Why Sound? (9/30/24)

While my current book project on Thalbach nuns centers on the question of sound and ceremony, my fascination with sound and soundscapes also helped to get me through the duties of my administrative years. As I pondered systematizing my thoughts, I toyed with several strategies (and blog titles, for that matter), and settled on Silences and Sounds as an overarching theme for the topics I want to engage with over the next long while. Today’s post explores sound as a critical element in my way of being in the world.

Why wallow in sound?

• Because I’m a musicologist; sound is my operational focus
  
• Because making sense of senses is a fundamental human activity 
• For the resolutions of jangling discords into bliss, like in this Corelli example from Op. 3 No. 1

Corelli, Op 3 No. 1...

• (If the clip won't launch, you can find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrg3uPORvV8, 1:09-1:31)

Other reasons I'm interested in sound:

• Because … noise, and beauty, and the serenity made manifest in an adagio
• Because I get unutterably curious about representing one sense in another medium. I write ekphrastic poetry, for instance, turning image or melody into the flow of words.

 

On one side, a photo of a gull; on the other, an imagistic poem about gulls feeding after a storm

• Because the outdoors has its own array of noises: crickets, early morning birds, wind through the trees
• Because there is a seasonality to sound, one that I’d like to ponder on some more

An ear and a cupped hand to capture sound

• Because back in the day after a particularly nasty virus, I transmogrified from having super-acute hearing to subpar acoustical detection skills. Surgery helped, but I still sometimes ache for that loss. As a result I think a lot about how one relates to the presence and absence of such stimuli and about the way sound impacts how we perceive the world.

• Because Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt testament touches my soul even though the writing is raw and the human deeply flawed 
• (IYKYK. If you don’t know, here’s a translation [CW suicidal ideation]:https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Heiligenstadt_Testament) 
  
• Because sound persists in memory, shaping and governing the stories we tell ourselves about being our truest selves. 

What are the critically important elements of sound in your life?