The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World (47 page)

The invention of water birds appears to date back to Ctesibius of Alexandria
(c
. 250 B.C.). The birds were made to sing by forcing a stream of air into them by water pressure, thus using the same principle as Hero of Alexandria’s water organ. In fact, in Hero’s
Pneumatics
a very sophisticated version of the singing birds is described in which the birds perform in turns. Here the water, entering a closed vessel, expels the air from it through bronze tubes, placed at staggered levels. These tubes are concealed among the branches of a tree and end in whistles attached to the beaks of artificial birds. Vitruvius also mentions such devices as well as “little figures which drink and move; and other things which flatter the pleasure of the eyes and the use of the ears.” That similar devices were plentiful in Italian Baroque gardens is verified by John Evelyn’s diary, which contains numerous descriptions of such displays. At Frascati, villa of Cardinal Aldobrandini, Evelyn observed

hydraulic organs, and all sorts of singing birds, moving and chirping by force of the water, with several other pageants and surprising inventions. In the centre of one of these rooms, rises a copper ball that continually dances about three feet above the pavement, by virtue of a wind conveyed secretly to a hole beneath it; with many other devices to wet the unwary spectators, so that one can hardly step without wetting to the skin. In one of these theaters of water, is an Atlas spouting up the stream to a very great height; and another monstermakes a terrible roaring with a horn; but, above all, the representation of a storm is most natural, with such fury of rain, wind, and thunder, as one would imagine oneself in some extreme tempest.

There is no doubt that this
théâtre d’eau
, as it is called, often ran to extremes. It is clear, however, that with a little thought the acoustic designer could create great adventures with water. The mere fact that water sounds differently when played on different surfaces and materials could be a subject of rich inventions. Imagine a specially contrived parterre, fashioned out of all kinds of materials—woods, bamboos, metals, scalloped stones, shells—arranged with sounding boxes beneath them, under such a common natural event as a rainstorm. There is a suggestion of the part that different materials and resonating shapes can play under streams of water in Evelyn’s description of the famous fountains in the garden of Cardinal Richelieu’s villa, at Rueil.

At the further part of this walk is that plentiful, though artificial cascade, which rolls down a very steep declivity, and over the marble steps and basins, with an astonishing noise and fury; each basin hath a jetto in it, flowing like sheets of transparent glass, especially that which rises over the great shell of lead, from whence it glides silently down a channel through the middle of a spacious gravel walk, terminating in a grotto. … We then saw a large and very rare grotto of shell-work, in the shape of Satyrs, and other wild fancies: in the middle stands a marble table, on which a fountain plays in divers forms of glasses, cups, crosses, fans, crowns, etc. Then the fountaineer represented a shower of rain from the top, met by small jets from below. At going out, two extravagant musketeers shot us with a stream of water from their musket barrels. Before this grotto is a long pool into which ran divers spouts of water from leaden escalop basins.

There is a hint here, perhaps not yet fully developed technically, of a water concert which could become the objective of an exciting collaboration between a sculptor and an acoustic designer.

Around the world there are numerous further water devices which could be utilized for aesthetic effects: the water wheel, for instance, which is most attractive when it revolves asymmetrically so that its tempo is now rapid, now slow. In Bali there is an ingenious irrigation system in which large pieces of bamboo on hinges fill up with water from a stream then flip over, spilling water into the rice fields. As each tips back it produces a hollow tapping sound and one may hear amid the continuous bubbling of water a delicate and irregular recital of taps from fifty or more of these little water mills in operation at once. Alter the lengths of the bamboo tubes and a continuous marimba melody would result.

We must completely revise the thinking of the modern designer for whom a drainpipe is merely runoff for effluvia. Imagine a habitat building with staggered roofs from which the water tumbled into many differentkinds of tubes and basins, spurted out of all kinds of gargoyles and spouts, flooded windows, slid down oblique surfaces, and caused all kinds of playful automata to pipe, gurgle, revolve or whistle!

The Spirit Of the Wind
      The polynoise of water, from which the acoustic designer can draw forth limitless variations, has a pneumatic parallel in the Aeolian harp. Here again man constructs the instrument, but nature plays upon it; and the eerie and even frightening sounds which issue from its strings correspond precisely with what we have already written about the deviousness of the wind. Consider this description by E. T. A. Hoffmann of a large-scale wind harp during a storm.

I had had the weather harp tightened, which, as you know, is stretched above the large fountain; and the storm, like an accomplished musician, played lustily on it as on a giant harmonica. The chords of this huge organ resounded fearfully through the raging and howling of the hurricane. The powerful tones beat faster and faster, and one might have been listening to a ballet of the Furies in an unusually grand style such as would never be heard within a stage’s canvas walls. Well—in half an hour all was over. The moon came out from behind the clouds; the night wind murmured consolingly in the frightened forest and dried the tears on the dark bushes. From time to time the weather harp jingled like a somber, distant bell.

The German enthusiasm for Aeolian harps reached its peak during the Romantic era. They are frequently described in the novels of Jean Paul (1763–1825) as well as in Hoffmann; and Goethe calls for several such instruments to orchestrate the angelic choir in the second part of
Faust
(1832). This association of the Aeolian harp with the soaring spirit of the Faustian temperament illustrates Jung’s archetypal coupling of the soul with the transcendental breath of the pneuma.

The Aeolian harp was claimed as a German invention by Athanasius Kircher in his
Musurgia Universalis
of 1650, where he calls it a “musical autophone,” but further research reveals that it was known in Italy, at least in principle, a century before. The invention may be Chinese, by whom it was incorporated into the design of certain kites and was called
Feng Cheng
.

