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Abstract
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was the only nineteenth-century American writer of the very first rank who paid prolonged and intense attention to sound-worlds, particularly non-human ones. As a naturalist, Thoreau’s fieldwork not only involved botany but also sound-collecting. Relying on his Journal and other written work, I show how Thoreau understood music as sound, paying particular attention to his writings on ambient sound and animal sound communication in acoustic ecological niches; showing how he understood sound announces presence and enables co-presence; and pointing to his development of a relational epistemology and alternative economy based in sound. His responses to the vibrations of the environment through prolonged and deep listening, more than 150 years ago, make him valuable for sound studies today.
Notes
1. Earlier versions of this essay were given as public lectures: the Sidore Lecture at the Sustainability Academy Symposium on Sustainability and the Humanities, at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 22 March 2012; the Distinguished Lecture in Musicology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 23 October 2012; and the keynote address at the Cultural Sustainability Symposium, Sterling College, Craftsbury Common, VT, 16 August 2013. I am grateful for suggestions and encouragement from Aaron Allen, Denise Von Glahn, Mark Pedelty, Lewis Hyde, Burt Feintuch, Leslie Gay, Marta Daniels, and Mary Hufford.
2. Pinch and Bijsterveld, Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, 6–10, 48.
3. Erlmann, Reason and Resonance.
4. ‘The fact will one day flower out into a truth.’ Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1837. Because of numerous editions of Thoreau’s journals, it is most useful to refer to entries by Thoreau’s date of entry.
5. Emerson, Nature, 5.
6. In his Journal for 12 September 1851 Thoreau wrote that while walking near Walden Pond near the newly constructed telegraph line, he heard a loud humming. Realizing that the blowing wind was sounding the wires, as if the telegraph line were a giant Aeolian harp, he ran to it and pressed his ear and the side of his body to a telegraph pole, which was amplifying the vibrations. He wrote that day in his journal that the experience thrilled him, and he wrote about returning to listen and vibrate ecstatically with the telegraph harp in 30 subsequent Journal entries.
7. See, for example, Cavicchi, Listening and Longing, 55–56.
8. Matthiessen, American Renaissance, 84.
9. Paul, “Wise Silence,” 511.
10. Ibid., 520.
11. Thoreau, Walden,Walden; Marx, Machine in the Garden, 250–53.
12. Thoreau, Walden, in A Week, 414–15.
13. Buell, “Thoreau and Natural Environment,” 171–2.
14. Miller, Consciousness in Concord, 156.
15. Harding, Days of Henry Thoreau, 354–55; 265, 195.
16. Journal, August 18, 1841.
17. Ibid., 73.
18. Journal, March 8, 1842.
19. Thoreau, A Week, 141–43.
20. Journal, April 24, 1841.
21. Ives, “Thoreau.”
22. After Thoreau died, acquaintances recalled that when they were children Thoreau amused them by taking them into the woods, showing them how to forage, how to find animals, and how to sing with birds (Harding, Days of Henry Thoreau, 190–95).
23. Presence is also a key concept in theatre and performance studies; see, for example, Giannachi and Kaye, Performing Presence, 1–25.
24. Ihde, Listening and Voice, 25.
25. Goffman, Behavior in Public Places, 13–22.
26. Zhao, “Taxonomy of Copresence,” 445–55; see also Lombard and Ditton, “Heart of It All.”
27. Titon, “The Nature of Ecomusicology,” 14–17.
28. Journal, October 12, 1851.
29. Cage, M, 18.
30. Journal, February 20, 1857.
31. Thoreau, Collected Essays and Poems, 426, 428.
32. Bradbury and Vehrencamp, Principles of Animal Communication, 19–112.
33. Journal, August 20, 1850.
34. Pijanowski et al., “Soundscape Ecology,’ 203–16.
35. Journal, May 12, 1855 (text is from the Princeton edition website).
36. Commons has received an enormous amount of attention in the past 25 years, whether historically (European agricultural commons and enclosure movements), or in contemporary life, as on the Internet (a digital information commons), or as a cultural commons (threatened by enclosure through intellectual copyright law). See Hyde, Common As Air; Rose, “Romans, Roads”; Titon, “Sound Commons”; and http://sustainablemusic.blogspot.com passim.
37. Rose, ‘Romans, Roads,’ 89–110.
38. Thoreau, Collected Essays and Poems, 493–94.
39. Reder, Economics, 110–15; 236–37.
40. Krause, Great Animal Orchestra, 179–80.
41. Noise Effects Handbook.
42. Titon, “Sound Commons.”
43. Furtak, “Henry David Thoreau.”.
44. Feld, Sound and Sentiment.
45. Turnbull, Forest People.
46. Journal, October 17, 1857.