Noise Author(S): Siegmund Levarie Reviewed Work(S): Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol

Noise Author(s): Siegmund Levarie Reviewed work(s): Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 21-31 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343040 . Accessed: 03/04/2012 10:35

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Critical Inquiry.

http://www.jstor.org Noise

SiegmundLevarie

Noise has become an increasingly noticeable and significant symptom of our civilization. Fundamentally an acoustical phenomenon, noise has wider implications.It is the legitimateobject of scientificinvestigations in the fields of psychology and physiology. It can be properly evaluated by its role in music and in general aesthetics. It leads to basic questions of sociology. We shall pursue the implications in these various fields one by one. In this process, as elsewhere, music provides the bridge from facts (acoustics, psychology, physiology) to commitments (aesthetics, sociology). Acoustics.-If we define sound as anything we can hear, then noise is the kind of sound that is disorderly. The orderly kind of sound is called tone. All sound is either the one or the other or a mixture of the two. The disorderly aspect of noise is very evident when we look at an oscillogram, that is, the visual transcription of the vibration underlying every sound. The line produced by noise is highly erratic whereas that of pure tone emerges as a perfect sine curve. The main distinction between disorderly noise and orderly tone concerns pitch. The orderliness of the vibration bestows on tone an individually defined, discrete pitch, which noise lacks. The disorderli- ness of the vibration keeps noise undifferentiated. Pitch can be exactly measured (by frequency or wavelength) and exactly reproduced, whereas noise can at best be estimated by approximation. Otherwise all sounds-noise as well as tone-may be characterized by different degrees of loudness and different qualities of timbre. Hence contrary to the common usage of the word, noise is not necessarily loud. There are soft noises: the turning of a page, distant footsteps, normal 21 22 Siegmund Levarie Noise

frff1ffV~

FIG. 1.-Oscillograms of tone (top) and noise (bottom). breathing. Nor is noise necessarily grating. There are unaggressive noises: rustling silk, rubbing one's hands, a running brook. In the sounding world around us, noise is far more common than tone. Occasionally nature produces tones, as when the wind blows through a reed or a bird sings; but in general almost all natural sounds around us are noises. The production of tone, on the whole, requires a controlled situation. Tone is a human artefact brought about primarily by special "instruments" capable of creating regular vibrations. Elastic strings have proven extremely practical, but other materials and devices have given good service (pipes, electric currents, and others). Outside music, man produces tones as by-products of some organized activity: the clanging of a bowstring (as beautifully described at the beginning of the Iliad), the hitting of hammer against anvil, the striking of a clock. In human life, as in nature, noise is the common occurrence. Tone is an accomplishment. Spoken language exemplifies well the mixture of noise and tone: all consonants are noises, and all vowels are tones. Hence singers are taught to sing on vowels (the differentiation among which derives from timbre). Psychology.-The basic biological factor determining our attitude toward sound is that we cannot close our ears. We cannot "listen away" as

