Providing some aural pleasure

The number of emerging high-tech concert halls, Bose home theater systems and iPods alone is evidence enough that the phenomenon of "perfect sound" has taken America by storm. Consider the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall this month in L.A. Billed as "one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world," the concert hall is lined with Douglas Fir and was designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry of EMP fame. When the L.A. Philharmonic practiced in the space for the first time, the conductor was astounded at how many mistakes were evident in a piece he previously thought had been performed flawlessly. Such is the reality of the culture of listening in America today.

It may seem dubious that this quest for "perfect sound," so distinctive in the recent construction of the Disney Concert Hall, dates back to ideologies of the Enlightenment. But Emily Thompson, Senior Fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT, would beg to differ. Thompson will present the findings and ramifications of her newest book, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (MIT Press, 2002), this Friday in the Biddle Music Building. Thompson's is the first in a lecture series entitled "The Modern Ear" sponsored by the Music Department, under the direction of Louise Meintjes, Director of Graduate Studies. The series will continue in the spring semester with three more lectures addressing the underlying cultural ideologies propelling the evolution of "'good sound' in relation to histories of ideas, acoustic research and development, philosophies of the senses, audience practices, technological advances, ideologies of the Enlightenment and modernity and the politics of empire."

Focusing primarily on the influence of modernity in early 20th century America, Thompson examines history to explain how cultural values and beliefs led to the eruption and shape of acoustical engineering. The worship of industrialization and science that Modernism established permanently altered the ways in which we both listen to and create sound. Case in point--in the early 1920s reverberation was both discovered and eliminated through scientific techniques, resulting in the eventual disassociation of sound from space. Sound could be manipulated; hence, the loudspeakers and the headphones; hence, Disney Concert Hall.

The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 is this Friday, Oct. 31 at 4 p.m. in Room 101 Biddle Music Building, East Campus, and is co-sponsored by the Film and Video Program. Admission is free.