RESEARCH INTO THE HISTORICAL 'SOUNDSCAPE' IN 'THE TUNING OF THE WORLD' AND 'VOICES OF TYRANNY, TEMPLES OF SILENCE' BY R. MURRAY SCHAFER (Polish title - below)

(Title in Polish - 'Charakter badan nad historycznym 'pejzazem dzwiekowym' (soundscape) w 'The Tuning of the World' i 'Voices of Tyranny, Temples of Silence' R. Murraya Schafera'). Historiography of the soundscape occupies a privileged position in the writings of R. Murray Schafer and raises a number of methodological questions. Schafer attempts a multi-faceted solution to the problem of sources, introduces the concept of 'earwitness', and places the history of soundscape in the context of other branches of learning; however, his historical writing often resembles a 'facade', consisting in 'patching up' history through a-historic threads of narrative and fictionalising the material through the introduction of anachronistic quotations from literary fiction. Following Schafer's idea, his history of the soundscape may be described as history in sonata form, where a clear 'exposition' is followed by a noisy 'development', which should be closed by an ecological, transparent 'recapitulation'. Among the historical categories distinguished in Schafer's writings, we find an ordering of the processes of sound evolution into 'morphological' sequences, as well as synchronic and diachronic investigations. On the other hand, psychology (the influence of soundscape on musical output) and sociology (the mimesis of social changes in the history of music) provide a rich background to Schafer's historiosophical deliberations; both these areas interact to a great extent.