Siegmund Levarie is professor of music at the City University of New York. The author of books on Mozart, Guillaume de Machaut, harmony, and Italian music, he has also collaboratedwith Ernst Levy on Tone:A Studyin MusicalAcoustics and the forthcoming A Dictionaryof MusicalMorphology. Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977 23 we can look away. We are defenseless against sound. Usually we cannot even place an adequate barrier between us and the audible source of a sound; for sound, unlike light, casts no shadow. It goes around most obstacles. Our defenselessness concerns all sound, not only noise but also tone. The threatening effect of sound on the human psyche has been well observed in the case of newborn infants, who display a very special kind of reflex, known as the Moro reflex, in response to any loud noise, to a jarring of the crib: "The infant lying on his back extends his arms for- ward, stiffens the lower extremities and contorts his face into a grimace; after a second or two he brings the arms slowly together into a sort of embrace, emits a cry and then gradually relaxes. The reflex normally persists for about a month or six weeks, being gradually replaced by the startle response shown by adults following a loud noise like a pistol shot."' Studies of the Moro reflex have not distinguished, to my knowledge, between tone and noise-perhaps because the sounds in a lying-in ward are likely to be exclusively noise. One wishes that pediatric experiments be refined to determine whether such a distinction might be mirrored by the kind of reflex.2 In any case, the infant's reaction to sound differs significantly from its reaction to other stimuli. Before the end of the first week of life, the infant closes its eyelids when disturbed by some visual stimulation, and it withdraws in a most coordinated manner a painfully stimulated arm or leg. To auditory stimuli, however, it remains exposed. This association between sound and the threatening outer world, early established, lies within the everyday experience of all of us. Our mature differentiation between noise and tone has a bearing on our enjoyment of listening to music. For while we remain defenseless before the power of any sound, the controlled presentation of orderly tones in a good composition obviates the primeval threat. The intelligible organiza- tion of music permits us to master and subsequently to enjoy the otherwise confusing and often irritating acoustical stimuli.3 Noise, on the other hand, evokes in adults and children alike a direct reflex action as if it were a signal of danger, or an unpleasant attack. Indicative in this regard is our immediate reaction, without interference of logical thought, to thunder and lightning. Although we know that lightning 1. L. E. Holt and J. Howland, Holt's Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, 11th ed., rev. by L. E. Holt, Jr., and R. McIntosh (New York, 1940). 2. Since writing this article, I have persuaded Dr. Nathan Rudolph, of the depart- ment of pediatrics, Downstate Medical Center, State University of New York, to join me in setting up such experiments. In due time, we hope to publish the results. Preliminary findings indicate that newborn infants indeed distinguish between tone and noise. Of twenty-four neonates tested thus far, all were disturbed by noise and only three by tone. 3. For a development of these thoughts in a different context, see Heinz Kohut and Siegmund Levarie, "On the Enjoyment of Listening to Music," The PsychoanalyticQuarterly 19 (1950): 64-87. 24 Siegmund Levarie Noise may ignite our house and kill us, we really shudder, not at the dangerous flash, but at the accompanying noise of the harmless thunder. The very idiom "thunder and lightning" reverses the order of the physical event so that the terrifying emphasis lands on the word describing the sound. Similarly, according to reports by many Jews who, in Germany under Hitler, lived in continuous fear of being arrested, the sighting of a stormtrooper generated less instinctive fear than the ringing of the doorbell. In Anne Frank's dramatized story, the threat of approaching footsteps provides the terrifying climax. During World War II the Ger- mans tried to panic the Allied troops by extra noise producers attached to their dive bombers. This practice followed a long tradition, extending from primitive warriors to modern bayonet fighters, which adds the terror of noise to the menace of the weapon. Noise need not be loud in order to offend, although here as elsewhere the inherent quality is intensified by extremes (very high, very low, very loud, very soft). In periods of stress or preoccupation or con- centration, even a very soft noise can provoke a startled response. A moment later one might smile at the apparently foolish overresponse, but one is psychologically justified in having felt attacked. Musicians know the distressing irritation caused by the smallest scratch on a phonograph record, or by a static on the radio, as if the minimal noise amidst controlled tones symbolized a fundamental aggression against one's civilized status. Physiology.--Just as noise assails our psyche, it also damages our hearing apparatus. Factory workers, among others, can attest to both psychic fatigue at the end of a day and physiological hearing impairment at the end of their lives. According to current studies, deafness may be only one symptom in a wider syndrome caused by noise. In 1960, Dr. Samuel Rosen, an otologist at Columbia University, organized an expedition to the Sudan to conduct a hearing survey of a population living in a relatively noise-free environment.4 He chose an area which until 1956 had been a "closed" one,

untouched by any foreign culture or civilization .... It is primarily bush country surrounded by swamps of the White Nile and con- tains abundant game. It is accessible only during the dry season by truck or jeep over a narrow, rough dirt trail sometimes difficult to find and to follow. In this isolated area live the Mabaans, a pre- nilotic, pagan, primitive, tribal people whose state of cultural development is the late Stone Age. They are a peaceful and quiet people,... living in small huts with straw-thatched roofs and bam-

4. The following report leans on his findings. See Samuel Rosen et al., "Prebycusis Study of a Relatively Noise-free Population in the Sudan," Annals of Otology,Rhinology and Laryngology 71 (September 1962): 727-43; and "High Frequency Audiometry in Pre- bycusis: A Comparative Study of the Mabaan Tribe in the Sudan with Urban Populations," Archives of Otolaryngology79 (January 1964): 18-32. Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977 25

boo sides. . . . They have no guns, but hunt and fish with spears. They do not use drums in their dance and song but pluck a five- string lyre and beat a log with a stick.

