Volume 50, Number 6 · April 10, 2003
His Master's Voice
By Daniel J. Kevles
The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933
by Emily Thompson
MIT Press, 500 pp., $44.95
President Charles William Eliot of Harvard unwittingly stimulated the creation of modern architectural acoustics when in 1898 he suggested that Henry Higginson consult with Wallace Sabine, a young member of his physics faculty, about the design of the new Boston Symphony Hall. Higginson, a financier, philanthropist, and owner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had commissioned the construction of the hall and he was determined that it keep out the sounds of the world and faithfully render the sounds produced within.
Review, 3548 words
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