Part 2

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

Music and sound are very important for our society.

On the one hand, music is a social glue. On the dance floor, all people are equal, no matter their sexual orientation, skin color, or social status. From an evolutionary perspective, this is also crucial for humanity. Because we can only solve looming problems such as the biodiversity crisis or the climate crisis collectively.

Through dancing together and experiencing sound, a sense of “we” emerges, a collective in which bonding hormones like oxytocin are released. In this way, such communal musical experiences can be valuable places of utopia, where we once again come into resonance with ourselves and with others. The beauty of it is that music knows no language barriers.

In nature as well, music and sound are important for our mental and, consequently, physical health. Studies show that we are happier the more birdsong from different species we can perceive. These songs are an indicator of an intact ecosystem in which we can feel comfortable and safe. At the same time, the singing of a bird—marking territory or attracting a mate—conveys to us a deeply ingrained evolutionary feeling of safety, because the likelihood that a dangerous predator is lurking behind that bush is very small.

Moreover, we are only truly happy in the here and now. Thinking and feeling are antagonists. The more we listen, the less we think, the more we are in the present moment—and the happier we become.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

Oh, there are countless examples. I love, for instance, the far-carrying trumpeting of cranes when they fly over my house, heralding change—either the coming of autumn or the arrival of spring.

I also love the song of bird species that stay in our regions only briefly, such as the flute-like song of the golden oriole. For me, hearing it is a very precious gift, because I am aware that it is only possible for a few weeks each year.

I also love the bell-like mating calls of the midwife toad in a nearby quarry, which sound almost like a submarine sonar, and the courtship display of the nightjar in a heath close by is a true highlight for me every year. Its minute-long purring arias sound like the LFO of a synthesizer.

But I also greatly love the song of our most common breeding bird, the blackbird. It has the widest tonal range of all native songbirds. With its syrinx it can produce two sounds at once, creating a duophony. The blackbird uses this to weave wonderfully counterpointed harmonic structures. Each male blackbird usually has about five favorite motifs.

Once you recognize them, you can easily distinguish individuals in your own garden. That is delightful—knowledge expands the horizon of experience.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

In songbirds, one must distinguish between songs and calls. While songs are always highly species-specific, calls are considerably more universal. Alarm calls, for instance, can also warn individuals of other species. A good example of this is the jay, which is not called the “guardian of the forest” for nothing. With its harsh, rasping calls, it not only puts birds on alert.

Of course, we must be careful not to interpret interspecies communication in an unscientific or anthropomorphic way. But I am aware of studies showing that even plants communicate with “allies.”

For example, when a tobacco plant is attacked by the caterpillars of the tobacco hornworm—caterpillars that are immune to the plant’s toxin, nicotine—the plant releases hormones that attract parasitic wasps. These wasps then lay their eggs in the caterpillars’ bodies, rendering them harmless.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

Yes, this is a major problem as a musician. You don’t need a license or any kind of exam to get on stage. There isn’t even a DJ union.

That’s something I often criticize. Young people should be made much more aware of how sensitive and irreversibly vulnerable our hearing is. Exposure to sound levels above 90 decibels over a longer period can cause lasting damage.

I myself had to experience this painfully at the beginning of my career and briefly suffered from temporary hyperacusis, which fortunately resolved on its own. I have also had tinnitus in both ears ever since. However, I believe this is more related to muscle tone and tension in the neck, jaw, and shoulders.

Still, protecting one’s hearing is extremely important. I use custom-fitted earplugs with linear filters. Since we also perceive frequencies through our bones, the outside world seems very muffled if you simply put cotton or silicone in your ears. These special filters compensate for that, ensuring that the actual reduction in volume is truly linear and that the frequency balance remains the same.

I use a reduction filter of 15 decibels per ear.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

I see this quite differently from Mr. Gould. For me, silence is extremely important, because this nothingness creates the space for new things to emerge—for new impulses to grow, and for every thought to send out ripples.

As Paracelsus so aptly said, the dose makes the poison. If we are surrounded by sounds all the time, then what value does a single tone still have? The essence of music lies in what happens between the notes. In silence—even between the tones—the true magic arises.

At home, I never listen to music; instead, I enjoy silence. This is also one of the reasons why I live such a reclusive life.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

Yes, I completely agree with Mr. Horowitz. Hearing is our super-sense—the second sense to develop in the womb, right after touch, and the last to fade when we die. It is also the most high-resolution sense, demanding the greatest capacity of the brain.

Evolutionarily, this makes perfect sense. Our ancestors on the savannah, for instance, could not look behind a bush to see if a predator was hiding there, but they could hear it—and in this way, they also remained connected with their peers.

Hearing is our super-sense, yet we neglect it gravely, torturing it with cheap MP3s and lo-fi headphones. This is one of the greatest problems of our time: we no longer truly listen—not to ourselves, not to our partners, not to our fellow human beings, and not to nature.

Yet truth only reveals itself in dialogue—only when we listen, when we truly hear.