How Noise Makes Music - Issue 38 : Noise
▻http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/how-noise-makes-music
Prior to the rise of urban culture, the sounds of clucking hens must have been among the world’s most ubiquitous annoyances. For millennia, humans have been “up with the chickens,” demarcating time by the rooster’s crow. But the infernal clucking of poultry must have constituted a constant din. It seems odd, then, that this obnoxious noise has found its way into a vast repertoire of music, from “La Poule” by French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1726 to “Chick Chick” by Chinese pop singer Wang Rong Rollin in 2014: But poultry is not the exception. The noises of life—both annoying and pleasant—have been represented through mimicry or abstraction in all music cultures. Schubert used the sound of galloping horses to haunting effect in his ballad, “Erlkonig,” a sound also heard in music played (...)