Emily Thompson: The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (2002)

“In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era.

Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston’s Symphony Hall, New York’s office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound—clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant—had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2002
ISBN 0262201380, 9780262201384
510 pages

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PDF (33 MB, updated on 2017-5-15)

Leigh Landy: Understanding the Art of Sound Organization (2007)

The art of sound organization, also known as electroacoustic music, uses sounds not available to traditional music making, including pre-recorded, synthesized, and processed sounds. The body of work of such sound-based music (which includes electroacoustic art music, turntable composition, computer games, and acoustic and digital sound installations) has developed more rapidly than its musicology. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization proposes the first general foundational framework for the study of the art of sound organization, defining terms, discussing relevant forms of music, categorizing works, and setting sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts.

Leigh Landy’s goal in this book is not only to create a theoretical framework but also to make sound-based music more accessible—to give a listener what he terms “something to hold on to,” for example, by connecting elements in a work to everyday experience. Landy considers the difficulties of categorizing works and discusses such types of works as sonic art and electroacoustic music, pointing out where they overlap and how they are distinctive. He proposes a “sound-based music paradigm” that transcends such traditional categories as art and pop music. Landy defines patterns that suggest a general framework and places the study of sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts, from acoustics to semiotics, proposing a holistic research approach that considers the interconnectedness of a given work’s history, theory, technological aspects, and social impact.

The author’s ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS, www.ears.dmu.ac.uk), the architecture of which parallels this book’s structure, offers updated bibliographic resource abstracts and related information.

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262122928, 9780262122924
303 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)

Don Ihde: Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound (1976/2007)

“Listening and Voice is an updated and expanded edition of Don Ihde’s groundbreaking 1976 classic in the study of sound. Ranging from the experience of sound through language, music, religion, and silence, clear examples and illustrations take the reader into the important and often overlooked role of the auditory in human life. Ihde’s newly added preface, introduction, and chapters extend these sound studies to the technologies of sound, including musical instrumentation, hearing aids, and the new group of scientific technologies which make infra- and ultra-sound available to human experience.”

First published by Ohio University Press, 1976
Second edition
Publisher SUNY Press, 2007
ISBN 0791472558, 9780791472552
276 pages

Reviews: V. A. Howard (Journal of Aesthetic Education, 1978), Ansa Lønstrup (MedieKultur, 2010).

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PDF (updated on 2021-8-16)