This musical merry-making of the youth was the only high-level noise recorded by the researchers during a two-month period. Except for "the fleeting noises of domestic animals, few other sounds were sufficiently intense to yield a reading on the sound level meter." Carefully set up audiometric and other medical tests confirmed the case against "noise as the critical factor in the differences in hearing with aging in various populations." In modern industrialized areas in the United States, hearing deteriorates in the natural course of aging. The primitive Mabaans, ranging in age from ten to ninety, "demonstrated better hearing in the high frequency with aging than any [people] in similar studies of modern western civilization. ... There is a simultaneous presence of blood pressure elevation and high tone loss with aging in the United States. There is a simultaneous absence of elevated blood pressure and high tone loss with aging in the Mabaans." The auditory test results could have been predicted on the basis of the steep and noticeable increase of hearing aids even among middle- aged people in New York City. The established harmful effect of noise on blood pressure is likely to be paralleled by analogous findings in medical areas yet to be investigated. Music.-Although music may utilize all available sounds, the proper building material of the art of music is tone. When we think of a piece-a popular tune or a Bach fugue-we identify it by its pitches, that is, precisely by that characteristic of sound that distinguishes tone from noise. The other sound qualities of loudness and timbre enter but remain dispensable. To evoke the "Star-spangled Banner," for instance, one does not first wonder whether it is hummed or trumpeted but rather how its opening line "goes." If I reproduce this line, another person will recognize it as an individual, particular experience defined by pitches. Now the path from the unlimited world of sound to the discrete experience of a specific piece of music marks a long and complex accomplishment of civilized man. It involves spiritual as well as intellectual endeavors, all of them in the direction from random to order, from nature to art. The process is one of continued selection, of increasingly refined discrimination. At the beginning lies undifferentiated sound; at the end, the art of music. The diagram on page 26 sketches the main steps in the development from the infinite world of physical vibration to the finite world of musical tones. In this process of repeated distillation, the left column shows the increasing purification; the right column, the nonmusical elements that are eliminated at each step. Just to distil sound from the rest of nature, 26 Siegmund Levarie Noise

Vibration oo

Supersensory, infrasensory

Perceived by senses

Other senses (eye: light, etc.)

Ear: sound

Noise

Tone

Continuous pitch variation (siren)

Discrete pitch variation (individuation)

Chance relations (asystematic)

Musically meaningful tone relations (systematic)

