Book of Silence

This unusual book is devoted to an undeservedly little studied topic of acoustic ecology, hearing culture, and sound landscapes. This is a study on noise, bells and silence.
Sergey Yuryevich Rumyantsev (1951–2000), a writer and musicologist, created a “auditory biography” - memoirs about personal sound experience. And not only about personal: the book has amazing “sound landscapes of Moscow” at the end of the 19th and first third of the 20th century. Rumyantsev writes that in the sound picture of the world in recent decades, as a rule, there is no concept of silence - only the opposition noise - music. In the chaos of sound phenomena, incidents, disasters that make up the history of the interaction of the sound environment of the city, a situation of confrontation between noise and silence arose. Behind the thoughts of the sound atmosphere of the city, a grandiose problem of the fate of Russian culture, the impossibility of returning to the former sound of the nation, arises. Alas, the book was not finished during the life of the author - the first edition was published in 2003. Thanks to the participation of the musician and sound artist Peter Aid, she is prepared for reprinting with additions, includes an anthology of texts affecting the issues of hearing culture, understanding of music and the sound landscape of the city.
Compiled by Peter Aidu