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

Abstract

In The Soundscape of Modernity, Emily Thompson takes up architectural acoustics at the end of the nineteenth century, when it had become clear that neither the ancient prescriptions of Vitruvius nor anything developed subsequently was effective in taming the acoustics of large public spaces such as concert halls. Thompson begins with the story of Wallace Sabine, a Harvard physics professor who undertook the task of finding a remedy for the faulty acoustics of a campus lecture hall and who applied the empirical methods he learned from that experience to shaping the acoustics of Boston's Symphony Hall. The methods of architectural acoustics, the expectations regarding the aural environment, and the ways of perceiving that [End Page 399] environment all changed dramatically between that moment in 1900 and the opening of New York's Radio City Music Hall late in 1932. Thompson examines this period from different perspectives in charting the technological developments and other social forces that drove these changes.