Cacophony

Cacophony (pronounced kuh-kof-uh-nee)

(1) A harsh discordance of sound; dissonance.

(2) The use of inharmonious or dissonant speech sounds in language.

(3) In music, the frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand.

1650-1660: From the sixteenth century French cacophonie (harsh or unpleasant sound) from the New Latin cacophonia, from the Ancient Greek κακοφωνία (kakophōnía) (ill or harsh sounding), from kakophonos (harsh sounding), the construct being being κακός (kakós) (bad, evil) + φωνή (phōnḗ) (voice, sound) from the primitive Indo-European root bha (to speak, tell, say).  The source of kakós was the primitive Indo-European root kakka (to defecate), something which may have been in mind in that notable year 1789, when first cacophony was used to mean "discordant sounds in music".  Cacophony is a noun, cacophonic & cacophonous are adjectives, cacophonously an adverb and the noun plural is cacophonies.  The most natural antonym is harmony although musicologists tend to prefer the more precise euphony.

Noise as music

There were twentieth century composers, all of whom thought themselves both experimental and somewhere in the classical tradition, who wrote stuff which to most audiences sounded more cacophonous than melodic.  Some, like Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951) had a varied output but for untrained listeners seeking music for pleasure rather than originality or the shock of something new, the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007), Charles Ives (1874–1954) and Philip Glass (b 1937) were not fun.  Some critics however, trained or otherwise, claim to enjoy many of these cul-de-sacs of the avant-garde and find genius among the noise.  Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) would have called them formalists.

Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music (1975).

In popular (sic) culture, Lou Reed (1942–2013) in 1975 released Metal Machine Music, either (1) to fulfil a contractual obligation to a record label with which he no longer wished to be associated, (2) to annoy critics and others he didn’t like, (3) as a piece of electronic music, (4) to win a bet with Andy Warhol (1928-1987) or (5) because he was suffering an amphetamine induced psychosis.  Known as MMM or 3M by fans and categorized by most as noise, drone, industrial or minimal, it’s about two hours of modulated feedback running at different speeds.  Despite the derision attracted at the time, it’s since built a cult following and has been performed live, one approving reviewer suggesting MMM is best understood as “…electricity falling in love with itself”.  The original release was a double album on twelve-inch vinyl and featured a “locked grove” on the final track meaning the noise endlessly would loop, theoretically forever.  This trick couldn’t be done on the new medium of the CD but there were no complaints the omission detracted from the experience.

Phonaesthetics is a discipline most associated with the phonetics branch of linguistics although it’s of interest also in psychology or any aspect of literary studies concerned with the utility of sounds or words as poetic devices.  Despite progress in the use of machines to systematize the relationship between certain sounds and human feeling, phonaesthetics remains still too subjective to be regarded as something which can be called “scientific” although few would doubt that even if precise models have never been created, one knows the qualities when one hears them.  The basis of phonaesthetics is the perception of beauty induced by the sounds of certain words or their elements and while there may be various explanations why a word like “succulent” is so pleasing, the effect is real.  Sounds alone however do not account for all reactions because words can have many associations (some historic and often varying between cultures).  At the phonetic level there seems no obvious reason why the word “moist” should evoke such distaste yet consistently it’s high on the lists of the “most hated” words in English, the planet’s definitely cross-cultural fondness for moist chocolate cakes notwithstanding.  Most conclude the aversion has some link with human bodily fluids.

Cassandra.

Remarkably, Lindsay Lohan (a dedicated “remainer”) proved one of the more thoughtful commentators amid the “cacophony of Brexit analysis” on the fateful night of the referendum when 72.21% of the UK electorate voted (51.89-48.11%) to leave the EU (European Union (1993)), the multi-national aggregation which evolved from the EEC (European Economic Community), the Zollverein formed in 1957) that the country had joined in 1973.  In the years to come, throughout the land, increasingly, people will say: “We should have listened to Lindsay.”

The use of “phonaesthetics” in this context appears to have been by the fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), a man well-versed in words, sounds and their effects on readers; the construct was the Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ) (voice, sound) + αἰσθητική (aisthētikḗ) (aesthetics) and the aesthetic qualities of “speech sounds” enjoys a dichotomous binary: those subjectively euphonious (pleasing) or cacophonous (displeasing).  Importantly, this is the study of sound and not written text; although the two main flavours of Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese) are essentially the same language, the former when spoken tends to be judged mellifluous, the latter jarring.  So, “euphony” describes the perception of sounds as pleasant (which implies lyrical, rhythmical or harmonious) whereas “cacophony” is associated with harshness (often a chaotic or discordant mix).  That does not mean something cacophonous is meaningless, indeed the very jumble may be an ideal device to convey meaning whether in speech or music, poets and composers skilled in using sounds to generate feelings serenity or disorder as required, the juxtaposition of the two able to be used to exaggerate the effects of both.