Sound Control :

Policing Noise and Music in German Towns, ca. 1450-1800

Philip Hahn

Recent research on early modern European towns has characterised their soundscapes as « semiotic systems ». In that period, towns, according to David Garrioch, consisted of « overlapping acoustic communities » that each derived its identity from the peculiarity of its soundscape. Moreover, sound contributed much to structuring urban hierarchies, and control over the aural sphere was regarded as an important means of power1. Authorities tried to limit access to and use of key emittents of sound such as bells, fire weapons, trumpets, drums and the like. At the same time, their interest in creating and preserving an orde-red soundscape led to the banning of what was regarded by them as intole-rable noise, and to the consequent prosecution of disturbances and disruptions of this well-ordered aural world. Naturally, those efforts often did not remain undisputed, and always fell far from being implemented completely2. In part, the problem lay in the nature of noise itself, as contemporaries were unsure how noise ought to be prosecuted, let alone that an unquestioned consensus existed as to what actually was noise3. Emily Cockayne has pointed out that in English towns, for instance, craftsmen’s noise was only rarely prosecuted, whereas most complaints were directed against the poor or, more concretely, street musicians4. German university professors, on the other hand, could refer

1 Garrioch David, « Sounds of the city : the soundscape of early modern European towns », Urban History, 30, 1, 2003, p. 5-25, here p. 6, 14, 18, 19, 22. Cf. also the contributions to this journal’s special issue on music and urban history : Urban History, 29, 1, 2002.

2 Ibid., p. 19, 22 ; cf. Landwehr Achim, « “Gute Policey”. Zur Permanenz der Ausnahme », in Lüdtke Alf, Wildt Michael (eds.), Staats-Gewalt, Göttingen, Wallstein, 2008, p. 39-64.

3 Cockayne Emily, Hubbub : filth, noise and stench in England, 1600-1770, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 111-112.

4 Ibid., p. 115, 122.

to an old privilege of not having to tolerate noisy manufacturing trades in their neighbourhoods5. In Augsburg, watchmen patrolled through the streets during the Thirty Years’ War, trying to detect and stop the singing of Protestant cho-rales within private houses, as Alexander Fisher has shown6.

This semiotic system, it is argued, declined towards the end of the eighteenth-century, mainly due to the increase of industrial and traffic noise that muffled other sounds, diminishing their value as signs. At the same time, other strategies of reinforcing social distinctions and manifesting power relations became more important7. But this grand narrative is delusive. For London, Cockayne has found out that already the Great Fire of 1666 and the city’s subsequent reconstruction changed the nature and perception of the urban soundscape considerably8. On the other hand, it seems improbable that only for villagers like those described by Alain Corbin the aural environment still carried meaning in the nineteenth-century9. So far, most hypotheses on early modern urban soundscapes have been based on studies not of towns, but of big cities like London, Paris, and Milan10. It seems no wonder that those places tell at least to some extent a similar story. Therefore, much research still has to be done on a local level in order to arrive at a clearer picture of urban soundscapes and the disputes and conflicts about them from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the nineteenth-century.

This essay is based on evidence from German towns that have largely esca-ped the attention of aural historians so far, although they do represent a pro-mising object of study11. If one looks at the number of regulations dealing with

5 Füssel Marian, «  Akademische Lebenswelt und gelehrter Habitus. Zur Alltagsgeschichte des deutschen Professors im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert », Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte, 10, 2007, p. 35-51, here p. 42-43.

6 Fisher Alexander, Music and religious identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 1580-1630, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004 (St. Andrews studies in Reformation history), p. 282-285.

7 Garrioch D., « Sounds of the city… », art. cit., p. 25.8 Cockayne E., Hubbub…, op. cit., p. 118-119, 129-130.9 Corbin Alain, Les cloches de la terre. Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les cam-

pagnes au xixe siècle, Paris, Albin Michel, 1994.10 Cf. Cockayne E., Hubbub…, op. cit., p. 129-130 : increase in traffic noise dominant in

London, p. 122 : no rise in official complaints about noise outside London across the period.

11 As regards Germany, only the noise created by university students, the struggle of university professors against noise, and the role of Lutheran songs in the Reformation and Confessionalisation have been studied : see Krug-Richter Barbara, « Von Messern, Mänteln und Männlichkeit. Aspekte studentischer Konfliktkultur im frühneuzeitli-chen Freiburg im Breisgau », in Lanzinger Margareth, Scheutz Martin (eds.), Normierte Lebenswelten, Innsbruck et al., Studienverlag (Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit, 4, 1, 2004), p. 26-52 ; Braun Tina, « Musik und Tanz in der studentischen Freizeitkultur der frühen Neuzeit. Die Universität Freiburg im 16. und frühen 17.

