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Raymond Murray Schafer e i Soundscapes studies

Abstract

Published in 1977, Raymond Murray Schafer's The Tuning of the World inaugurated studies on soundscapes, which gave rise to and shaped, intertwining various disciplinary fields (from electroacoustics to urban planning, ethnoanthropology, ecology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy), and many other areas of research, particularly acoustic design and acoustic ecology, which continue to fuel international debate today. Based on the concept of sound as a meta-category that encompasses and transcends music, whose perception is closely related to the geography of the place where it occurs, these studies invite us to reflect on the relationship between human beings and the sound environment, on the responsibility of each individual to share the soundscape as a common and collective heritage and, more generally, on the ability to use hearing as a means of understanding the world. Starting from a preliminary reconstruction of the main themes of Schafer's work, and therefore in particular the concept of “soundscape”, this contribution aims to focus on how Schafer's analysis seeks to highlight the profound changes in the contemporary world he witnesses, particularly noise pollution. The sound aspect of contemporary life, and therefore the perception of sounds and noises which, especially in urban contexts, constitute the sound manifestation of phenomena that involve people's lives in their entirety, reflects a changed relationship between humans and the environment, of a way of experiencing the geography of places from an acoustic rather than an ocular perspective.