Since modern man fears death as none before him, he avoids silence to nourish his fantasy of perpetual life. In Western society, silence is a negative, a vacuum. Silence for Western Man equals communication hangup. If one has nothing to say, the other will speak; hence the garrulity of modern life which is extended by all kinds of sonic jabberware.
The contemplation of absolute silence has become negative and terrifying for Western Man. Thus when the infinity of space was first suggested by Galileo’s telescope, the philosopher Pascal was deeply afraid of the prospect of eternal silence. “Le silence etemel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.”
When one stays for a while in an anechoic chamber—that is, a completely soundproof room—one feels a little of the same terror. One speaks and the sound seems to drop from one’s lips to the floor. The ears strain to pick up evidence that there is still life in the world. When John Cage went into such a room, however, he heard two sounds, one high and one low. “When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.” Cage’s conclusion: “There is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.”
When man regards himself as central in the universe, silence can only be considered as approximate, never absolute. Cage detected this relativity and in choosing Silence as the title for his book, he emphasized that for modern man any use of this term must be qualified or assumed to be ironical. Edgar Allan Poe touched on the same thing when in “Al Aaraaf” he wrote: “Quiet we call ‘Silence’—which is the merest word of all.”
The negative character of silence has made it the most potentialized feature of Western art, where nothingness constitutes the eternal threat to being. Because music represents the ultimate intoxication of life, it is carefully placed in a container of silence. When silence precedes sound, nervous anticipation makes it more vibrant. When it interrupts or follows sound, it reverberates with the tissue of that which sounded, and this state continues as long as the memory holds it. Ergo, however dimly, silence sounds.
Because it is being lost, the composer today is more concerned with silence; he composes with it. Anton Webem moved composition to the brink of silence. The ecstasy of his music is enhanced by his sublime and stunning use of rests, for Webern’s is music composed with an eraser. What irony, that the last sound of his life was the explosion of the soldier’s gun that shot him.
In Dummiyah the Canadian composer John Weinzweig has the conductor conduct long passages of silence in memory of Hitler’s victims. “Silence,” he says, “is the final sound of the Nazi holocaust.”
In dumb silence I held my peace.
So my agony was quickened,
and my heart burned within me.
[Psalms 39:2–3]
Simultaneously with Webern’s discovery of the value of silence in music, his compatriot Freud discovered its value for psychoanalysis. “The analyst is not afraid of silence. As Saussure remarked, the unconnected monologue of the patient on the one side and the almost absolute silence of the psychiatrist on the other was never made a methodological principle before Freud.”
The relationship between music and psychoanalysis is by no means fortuitous. Like the music teacher, Freud made regular appointments to see his patients and listened to them at length. In psychoanalysis, as in much modern poetry, that which is not said is pregnant with potential meaning. Philosophy too terminates in silence. Wittgenstein wrote: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”
But these things do not reduce my contention that for Western Man silence somehow represents an unutterable impasse, a negative state beyond the realm of the possible, of the attainable. The same semantic complexion is borne out in Western lexicography. The following is the complete entry under “Silence” in Roget’s New Pocket Thesaurus (New York, 1969). Read it and you will understand that what is described is not a felicitous or positive state but rather merely the muzzling of sound.
SILENCE—N. silence, quiet, quietude, hush, still; sullenness, sulk, saturninity, taciturnity, laconism, reticence, reserve.
muteness, mutism, deaf-mutism, laloplegia, anarthria, aphasia, aphonia, dysphasia.
speech impediment, stammering, stuttering, baryphony, dysphonia, paralalia.
dummy, sphinx, sulk, sulker, calm; mute, deaf-mute, laloplegic,
aphasiac, aphonic, dysphasiac.
v. silence, quiet, quieten, still, hush; gag, muzzle, squelch, tongue-tie; muffle, stifle, strike dumb.
be silent, quiet down, quiet, hush, dummy up, hold one’s tongue, sulk,
say nothing, keep silent, shut up (slang).
ADJ. silent, noiseless, soundless, quiet, hushed, still. speechless, wordless, voiceless, mute, dumb, inarticulate, tongue-tied,
mousy, mum, sphinxian.
sullen, sulky, glum, saturnine.
taciturn, uncommunicative, close-mouthed, tight-lipped, unvocal,
nonvocal, laconic; reticent, reserved, shy, bashful.
unspoken, tacit, wordless, implied, implicit, understood, unsaid, unut
tered, unexpressed, unvoiced, unbreathed, unmentioned, untold. unpronounced, mute, silent, unsounded, surd, voiceless.
inaudible, indistinct, unclear, faint, unheard.
inexpressible, unutterable, indescribable, ineffable, unspeakable, nameless, unnamable; fabulous.
See also MODESTY, PEACE. Antonyms—see LOUDNESS, SHOUT.
