The Cicada’s Deafening Tymbals

Abstract In the genealogy of sound studies, the figures of Pierre Schaeffer and R. Murray Schafer have loomed large, the former bequeathing key concepts of sound objects and acousmatic listening, the latter the idea of soundscapes. Relatively neglected have been Schaeffer’s elaboration of sonic morphology and typology, as well as Schafer’s ecological impetus. This essay returns to and links these aspects of these writers’ works, focusing on the troubling example in poetry, sound description, and first-wave sonic ecology of the “song” of the cicada to suggest how a more critical sonic ecology might be forged—one that extends what is useful in their contributions but does not rely on the implicit embraces of purity hidden in the valuation of reduced listening (Schaeffer) and the mystical praise of silence (Schafer) and that instead makes explicit the noisy grounds of auditory dissensus and the limitations of anthropocentric listening.