Materiality and aural memory in the Harbour Symphony (St. John’s, Newfoundland)

Abstract

The Harbour Symphony is a collection of site-specific works composed for, and performed within, the soundscape and landscape of the St. John’s harbour. The Harbour Symphony is a creative endeavor intended to unite city and environment, people and their community in an awareness that harbour sounds and the acoustic environment constitute a part of St. John’s heritage–one that should be valued, attended to, and preserved. Since its inception, numerous composers have created works that interpret the soundscape and landscape of St. John’s harbour, particularly the distinct soundmarks of the tugboats, trawlers, and ocean freighters, positioning the city as a unique physical, cultural, and sonic site. This article addresses how the Harbour Symphony exploits the geographies of place and engenders an awareness of the local soundscape through contextual change. Ethnographic voices and aural histories detailing performance experience express the meanings embedded in sound and the power and place of memory. Grounded in ethnographic research, this article argues for an understanding of the shifting roles of everyday sounds and musicalized mechanical sound. The composers who contribute Harbour Symphonies are collectively concerned with issues of sonic experimentalism, the health and value of the acoustic environment, and the spatial- and temporal-contingent characteristics of environmental sound. This article engages with the compositional re-contextualization of industrial sounds and their technologies, and questions how place and soundscape impact and are inscribed in modern cultural expressions and comment upon shifting environments.