Sound Terrains : “ Soundscape , ” Place and Nature

Introduction: Sound Terrains of South Moravia The connection between musical sounds and nature has a long intellectual and popular history in Europe. My purpose here is to investigate this relationship as it has played out in South Moravian traditional music. In this exploration, I am interested in understanding the significance of ‘nature’ and soundscape as they structure Moravia as a coherent region. To understand the totality of sounds in the ecology of South Moravia, I propose to use the Czech phrase zvukový terén, which literally means “sound terrain.” Like Murray Schafer’s “soundscape” (Schafer 1977), the phrase places focus on environmental sounds over humanly organized “musical” sound. However, the expression connotes a closer connection to land or “terrain,” suggesting a deeper linkage between sound and place. I have drawn on Louise Wrazen’s (2007) discussion of the experiential geographies of music among Górale musicians in Poland (zakopane) and Canada (Toronto). Wrazen suggests that landscape may be seen as a “social construct” that orients a viewer toward a particular “way of seeing the world and imagining a relationship to nature” (Wrazen 2007, 186). In this light, I take sound terrains as