MOST days it started around 9 or 10 am, and carried on until early evening. Usually it was Chopin, played ad nauseam by the piano student next door. The playing wasn’t bad, just incessant – for nearly two years.
After an experience like that, it didn’t surprise me to learn in Mike Goldsmith’s spectacularly good book that the word noise is derived from “nausea”. But Discord is far from a morose dirge about one of today’s major blights. It is full of rich anecdotes, scrupulously researched historical narrative and lucid descriptions of the sometimes bewildering science of sound.
Goldsmith shows that noise pollution is no modern problem. The Greek colony of Sybaris, founded in 720 BC, banished potters, tinsmiths and other noisy tradespeople to outside the city walls. In London, the first official noise complaint was in 1378, against an armour-maker.
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“Noise pollution is not just a modern problem. The first official noise complaint in London was made in 1378”
London rapidly became the world’s noisiest city, followed inevitably by New York, but the actual science of sound took longer to mature. Goldsmith hilariously describes how Isaac Newton used “fiddle-factors” to “calculate” the speed of sound. With the industrial revolution came a new thrum to modern life, which only grew with the rise of trains, planes and automobiles. Yet it wasn’t until the 1930s that the decibel was born, providing a way to measure sound levels and impose some control over them.
Goldsmith points out that managing noise is not just about being pernickety. Research shows that constant exposure to noise and lead to heart attacks. Our bodies react to noise even when we’re asleep.
Great strides have been made to control big sources of background noise, particularly in Europe, but neighbour nuisance remains largely untackled. Goldsmith hopes that inconsiderate noise will become as socially unacceptable as other antisocial habits, such as smoking in public. “Unwanted noise is bad; inescapable noise is terrible,” he writes.
I will keep that in mind because, ironically, I’m getting my own piano tuned today. I have been revisiting some Chopin pieces that I grew to loathe – only when the neighbours are out, of course.
Discord: The story of noise
Oxford University Press