What the Hills Are Alive With: In Defense of the Sounds of Nature

Reflection on the nonmusical sounds that occur around us suggests a puzzle for aesthetic theory. Many of these sounds-particularly those associated with nature-are quite beautiful if we listen to them attentively. Many are interesting, singly or (especially) in combination. (Certainly there is as much richness and complexity in the sounds around us as occurs in music.) Some move us emotionally.1 Many are irritating or tedious. Our responses to nonmusical sounds of all types are thus often (perhaps most often) aesthetic. Oddly, in spite of the prima facie aesthetic value of many of these sounds, particularly the sounds of nature, aesthetic theory has largely overlooked them. Those interested in the aesthetics of nature have done the same. They have approached nature almost exclusively through vision and the visual arts.2 This neglect by theory of the sounds around us is in striking contrast to the attention theory pays to music. For, within aesthetic theory and within the arts, music is regarded as a major art form. For many people it is the supreme art. For most it is the most influential and widely experienced art medium. Yet, is it really true, as the existence of this contrast suggests, that sounds are worthy of serious (aesthetic) attention only when intentionally manipulated? And are they of marginal importance even in an account of the aesthetics of nature? I take it that reflection, particularly on the often beautiful and intriguing sounds of nature, implies that the answers to these questions must be: no and no.3 1 assume, in short, the prima facie plausibility of the claim that the sounds of nature are worthy of aesthetic attention and that they contribute to the aesthetic value of nature. Why then do we tend to ignore them when we theorize about nature? In this essay I will explore what I take to be the most significant impediments to including sound in accounts of the aesthetics of nature. There may be those who think that sounds that are nonmusical do not merit attention. Others may think that sounds are not important features of nature. Still others might reason that the characteristics of aesthetic appreciation in general are such as to exclude our auditory responses to nature sounds from the realm of proper aesthetic appreciation. In what follows I will try to show that the reasoning underlying each of these concerns can be disarmed. Although many of the points that I will develop apply to nonmusical sounds in general, those sounds that we appear to value the most and that are relevant to an aesthetics of nature are those sounds produced in and by nature. What emerges in the argument is that our appreciation of the sounds of nature does not conform to the appreciation of music or to the strictures of conventional aesthetic theory, as these have been extended by various thinkers from their application to the arts to appreciation of nature.4 If this is right, one moral to draw is that it is a mistake to assume that the aesthetics of nature must parallel the aesthetics of art.