Free The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World by R. Murray Schafer Page A

quite dark when one of the hunters ceremonially opened the hunt with a fanfare on his horn. Unless the stretch of land to be hunted was an open field, the only method of communication between hunters and beaters was through horn signals. During the formation, in which the hunters enclosed the area on three sides and the beaters on one, everyone was very quiet so as not to disturb the animals. The silence was broken by a horn signal, which was answered by a terrible, shrill toot from a single-pitch trumpet (which looked like a toy trumpet) blown by one of the beaters. We started to attack the land in front of us with rattles, pots, pans, noisemakers of every sort and shouts in all modulations. Frightened by the noise, every living creature was stirred up and chased out of its shelter in the direction of the hunters. As children we just loved to make the loudest noises. …
At the end of the day, everybody gathered around and listened to the horn player blowing the fanfares for the dead animals. There was a signal for every animal, and I remember that the one for the fox was the most beautiful, whereas the one for the rabbit was quite short and simple. At the end of the day, in the evening darkness, the hunt was ended by a cheerful, almost triumphant fanfare.
     
    The hunting horn presents us with a sound of great semantic richness. On one level its signals provide a code which all participants understand. On another level it takes on a symbolical significance, suggesting free spaces and the natural life of the country. I also spoke of the hunting horn as an archetypal sound. Only sound symbols which are carried forward century after century qualify for this distinction, for they knit us with ancient ancestral heritages, providing continuity at the deepest levels of consciousness.
     
    The Post Horn      Another sound of similar character which was also ubiquitous on the European scene was the post horn. It too persisted for centuries, for it began in the sixteenth century when the administration of the post was taken over by the family of Thurn and Taxis, and as the postal routes extended from Norway to Spain so did the horn calls (Cervantes mentions them). In Germany the last post horns were heard in 1925. In England the post horn was still in use in 1914 when the London-to-Oxford mail was conveyed by road on Sundays. In Austria, horns were also heard until after the First World War, and even today no one is permitted to carry or sound a post horn, thereby enhancing the sentimental symbolism of the instrument (Article 24 of the Austrian Postal Regulations, 1957).
    The post horn also employed a precise code of signals to indicate different types of mail (express, normal, local, packages) as well as calls for arrival, departure and distress, and indications for the number of carriages and horses—in order that the changing stations might receive advance warning. In Austria a recruit was given six months to learn the signals and if he failed, he was dismissed.
     
Through the narrow streets and across the country landscape the post horn was heard, in the villages and the alleys of cities, at the gates of castles above and by the monasteries below in the valleys—everywhere its echo was known, everywhere it was greeted joyfully. It touched all the strings of the human heart: hope, fear, longing and homesickness—it awakened all feelings with its magic.
     
    Thus the symbolism of the post horn worked differently from that of the hunting horn. It did not draw the listener out into the landscape but, working in reverse, brought news from far away to home. It was centripetal rather than centrifugal in character and its tones were never more pleasant than when it approached the town and delivered its letters and parcels to the expectant.
     
    Sounds of the Farm      By comparison with the quiet life of the pasture and the shrill celebrations of the hunt, the soundscape of the farm provides a general turmoil of activities.