Spence Green

Following my comments yesterday on pianos and noise:

The whole world has changed around us in ways we can only guess at. In an age when any stereo system can re-create the full range of tones audible to the human ear, is it any wonder that piano tuners are expected to make the instruments bright and clear, and, above all, loud? In this sense, the modern ear can be seen as a response to the assault–both in volume and in sheer quantity–of noise in our time, and it’s a process that began nearly two hundred years ago. (Thad Carhart, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank)

Certainly pianos are not the only casualty. The trend in record mastering has been to create walls of sound. Today, perhaps it is not the content of what is said, but the force with which it is said, that makes the difference.