The Recovery of Positive Silence In the West we may assume that silence as a condition of life and a workable concept disappeared sometime toward the end of the thirteenth century, with the death of Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroeck, Angela de Foligno and the anonymous English author of The Cloud of Unknowing. This is the era of the last great Christian mystics and contemplation as a habit and skill began to disappear about that time.
Today, as a result of increasing sonic incursions, we are even beginning to lose an understanding of the word concentration. The words survive all right, that is to say, their skeletons lie in dictionaries; but there are few who know how to breathe life into them. A recovery of contemplation would teach us how to regard silence as a positive and felicitous state in itself, as the great and beautiful backdrop over which our actions are sketched and without which they would be incomprehensible, indeed could not even exist. There have been numerous philosophies expressing this idea and we know that great periods of human history have been conditioned by them. Such was the message of Lao-tzu: “Give up haste and activity. Close your mouth. Only then will you comprehend the spirit of Tâo.”
No philosophy or religion catches the positive felicity of stillness better than Taoism. It is a philosophy that would make all noise abatement legislation unnecessary. This is also the message of Jalal-ud-din Rumi, whoadvised his disciples to “Keep silence like the points of the compass, for the king has erased thy name from the book of speech.” Rumi sought to discover that world where “speaking is without letters or sounds.” Even today one may observe Bedouins sitting quietly in a circle saying nothing, caught perhaps somewhere between the past and the future—for silence and eternity are bound in mystic union. I recall also the slow stillness of certain Persian villages, where there is still time to sit or squat and think, or merely to sit or squat; time to walk very slowly alongside a child on crutches or a blind grandfather; time to await food or the passage of the sun.
We need to regain quietude in order that fewer sounds can intrude on it with pristine brilliance. The Indian mystic Kirpal Singh expresses this eloquently:
The essence of sound is felt in both motion and silence, it passes from existent to nonexistent. When there is no sound, it is said that there is no hearing, but that does not mean that hearing has lost its preparedness. Indeed, when there is no sound, hearing is most alert, and when there is sound the hearing nature is least developed.
When there is no sound, hearing is most alert. It is the same idea that Rilke expresses in his Duino Elegies when h
e speaks of “die ununter-brochene Nachricht, die aus Stille sich bildet.” Silence is indeed news for those possessing clairaudience.
If we have a hope of improving the acoustic design of the world, it will be realizable only after the recovery of silence as a positive state in our lives. Still the noise in the mind: that is the first task—then everything else will follow in time.
EPILOGUE
The Music Beyond
Before man, before the invention of the ear, only the gods heard sounds. Music was then perfect. In both East and West arcane accounts hint at these times. In the Sangīta-makaranda (I, 4–6) we learn that there are two forms of sound, the anāhata, “unstruck,” and the āhata, “struck,” the first being a vibration of ether, which cannot be perceived by men but is the basis of all manifestation. “It forms permanent numerical patterns which are the basis of the world’s existence.”
This is identical with the Western concept of the Music of the Spheres, that is, music as rational order, which goes back to the Greeks, particularly to the school of Pythagoras. Having discovered the mathematical correspondence between the ratios of the harmonics in a sounding string, and noting that the planets and stars also appeared to move with perfect regularity, Pythagoras united discovery with intuition and conjectured that the two types of motion were both expressions of a perfect universal law, binding music and mathematics. Pythagoras is reported to have been able to hear the celestial music, though none of his disciples was able to do so. But the intuition persisted. Boethius (AD. 480–524) also believed in the Music of the Spheres.
How indeed could the swift mechanism of the sky move silently in its course? And although this sound does not reach our ears (as must for many reasons be the case), the extremely rapid motion of such great bodies could not be altogether without sound, especially since the courses of the stars are joined together by such mutual adaptation that nothing more equally compacted or united could be imagined. For some are borne higher and others lower, and all are revolved with a just impulse, and from their different inequalities an established order of their courses may be deduced. For this reason an established order of modulation cannot be lacking in this celestial revolution.
If one knew the mass and velocity of a spinning object, it would be possible theoretically to calculate its fundamental pitch. Johannes Kepler, who also believed in a perfect system binding music and astronomy, calculated the following pitches for each of the planets.
The Music of the Spheres represents eternal perfection. If we do not hear it, it is because we are imperfect. Shakespeare puts it eloquently in The Merchant of Venice (V, i).
Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings. …
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
But our imperfection is not merely moral; it is physical also. For man, the perfectly pure and mathematically defined sound exists as a theoretical concept only. The French mathematician Fourier knew and stated this when he was developing his theory of harmonic analysis. Distortion results the moment a sound is produced, for the sounding object first has to overcome its own inertia to be set in motion, and in doing this little imperfections creep into the transmitted sound. The same thing is true ofour ears. For the ear to begin vibrating, it too has first to overcome its own inertia, and accordingly it too introduces more distortions.
