all memories turn into romance? If so, the sea is the first example.
The Deviousness of the Wind By comparison with the barbaric challenge of the sea, the wind is devious and equivocal. Without its tactile pressure on the face or body we cannot even tell from what direction it blows. The wind is therefore not to be trusted. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” (John 3:8.) Jung speaks of the wind as the breath of the spirit.
Man’s descent to the water is needed in order to evoke the miracle of its coming to life. But the breath of the spirit rushing over the dark water is uncanny, like everything whose cause we do not know—since it is not ourselves. It hints at an unseen presence, a numen to which neither human expectations nor the machinations of the will have given life. It lives of itself, and a shudder runs through the man who thought that “spirit” was merely what he believes, what he makes himself, what is said in books, or what people talk about. But when it happens spontaneously it is a spookish thing, and primitive fearseizes the naive mind. The elders of the Elgonyi tribe in Kenya gave me exactly the same description of the nocturnal god whom they call “maker of fear.” “He comes to you,” they said, “like a cold gust of wind, and you shudder, or he goes whistling round in the tall grass”—an African Pan who glides among the reeds in the haunted noontide hour, playing on his pipes and frightening the shepherds.
There is some etymological basis to what Jung writes. The Old German word for soul was saiwalô, which may be a cognate of the Greek aioΛos, meaning “quick-moving, wily or shifty.”
The illusory nature of the wind finds its instrument in the Aeolian harp, whose haunting and elusive tones were so affectionately regarded by the romanticists. Novalis wrote: “Nature is an aeolian harp, a musical instrument whose sounds come from the plucking of higher strings within us.” But at times the wind seems to have a downright evil character. What are we to make of winds such as the Fohn in Germany and the Chinook in America, which have been cited as the cause of aberrational behavior and even death, usually by suicide? In an interesting unpublished paper, Dr. Philip Dickinson of the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton mentions the case of an elderly woman who tried to commit suicide.
Her reason for the attempt: a low throbbing noise, that she alone seemed to be able to hear. … The local health department was unable to hear or record anything at all. It was then found that many other people also heard the noise, but were afraid to say so. Hence “expert” advice was brought in. A noise consultant visited the area with his wife, who was medically trained, and although he could hear nothing, recorded the “nothing” he could hear. On analysis of the noise a distinct peak was discovered in the 30–40 Hz range. Following newspaper accounts of these tests, reports came in from all over the country of severe noise disturbance from a low throbbing noise. … Many of these were investigated and in all cases a distinct peak of noise was discovered in the 30–40 Hz range. The noise was audible to the sufferers mainly at night, especially so on cold winter mornings in a slight breeze and in conditions of temperature inversion. Never on a hot summer day with no wind or with a very stiff breeze. Attempts to find the origin of the noise pinpointed power transmission lines in many of the areas. In some of these lines the wooden posts were vibrating so much that it was painful to place the ear against them. Not all the places had transmission lines, in others it seemed the noise was amplified by houses and possibly thin trees!
Dr. Dickinson has attributed these low-frequency vibrations to the wind. Uncontrolled low-frequency vibrations have been credited with causing brain tumors, a matter which Dr. Dickinson also raises in connection with his study.
Illusory, capricious and destructive, the wind is the natural sound man as traditionally mistrusted and feared the most. We recall that Typhoeus was a devious god because he spoke with so many tongues. The trickery of the wind has continued right down to modern times as anyone who has t
ried to make tape recordings outdoors well knows.
The Manddla and the Bell erhaps no artifact has been so widespread or has had such long-standing associations for man as the bell. Bells come in a vast array of sizes and have been put to an incredible diversity of uses. Most may be said to function in one of two distinct ways: either they act as gathering (centripetal) or scattering (centrifugal) forces. This can be seen from the following partial table.
Not all bells can be categorized so easily according to function. In the Middle Ages in Europe, knights wore little bells attached to their armor and women wore them jingling from their girdles. Centripetal? But what do we say about the court jester, whose cap was adorned with the same tle bells? And then there are the countless bells attached to animals all over the world in order to inform their owners of their whereabouts, or to identify the lead animal.
The bell is hung round the neck of the most willing horse of the pack, and from that moment he takes the lead. Till he moves on, it is almost impossible to force any of the others forward. If you keep back your horse for a mile or two when on the march, and then give him the rein, he dashes on in frantic eagerness to catch up to the rest. Get hold of the bell-horse when you want to start in the morning, and ring the bell and soon all the others in the pack gather round.
In the same account we learn how the bell of the lead horses signaled the approach of another pack train along the narrow trails of the Rocky Mountains. The jingling bells, attached to horses’ harnesses, sounded a festive note which Edgar Allan Poe caught in a famous poem.
The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World Page 21