Sound and Music for the Theatre, 3rd Edition

Foreword

We can shut our eyes, but we can still hear. We can shut our ears, but sound is still echoing inside our skulls. We exist in a universe of sound. In the beginning was the Word, and before the Word was written, it was spoken, and its sound keeps speaking in our minds and our hearts, and we can’t stop listening.

There are many voices. Mostly we live inside a cacophony, a mélange of whispers and shouts, of traffic congestion and bird song, appliance hum, exhaust fans, television, radio, alarm sirens, and angelic voices speaking softly in our inner ear.

In tandem with the related sense of smell, hearing is that sense that is most deeply associated with memory. Sound evokes place, not space. That is to say, sound is where we locate ourselves, ...