Recent scholars have turned to the question of what we might be able to recover about soundscapes in previous periods and culture. Sound itself is thereby recognized as a valuable cultural marker, and the question concerning this auditory element itself alerts us to certain dimensions in literary texts (maybe also in art works) to which we have certainly not yet paid attention. How much sound determines our postmodern world, and previous periods? What does silence mean, and is it welcome or feared? What types of sound exist in any given society, rural or urban, monastic or courtly? Could we go so far as to identify sound as a criterion of life itself? Would absolute tranquility simply indicate death? And we would have to distinguish clearly between, on the one hand, ordinary sound made by objects, tools, animals, and natural forces (wind, rain, etc.), and, on the other, sound produced artificially by people either by way of speaking or creating music.
The English word ‘soundscape,’ coined by the Canadian musicologist Murray Schafer (that’s the correct spelling, not ‘Schaffer’ as on page 7 here) is equivalent to the excellent German term ‘Lautsphäre,’ as used in the title of the present book. The contributors ‘explored’ the history of sound in the Middle Ages at a conference in Chemnitz, Germany, in September 2016, and the editors emphasize this term deliberately because this research field is still very young and not yet well established. Nevertheless, we can be certain that the investigation of sounds as mirrored in medieval and early modern history and literature opens new perspectives. There are some efforts to incorporate also musicological history, but with only two articles considering this field at least to some extent, we face here a considerable desideratum.
The contributions are divided into three sections: 1. functions of soundscapes; 2. perception of soundscapes; and 3. soundscapes in the late medieval city. The authors deserve our respect for their intensive and well-researched investigations in which they present a wide range of insights, all embraced by the realization that sound truly matters, and this much more than cultural historians have recognized so far. There are fourteen articles altogether, and they touch on many different aspects, which makes it rather difficult to give full justice to each one of them.
It is not clear what criteria might have been used to arrange the individual contributions. The first section, above all, is not determined by chronology, genre, or alphabet (for the authors). It begins with Christian Jaser’s study on horse races in late medieval and early modern south German and Italian cities, a sporting event which was certainly accompanied by much noise, as is the case today. Julia Samp turns to comments by early modern humanists about animal sounds, whereas Antonia Krüger questions how the Protestant Reformation was also determined by musical aspects, as those emerged in the city of Zwickau between 1500 and 1550. On the one hand, she considers problems with public noise which the city authorities tried to repress; on the other, she deals with fundamental changes in the liturgy, which is, of course, one of the key concepts of all Protestant musical history.
From here, Miriam Weiss suddenly examines acoustical phenomena in Matthew of Paris’s Chronica maiora, that is, comments on earthquakes, public announcements, a battle, musical performance, and the sound of the spoken word. She correctly notes that all those phenomena cannot be studied in isolation; they always have to be viewed in context to make sense for us today. Achim Thomas Hack moves even further back, dealing with sounds by animals or noise by creeks in ancient and early medieval lists of words, such as by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (d. 150), Polemius Silvius (5th c.), and Aldhelm of Malmesbury (d. 709) as part of “Listenwissenschaft” (121ff., the critical study of word lists). Confusing the reader even further as to the arrangement of the individual papers, then follows a study by Boris Gübele on the auditory context at the court of Emperor Louis the Pious, especially of the imperial palaces where the political discourse took place (Aula regia).
In the second section, we learn about the dimension of sound in various Middle High German texts: Konrad von Würzburg’s Partonopier und Melius (Almust Schneider; reflection of the protagonist’s emotions through sounds); the anonymous Reinfried von Braunschweig (Gesine Mierke; dealing with courtly processions); and courtly minnesang (Christoph Schanze). It is self-evident that love poetry was predicated on musical performance, which Schanze clearly points out, but I cannot see what the new insights might consist of here. It is true, there is an important relationship between “Wort und Sprachklang” (217; word and the sound of language); so would there really be much more here? A collaboration with a musicologist here would have been really productive. I can only agree with Schanze that the pure sound itself carries no meaning; it always aims for something intentional, as Markus Stock had already emphasized, on whose study Schanze’s article is strongly built (“Das volle Wort...”, Text und Handeln, 2004, 185-202).
The third section appears to be more cohesively structured, with all papers analyzing the correlated phenomenon of the sound within the urban space. Gerhard Dohm-van Rossum offers a comparative interpretation of the use of the campanile and the minaret in competition with each other when Christian and Muslim communities lived together, such as in Al-Andalus (until today a severe issue concerning the ‘acoustic sovereignty’). The author emphasizes, above all, the great function of bells for Christian churches, and the efforts by the Muslim muezzins to make their own soundscape heard, particularly in contact zones in southern Europe (“clash of cultures,” 261).
Gerald Schwedler goes into more details concerning bells as they were used during urban riots in Chemnitz (1345) and Braunsberg (1396; today Braniewo in northern Poland east of Elblag), which are impressively documented. Although it is generally true that bells created a sound-based community, Schwedler rightly emphasizes the multifunctional purposes of bells which could also differentiate in social terms, creating strife and conflicts. Arnd Reitemeier, in his contribution, focuses further on parish churches as sound centers and illuminates the wide range of sounds which could be heard in medieval churches according to the social groups meeting there, special liturgical operations, and business transactions. Sabine Reichert finally studies the soundscape in medieval cities associated with the use of bells and the music performed during religious processions (singing and listening to the songs). I wonder, however, what the full difference might be between those medieval processions and those organized today, especially in Catholic communities.
As a kind of appendix, Stefan Bürger discusses what kind of noises were produced at construction sites of medieval castles or cathedrals, and draws upon the practical experience in Guédelon in France (east of Orléans) where a medieval castle is currently being built entirely by medieval methods and tools.
The volume concludes with a subject index, which thus leaves out names of authors / artists / composers and titles of works discussed. It would have been welcome if there had been a list of brief biographical blurbs of the contributors. There are many valuable insights offered here, and we can credit the editors and authors for having set the stage for a new research field: soundscapes in the Middle Ages.