All the sounds we hear are imperfect. For a sound to be totally free of onset distortion, it would have to have been initiated before our lifetime. If it were also continued after our death so that we knew no interruption in it, then we could comprehend it as being perfect. But a sound initiated before our birth, continued unabated and unchanging throughout our lifetime and extended beyond our death, would be perceived by us as—silence.
This is why, as I intimated at the beginning of this book, all research into sound must conclude with silence—not the silence of negative vacuum, but the positive silence of perfection and fulfillment. Thus, just as man strives for perfection, all sound aspires to the condition of silence, to the eternal life of the Music of the Spheres.
Can silence be heard? Yes, if we could extend our consciousness outward to the universe and to eternity, we could hear silence. Through the practice of contemplation, little by little, the muscles and the mind relax and the whole body opens out to become an ear. When the Indian yogi attains a state of liberation from the senses, he hears the anāhata, the “unstruck” sound. Then perfection is achieved. The secret hieroglyph of the Universe is revealed. Number becomes audible and flows down filling the receiver with tones and light.
Appendixes
APPENDIX I
Sample Sound Notation Systems
This isobel map of Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, shows average sound levels in different locations. Sound level measurements were taken on the footpaths at intervals of about 100 yards, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on several successive Wednesdays during May, June and July of 1973. The weather each day was similar—clear and bright with temperatures in the middle 60s and 70s F. At each point three readings were taken, ten seconds apart, and later averaged together for the construction of the isobels.
Another sound event map, prepared by Michael Southworth in downtown Boston, that attempts to relate areas with similar and contrasting acoustic environments.
This chart shows log notes of sound events taken during a 24-hour period in the countryside in British Columbia.
One possible form of a sound map, made during two different time periods on a “listening walk” around a city block. The different types of sounds are given graphic values according to whether they are soft, medium or loud, and tabulated to show the general activity and intensity. Using this method, it is simple to make comparisons of sound events historically or geographically.
APPENDIX II
International Sound Preference Survey
Percentage of People Tested Liking or Disliking Sounds by Category
Glossary of Soundscape Terms
The following short list of terms includes only neologisms or acoustic terms which I have adapted and given special meanings to for the purpose of this book. The list does not include general acoustic terms employed in the customary manner, definitions of which may be found in standard works of reference.
ACOUSTIC DESIGN: A new interdiscipline requiring the talents of scientists, social scientists and artists (particularly musicians), acoustic design attempts to discover principles by which the aesthetic quality of the acoustic environment or SOUNDSCAPE may be improved. In order to do this it is necessary to conceive of the soundscape as a huge musical composition, ceaselessly evolving about us, and to ask how its orchestration and forms may be improved to bring about a richness and diversity of effects which, nevertheless, should never be destructive of human health or welfare. The principles of acoustic design may thus include the elimination or restriction of certain sounds (noise abatement), the testing of new sounds before they are released indiscriminately into the environment, but also the preservation of sounds (SOUNDMARKS), and above all the imaginative placement of sounds to create attractive and stimulating acoustic environments for the future. Acoustic design may also include the composition of model environments, and in this respect it is contiguous with contemporary musical composition. Compare: ACOUSTIC ECOLOGY.
ACOUSTIC ECOLOGY: Ecology is the study of the relationship between living organisms and their environment. Acoustic ecology is thus the study of the effects of the acoustic environment or SOUNDSCAPE on the physical responses or behavioral characteristics of creatures living within it. Its particular aim is to draw attention to imbalances which may have unhealthy or inimical effects. Compare: ACOUSTIC DESIGN.
ACOUSTIC SPACE: The profile of a sound over the
landscape. The acoustic space of any sound is that area over which it may be heard before it drops below the ambient sound level.
AURAL SPACE: The space on any graph which results from a plotting of the various dimensions of sound against one another. For convenience in reading usually only two dimensions are plotted at once. Thus time may be plotted against frequency, frequency against amplitude or amplitude against time. Aural space is thus merely a notational convention and should not be confused with ACOUSTIC SPACE, which is an expression of the profile of a sound over the landscape.
CLAIRAUDIENCE: Literally, clear hearing. The way I use the term there is nothing mystical about it; it simply refers to exceptional hearing ability, particularly with regard to environmental sound. Hearing ability may be trained to the clairaudient state by means of EAR CLEANING exercises.
EAR CLEANING: A systematic program for training the ears to listen more discriminatingly to sounds, particularly those of the environment. A set of such exercises is given in my book Ear Cleaning.
EARWITNESS: One who testifies or can testify to what he or she has heard.
HI-FI: Abbreviation for high fidelity, that is, a favorable signal-to-noise ratio. The most general use of the term is in electroacoustics. Applied to soundscape studies a hi-fi environment is one in which sounds may be heard clearly without crowding or masking. Compare: LO-FI.
The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World Page 32