This is a bow made entirely of bamboo. The string is a very thin slip of bamboo about half an inch wide with a small piece left thick at each end to catch in notches which are cut in the end of the bow; and this is a piece of whole bamboo two or three feet long. It is tied to the frame of a paper kite so that the string will catch the wind just above the head of the kite.

A similar type of wind harp installed in a kite is known in Java. Unlike the European variety, which generally consists of a number of strings, sometimes tuned in a harmonic series, those of Java and China produced single tones, though they still possessed the same unearthly quality. A description of a Javanese wind harp bears this out.

We heard the deep fundamental of the
sabangan
as F below middle C, which lasted for a long semibreve (say 6 seconds), and then became about half a tone lower. It remained, fading, for a few seconds, and then on the last quarter of the second “bar” passed over into that alarming growling cry, after which the note F was again heard. And so it went on.

The principle of the Aeolian harp was widely known. It is encountered in Ethiopia, South Africa and among the Indians of South America. It is also present in the singing tree of
The Thousand and One Nights
, where beautiful notes arose when even a breeze passed the tree and were then lost upon it. Usually the sound of Aeolian harps produced a peculiar wailing quality which Berlioz likened to “a sharp attack of spleen linked to a temptation toward suicide"; but in fact any number of sounds could be produced by such instruments, and the sculptor and acoustic designer should combine their skills to bring about the rich variety of possible effects for the soniferous garden of the future.

Wind chimes of glass, shell, bamboo, and wood are other means of giving the wind an additional voice, though in this case its sounding is altered to produce a clattering or trembling pulsation of indeterminate character.

A judicious placement of signs in the garden would serve not only to draw the attention of the public to some of its sonic attractions, but also to stimulate that special composure of the mind that the park, of all places in modern society, ought to seek to rejuvenate.

In one corner of the soniferous garden, if it were spacious enough to permit a multiplicity of sonic attractions without becoming a jumble, there might also be a place for a public instrumentarium, such as that conceived by John Grayson. This consists of a number of simple instruments constructed from natural materials, designed to be permanently installed in a park so that the citizens of a community might come together and play together. I would regard this as a most desirable undertaking in the modern world where all activities which tend to reintroduce the feeling of community are valid. Let the Balinese Gamelan orchestra be our model here. In Bali there are no professional musicians; the orchestras are staffed by all the able-bodied of the community, and they strike up in the evening after work and play late into the night.

In the specifications for Grayson’s orchestra, the inventor requests an ambient noise level of no more than 45 decibels for his instrumentarium; and the total sound level of all the instruments together is designed not to exceed 80 decibels—that is, it does not exceed the level of the human voice and is accordingly ecologically in balance.

There is no place for the unbalanced sound ecology in the park. The task of the acoustic designer is to find reinforcements of natural sounds in the same way as the trellis reinforces the presence of the rose. One of his special problems will be to return an area of the park to the state of a quiet grove in the midst of active city life. This will not be easy. For frontage on busy streets giant mounds of earth may be the only answer, and these should not only be of sufficient height to hide the traffic from sight, but of such construction as to refract the sound away from the park and of such thickness as to deaden ground vibrations. Sunken gardens, grottoes and other types of acoustic baffles will also be of value here.

The suggestions made in these paragraphs will not be suitable for every park. Above all the acoustic park should be kept simple, and it is for this reason that its chief adornment may be nothing more than the Temple of Silence, a building with no purpose other than meditation. There is nothing special about the Temple of Silence except that in it all visitors will be expected to observe silence. It is to this place that the weary may come seeking nothing but the simplicity of the ultimate music on the other side of this world, the silence at the center of which may be heard the ringing of the great orbs of the Music of the Spheres.

NINETEEN

Silence

A sound of silence on the startled ear …

Edgar Allan Poe, “Al Aaraaf”

Quiet Groves and Times
     In the past there were muted sanctuaries where anyone suffering from sound fatigue could go into retirement for recomposure of the psyche. It might be in the woods, or out at sea, or on a snowy mountainside in winter. One would look up at the stars or the soundless soaring of the birds and be at peace.

Leaning on our stout oaken walking sticks, our sacks on our backs, we climbed the cobbled road that led to Karyés, passing through a dense forest of half-defoliated chestnut-trees, pistachios, and broad-leafed laurels. The air smelled of incense, or so it seemed to us. We felt that we had entered a colossal church composed of sea, mountains and chestnut forests, and roofed at the top by the open sky instead of a dome. I turned to my friend; I wanted to break the silence which had begun to weigh upon me. “Why don’t we talk a little?” I suggested. “We are,” answered my friend, touching my shoulder lightly. “We are, but with silence, the tongue of angels.” Then he suddenly appeared to grow angry. “What do you expect us to say? That it’s beautiful, that our hearts have sprouted wings and want to fly away, that we’ve started along a road leading to Paradise? Words, words, words. Keep quiet!”

Just as man requires time for sleep to refresh and renew his life energies, so too he requires quiet periods to regain mental and spiritualcomposure. At one time stillness was a precious article in an unwritten code of human rights. Man held reservoirs of stillness in his life to restore the spiritual metabolism. Even in the hearts of cities there were the dark, still vaults of churches and libraries, or the privacy of drawing room and bedroom. Outside the throb of cities, the countryside was accessible with its lulling whirr of natural sounds. There were still times too. The holy days were quieter before they became holidays. In North America, Sunday was the quietest day before it became Fun-day. The importance of these quiet groves and times far transcended the particular purposes to which they were put. We can comprehend this clearly only now that we have lost them.