FIG. 2.-The selection process from vibration to music. we first eliminate all those vibrations that we do not perceive because they lie above or below our senses (X rays, radio waves) or that we do not hear because their frequency is either too high (light) or too low (e.g., a swing). From sound, we distil pitches, that is, tones, by eliminating noise. From the infinite number of possible pitches (as represented by the siren), we select discrete tones. And finally to reach a musical system- any musical system-we eliminate asystematic chance relations between tones and select systematically from among the discrete tones a certain number with which to operate. In Western tradition, this number hap- pens to be 12. Other numbers are possible. Whatever the musical system, however, it is inevitably reached by a similar selection process which successively rejects nonmusical elements in favor of musical. From this final point of view, noise appears as a premusical element. Other phenomena that may be called premusical are continuous pitch variation-that is, the siren or glissando in which individuated tones remain submerged-and asystematic chance relations of tones which deprive individuated tones of meaningful connections. The history of music, at least until recently, is a manifestation of musically meaningful tone relations. Before the Romanticism of the nineteenth century, noise instruments such as drums and cymbals were almost never prescribed by the composer. They existed, of course, and Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977 27 were employed for particular purposes (such as marches, dances) but they never characterized the musical style of a period or composer. In the entire huge opus by Bach, there is not a single instance of a nondis- crete pitch. Timpani, when providing a desired element of percussive definition, are always marked by pitch. (So are the bells in the spurious cantata "Schlage doch," the only occurrence in the music of Bach of another percussion instrument.) Similarly Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven employ pitchless noise instruments only when deliberately evoking the barbarian: in occasional Turkish music in symphonies or in an opera like Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serail. The situation drastically changes in the Romantic style of the nineteenth century which must be considered a direct antecedent of many current trends. Realism, first at home in opera, demanded noise. Beethoven raises a storm in the Pastoral Symphony exclusively with instruments of defined pitch while producing the artful illusion of noise by an indistinct and quasi-disorderly mixture of tones in a low register. Comparable pieces by later composers utilize drums, wind machines, rattling chains, scratching metals, and hammer strokes. The establishment of noise as a primary style characteristic can be read off the growing lists of noise instruments in twentieth-century scores. Highly typical in this respect is the work of Edgar Varese, a strong influence on generations of American composers growing up after the Second World War. His famous Ionization, of 1931, is scored for thirty-nine percussion instruments without definite pitch, three percussion instruments with definite pitch, and two sirens. The participation of sirens is significant. The glissando of a siren projects a theoretically infinite number of tones each one of which has lost individuality because of the almost instantaneous transition to its immediate neighbor. This lack of pitch definition places the sound of a siren psychologically closer to noise than to tone. It is the opposite of individuation, a continuous becoming, never an artistic being. Like noise, a siren is premusical (see fig. 2). Aesthetics.--Individualized and individuating pitch accounts for the fundamental distinction between tone and noise. Yet in the world around us, the two aspects of sound are seldom, if ever, cleanly sepa- rated. Pure tone, that is, the acoustical counterpart of an exact sine curve, can be electrically produced in a laboratory. It may be approxi- mated by the vibration of a tuning fork. Otherwise all tones we hear contain some admixture of noise, particularly at the moment of attack. The complex mechanism of a piano, for instance, never completely elim- inates the noise of the finger on the key, of the actions of the various levers against each other, and of the hammer against the string. The best violinist cannot entirely free his tone production from some scratching of the bow against the string; the best flutist, from some wind escaping from his mouthpiece; the best timpanist, from some rapping of his sticks 28 Siegmund Levarie Noise against the membrane. A singer is bound to noise by the consonants of his text; among musical performers, he may have the best chance of approaching purity of tone in a vocalization such as a melisma, colora- tura, or a piece expressly so composed (for instance, the "Chorus of Heavenly Spirits" in Spontini's opera Nurmahal, or Ravel's Vocalise en forme d'Habanera). The aesthetic criterion guiding performers is the elimination or, at least, maximal reduction of any noise. All technical training concentrates on how to minimize scratching, knocking, hissing, rasping, and grating. The aesthetic ideal, in short, is escape from noise toward tone. This purely practical process parallels the artful distillation demonstrated for the genesis of tone out of premusical elements. Tone becomes the final aesthetic accomplishment, while noise remains symptomatic of a more primitive stage transcended by evolving civilization. The persistent admixture of noise to tone serves as a reminder of the imperfection of this material world. "Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest Zu tragen peinlich," Goethe complains at the end of Faust. "We are left to bear painfully an earthly remainder." Yet a positive lesson may also be drawn: absolute purity comes treacherously close to sterility. For the maintenance of life, bacteria are as essential as cleanliness. Music made with "sterilized" pure tones would have as limited an appeal as existence under an oxygen tent. The only such composition (of limited duration) in my experience appropriately accompanied an eerie fairy story in an illusive silvery puppet theater. The opposite process, namely, the recognition of the presence of tone in every noise, is also possible. Analysis of sound, developed by the French scientist J. B. J. Fourier around 1800, shows that every sound can be dissected into an unlimited number of sine waves, that is, tones, of varying frequencies. No matter what the noise, it can be understood as a superposed conglomeration of tone "clusters." Unlike the presence of noise in tone which could be ideally eliminated, the presence of tone in noise is fundamental. Noise can be decomposed into tone, but the flow is not reversible. Noise is the primary, natural, disorderly phenomenon. It becomes the remainder in the refined, artistic, orderly genesis of tone. For the production of music, noise, unlike tone, is not essential but may serve it as, in terms of evolution, a tamed animal serves man. Noise, though inadequate to create a musical system, may add spice to a composition. Thus it has been used-apart from the deliberate barbarism of Turkish music-throughout most of music history. In dance music, percussion instruments mark the characteristic beat and add luster to the tune. In Richard Wagner's overture to Die Meistersingervon Niirnberg (to give just one example), a soft triangle stroke distinguishes the artful combination of three themes at the moment of return to the tonic C major; and a rousing loud cymbal clash, the climactic final cadence. In these as in countless similar instances, noise, always subordinated to Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977 29 tone, affects us like a lion in a cage. It provides excitement without danger. In the coexistence of noise and tone, aesthetic value derives from the preponderance of one over the other. Sociology.