Your Brain Is Like Beethoven

Prior to the rise of urban culture, the sounds of clucking hens must have been among the world’s most ubiquitous annoyances. For millennia, humans have been “up with the chickens,” demarcating time by the rooster’s crow. But the infernal clucking of poultry must have constituted a constant din. It seems odd, then, that this obnoxious noise has found its way into a vast repertoire of music, from “La Poule” by French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1726 to “Chick Chick” by Chinese pop singer Wang Rong Rollin in 2014.

But poultry is not the exception. The noises of life—both annoying and pleasant—have been represented through mimicry or abstraction in all music cultures. Schubert used the sound of galloping horses to haunting effect in his ballad, “Erlkonig,” a sound also heard in music played on traditional Chinese instruments. Tuvan throat singing often imitates the sounds of rushing water and whistling wind. Beethoven orchestrated birdsong and thunderstorm. With the development of tools and machines, noises created by humans have also permeated music. Schubert, Dvorak, and Saint-Saens transformed the obstinate repetition of the spinning wheel to melodious patterns.

As machinery became pervasive and increasingly loud, so did its presence in music. In composer Steve Reich’s 1969 work, , the sounds of car alarms supplant the infernal clucking of the hen in Rameau’s “La Poule,” aestheticizing our urban soundscape. In fact, the car alarms and clucking share common