ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact of modern sound and technologies on the connections between music and violence, reiterating the point made at the outset that one cannot form an adequate understanding of the connection between music and violence unless they recognize that, whatever else music might be, it is fundamentally part of a sonic field. It is unnecessary to rehearse in detail the argument that one of the distinguishing features of that period is the exponential increase in the level of sound brought about by advances in technology since the industrial revolution. There are two mutually implicated aspects of the connection between music, violence and modernity. For as long as the range of music and speech was confined to earshot, it could not become competitive with the radius of circulation of the printed record as an information medium. Dense conurbations, their commerce, business and bureaucracies, produce commensurately dense information flows that, finally, the scribal hand can no longer cope with.
