The Soundscape of Modernity, Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America 1900-1933

by Emily Thompson.
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002.
500 pp., illus. Trade 44.95.
ISBN: 0-262-20138-0.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen,
Hogeschool Gent,
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent,
Belgium,

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Chances are that you never read or heard about Wallace Sabine, the modest Harvard professor who can be regarded as the real founding father of modern acoustics. Read this book to meet the man and his work, and read it to take a fascinating journey into the changing soundscape of modern American cities, the rise of a new scientific discipline sandwiched between academics and engineering, and the gradual 'civilisation process' of the sonorous environment in the early twentieth century.

At the end of the nineteenth century, American cities must have been deafening indeed. Peddlers, street cars, construction workers, traffic and ships on the river all contributed to an unimaginable din. On the other hand, lecture rooms, concert halls and conference halls were designed and built without the slightest idea of how they would sound. Several newly built lecture rooms at Harvard and the Hall of the House of Representatives in the Rhode Island State Capitol were practically useless because of a ghastly acoustic. In comes a young physicist who starts painstaking research (at night, adding and removing cushions from the seats and using his own ears to measure sound intensity) to get a grasp of the underlying laws of sound distribution and propagation. Wallace Sabine drew up a simple formula which enabled him to estimate the reverberation time of any enclosed space even when it was still on the drawing tables. His success was deafening. As a professor, he didn't want to cash in on his discoveries on a grand scale - the times they are a-changin' indeed! - and he helped design some famous Concert Halls, solved acoustical problems in existing buildings and supported commercial research for acoustically interesting materials for a modest fee only.

The life and works of Sabine make up the backbone as well as two chapters of this thoroughly researched, lavishly illustrated and well written book. But the author has more stories to tell. In a first chapter she looks at the prehistory of acoustics: beliefs and preconceptions about the propagation of sound and the form of theatres from the early eighteenth century on. 'Noise And Modern Culture, 1900-1933' deals with the efforts of city councils and humanitarian activists to abate noise indoors and outdoors. At times hilarious and at times endearing, Thompson portrays well-meaning citizens and hard-headed politicians and businessmen who, in trying to abate the continuous and universal pandemonium, contributed to a growing awareness of the detrimental effects of a noisy environment. In her analysis, she echoes sociologist Bruno Latour's story of the 'Pasteurization of France' as well as Foucault's history of madness. It is a convincing story of how people develop 'new ears' and start distinguishing between noise and sound, meanwhile cleaning up the streets and controlling public space and public life - a process that is still continuing to-day.

Chapter five describes the search for acoustical materials (here is Sabine again!) and the development of modern architectural practice. Three examples of very different buildings are described in great detail: St-Thomas Church New York, the New York Life Insurance Company Building and the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building. (Notice the photos of segregated dining rooms for Ladies and Gentlemen on page 204 for a good laugh). In chapter 6, Thompson tells the story of electroacoustics and modern sound: the rise of the loudspeaker, the radio hall and the modern auditorium. It is with the advent of electroacoustics that Sabine's laws become more precise, applicable and scientific in the full sense of the word.

Finally, an entire chapter is devoted to the Rockefeller Center and Radio City Hall. Celebrated as the epitome of modern engineering and the taming of sound, it was also criticised for being a sepulchre, a 'gray, unreal and baleful' building. (When Diego Rivera made a mural and added the face of Lenin in his depiction of the forces of industry, science and the people, Rockefeller had it destroyed.) The financial failure of Radio City Hall marked the end of an era of an unlimited scientific and economic optimism (of course the Crash in 1929 was the real end of those times) and the world as well as our sonorous environment 'would never be the same again'.