-In recent decades, noise has broken out of the cage. It dominates the contemporary scene outside and inside the concert hall. Together with the siren, it has become the most noticeable symptom of modern life. Electric appliances, crowded stores and supermarkets, factory machines, automobiles, trains, airplanes-whatever the technologi- cal gain, the concomitant phenomenon and the price we pay for it is noise, and usually at a high degree of loudness. Our spontaneous reaction to the howling of a siren, the acoustical symbol for dynamism run wild, is utilized by the alarm signals of fire engines, police cars, ambu- lances, and air-raid drills. Has the intended shock worn off so that we accept the wailing factory siren as a substitute for the noon bells of a church? Under the impact of noise and sirens, our healthy and elemen- tary reactions to acoustical events and acoustically deeply rooted symbols seem to be vanishing. Only occasionally some feeling for fundamentals still prevails-usually on a subconscious level-as in the identification of the all-clear signal with a steady tone. Similarly amidst the confusing and inherently threatening noise of a traffic crossing, the reassuring horn tones of a honking car admonish us to collect our wits. The overpower- ing attack by noise on a defenseless population has evoked an increasing number of protective anti-noise laws in various cities, states, and coun- tries. In music, too, noise and glissando, for the first time in civilized history, have assumed the role of a primary style characteristic. They have affected alike popular entertainment and avant-garde sophistica- tion. Compared to the language of systematic tonal relationships, there is no difference between, on one side of the social spectrum, the gross brass slides and loud drum batteries in a dance hall and, on the other, the relatively pleasant and soft sound of a vibrating gong submerging in a bucket of water. The overall popularity of noise instruments is re- flected, among other symptoms, in the recent quantitative and qualita- tive superiority of a percussion program at a leading New York college over other instrumental instruction. What are the possible reasons for the ascendancy of noise in our society? How can we interpret it? It signifies a particular kind of rebel- lion. We have established the acoustical and musical facts according to which a system built on musically meaningful tone relations represents the end product of a long and artful selection process. To arrive at it, many elements had to be eliminated, among them noise. The result of the selection process marks an accomplishment of civilized man; for civilization may be defined as a willingness to accept limitations, and within the infinite world of sounds, any tone system signifies a voluntary limitation. In this sense, a creative artist is essentially always civilized, for 30 Siegmund Levarie Noise he cannot work without some kind of limitation. A citizen is civilized if he understands that the alternative to limitation is chaos and anarchy. By contrast, any deliberate repudiating of accomplishments of civilization and voluntary returning to a precivilized state denotes an act of rebellious barbarianism. Rebellions are sometimes necessary. They can produce positive results when a justified need for change replaces the old order, not by anarchy, but by a new order. Such was the case in the American Revolution. Music history, too, records various "revolts." We read that the secular uprising of the ars nova of the fourteenth century was condemned in a papal bull because of its depravity, wantonness, irregularity, and excess. Around the year 1600, the crumbling confines of an earlier practice were overthrown by a group of composers in the north of Italy, whose new aesthetic principles were in turn interpreted by musicians of the next generation as "deformations of nature and propriety." None of these and other revolutionary efforts, however, re- lapsed into disorder because each in its own way accepted as a basis for further operations the artistic accomplishments of discrete tone and some ordered system. The development of music (and of good art in general) has been identical with that of civilized man. Today, however, the rebellious departure from traditional music is one of principle. It began with Arnold Sch6nberg's attack, in the early decades of the century, not on discrete tones, but on natural tone relationships and proportions. Since then, for the first time in history, an irruption of the irrational has openly declared musical proportion and order to be without value. Noise and other phenomena eliminated on the long path from chaotic sound to civilized music are claimed to be essential. The inarticulate and the unformed have been elevated to aesthetic standards. Noise has emerged as the standard bearer of the forces rejecting civilization. Barbarianism has always existed, but never before has it been held up as a model to aspire to. The function of barbarianism in our society was predicted and described in 1930 by Ortega y Gasset: "The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will."5 A decade before him, Karl Kraus had written: "A culture ends when the barbarians break out of it."6 The eruption of noise in contemporary music has been claimed to be "good" on the grounds that it is an expression of our time. If it be true that art should mirror its time, it must by no means mirror only the external and existent. The mirror should also reflect human aspirations and their wellsprings. The art of great epochs has fulfilled this function

5. The Revolt of the Masses (New York, 1951), p. 12. 6. Pro domo et mundo (Leipzig, 1919), p. 147. Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977 31 above all others. Greek art reflects not so much the actual Greek of the time as a certain elevated aspect of the Greek soul. The Romantic postu- late, that the artist's works are identical with his life, is clearly at variance with fact. One need not boast about "expressing one's time." The secular, physical person is only half the man; and of this half, biography renders account. Art is much more the record of that other, invisible part of him. It provides those energies which shape the most precious parts of ourselves. For above all, the task of art is to show a way. In medieval terms, it is anagogic. Where art is concerned, one may safely ignore all concern for being timely. The new barbarianism, with its premusical, precivilized worship of noise, glissando, and indistinct pitches offers no vision and denies natural and artistic norms. It is like scream- ing during a catastrophe-an occupation that is neither musical nor artful. The responsible reaction is to try to recognize noise for what it is and to assess it accordingly.