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 ...

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