The sound experience in the trenches. War phonospheres in the sensory revolution of the early twentieth century

The Great War was the first time in which industrial and technological transformations of the twentieth century converged, so much so that they intensely influenced the living conditions, thoughts and natural forms of the perception of time, space and the sound environment, above all for the soldiers on the frontlines. It was “i rumori nuovissimi della guerra moderna” (Russolo 1913) that obscured the sounds, noises and silences of the city, the countryside and the sky and notably influenced the atmosphere. Not yet sufficiently studied in the field of urban musicology, the present paper aims to interpret the historic phonosphere from a wide range of poetic and narrative texts from Italian literature and authors who experienced the war front first hand, by observing the recurring presence of sound events. These evidently brought on mutations to the quality of the acoustic environment, transforming it in numerous cases, both in rural and urban contexts, from hi-fi to lo-fi.