Historian Emily Thompson prepared a wonderful resource to explore for people interested in how sound and listening was thought of, articulated and discussed in the early 20^th century. In the website The Roaring Twenties, Thompson presents huge amounts of documents and film footage related to noise in New York City 1900-1933. A lot of the material more specifically relates to noise abatement: complaint letters from concerned citizens or documentation of measures taken to abate or minimize noise in New York City. Thomson collected the material during her research for The Soundscape of Modernity (Thompson 2002), where she synthesises and narrates her findings. The website, however, is a resource for users to explore for themselves. Please do so, and take your time finding interesting bits that hint to what sound meant to people in New York during the first third of the 20^th century.

In her introductory text Thompson writes about the interest in historical sound culture and the way it reshapes our knowledge of the past as well as our methods:

“Historians have only recently begun to consider sound, but their work is already reshaping our understanding of the past in significant ways.  This new work has been accompanied by an ever-increasing number of historic sound recordings made easily available via the internet, and the opportunity to listen in on the past has never been greater.  But recorded sound presents new challenges as well as opportunities.  Of course any recording is highly mediated by layers of technology that must be accounted for, but a more fundamental challenge lies in the fact that, while people hear with their ears, they listen with their minds.  The best work in aural history is as much about listening as it is about sound, recovering the meaning of sound as well as the sound itself.”

(Emily Thompson at The Roaring Twenties website:)

In Thompson's project and in a few other studies on historical sources, noise complaints and noise abatement form an entrance to a historical culture of listening. See also Karin Bijsterveldt's “Listening to Machines: Industrial Noise, Hearing Hoss and the Cultural Meaning of Sound” and John Picker's “The Soundproof Study”, both in the Sound Studies Reader (on Picker's study see next page as well). Looking at such studies, it becomes clear that noise is by no means an ‘objective’ category. What is noise and what is not noise, changes from culture to culture, from historical period to historical period. But what becomes even clearer is that the aesthetic or hygienic quest against noise also seems to have an element of social antagonism to it. Defining what sounds are acceptable is also an act of controlling certain kinds of behaviour.

If you study the material in The Roaring Twenties you will find indications of sounds that are rarely heard today. For instance: there are probably not that many noise complaints concerning horses, barkers, peddlers and paper vendors today. But a lot of the knowledge that can be found in the material is less about changing sonic environments and more about changing attitudes towards sound. At this particular time the use and acceptance of loudspeakers in public space, seems to have been heavily debated. 

 

Suggested reading:

Emliy Thompson: “Sound, Modernity and History” in Sound Studies Reader

The text is the introduction from Thompson's book: The Soundscape of Modernity. Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America 1900-1930 (2002)
 

Suggested assignment:

–  Find an example of a sound or a noise complaint that interest you. Present it to the class, to a fellow student or to yourself in writing, Consider the context: is this a usual complaint / heard sound? Why was it experienced as intrusive? Are you familiar with the sound and have you had the same experience? Or has things changed? Why?

– Study the site and make two lists: one of sounds that are rarely heard today and one of sound that seems to have a different meaning or function today.