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noise and music that have been preserved, the result does not convey a cohe-rent picture. In Nuremberg, of a total of thirty-four ordinances, twenty-three date from the sixteenth-century, seven from the seventeenth, and only four from the eighteenth-century. In Frankfurt, it is exactly the other way round : three ordinances from the mid-fifteenth-century, only four from the sixteenth, and twelve from the seventeenth, but fifty-one from the eighteenth-century. In the case of Würzburg, heavy losses during the war and the concentration of the collections printed in the eighteenth-century on more recent ordinances may have tipped the scales towards the same direction. But in Frankfurt, nearly all the old manuscript collections of ordinances are preserved and have been indexed. The municipal archive in Ulm still holds more than one hundred relevant ordinances issued at more or less regular intervals from the mid-fif-teenth-century until around 1800, four dating from the fifteenth-century, fifty-two from the sixteenth, thirty-seven from the seventeenth, and twenty-nine from the eighteenth-century, thus revealing a peak in the effort at controlling noise in the sixteenth-century and a gradual decrease towards the end of the early modern period12. Viewed against the massive rise of regulative activity in the town during the eighteenth-century, though, it seems that sound was no longer a central concern of the city council or at least that there was no need for new regulations such as in other aspects of civic life. In order to discern a general trend, far more data from a greater range of towns will be required, but neither does the sensitivity of authorities to noise seem to have increased significantly, nor did their effort to control it slacken. Contemporary English towns, excepting London, offer a similar picture of relative continuity13.

Jahrhundert », in Krug-Richter Barbara, Mohrmann Ruth-E. (eds.), Frühneuzeitliche Universitätskulturen. Kulturhistorische Perspektiven auf die Hochschulen in Europa, Cologne et al., Böhlau, 2009, p. 119-134 ; Füssel M., « Akademische Lebenswelt… », art. cit. ; Mager Inge, « Lied und Reformation. Beobachtungen zur reformatorischen Singbewegung in norddeutschen Städten », in Dürr Alfred, Killy Walther (eds.), Das protestantische Kirchenlied im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1986, p. 25-38 ; Fisher Alexander J., « Song, confession, and criminality : trial records as sources for popular musical culture in early modern Europe », The Journal of Musicology, 18, 4, 2001, p. 616-657 ; Veit Patrice, « Kirchenlied und konfessionelle Identität im deutschen 16. Jahrhundert  », in Brunold-Bigler Ursula, Bausinger Hermann, (eds.), Hören sagen lesen lernen : Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der kom-munikativen Kultur (Festschrift Rudolf Schenda), Bern et al., Peter Lang, 1995, p. 741-754 ; Missfelder Jan-Friedrich, « Akustische Reformation : Lübeck 1529 », Historische Anthropologie, 20, 1, 2012, p. 108-121. My paper only presents some preliminary fin-dings ; its topic will be part of a wider research project (Habilitation project) investiga-ting the history of aural perception in the Old Reich in the early modern period.

12 Counts based on the Repertorium der Policeyordungen and own research.13 Cockayne E., Hubbub…, op. cit., p. 122.

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What did early modern authorities regard as disturbing noise ? Here one encounters a considerable variety of sounds. A few phenomena, however, seem to be missing in the sources I have studied so far : manufacturing and traffic noise, neither one of which seem to have raised complaints and subsequent regulative activity. The professorial privileges mentioned above indicate that there may be some evidence lurking in other towns14, yet the complete absence of regulations of noise caused by traffic is surprising for a city like Frankfurt with its annual fairs and bustling trade activity throughout the year, of which an engraving by Merian conveys a vivid impression (see fig. 1)15.

The early modern tolerance towards artisanal noise seems to be a European phenomenon16. Most often, it was either shouting and yelling (sometimes des-cribed as « indecent » or « brutish »)17, usually in combination with public swea-ring18, or playing instruments around or after midnight19 that aroused the atten-tion of civic authorities. One ordinance from Nuremberg of 1563 names « drums, pipes, lutes, violins, and the like », another one of 1593 also mentions cymbals and other percussion instruments20. Making instrumental music on the streets during the day also required permission21 ; in 1500, the town council at Ulm explicitly allowed the use of drums and pipes during carnival22. On Sundays and holy days, music, especially dance music, used to be forbidden23. In Frankfurt, both musicians and listeners seemed to have attempted to evade those prohibi-tions by going outside the city walls. This resulted in an ordinance issued by the mayor and council in 1750 criticising such behaviour and threatening to arrest

14 E.g. in Tübingen, according to Udo Rauch, director of the Stadtarchiv Tübingen.15 Cf., in contrast, perceptions in London : Cockayne E., Hubbub…, op. cit., p. 107.16 Ibid., p. 115, 122.17 Years in brackets : Institut für Stadtgeschichte (IfS) Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 16, fo 198

(1442), vol. 17, fo 290f. (1616) ; Stadtarchiv (StadtA) Nuremberg, A 6, nos 134 (1537), 230 (1560), 372 (1581), 421 (1593), 550 (1616), 587 (1619), 2586 (1754/1756/1781) ; Stadtarchiv (StadtA) Ulm, A 3680, fo 259 (1537), A 3672, fo 88vo-90ro (1543) ; Ibid., fo 201ro-202vo (1549) ; for a close study of the meaningfulness of this sort of noise, see Colleran Kate, « Scampanata at the widows’ windows : a case-study of sound and ritual insult in cin-quecento Florence », Urban History, 36, 3, 2009, p. 359-378.

18 Cf. StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 98 (1528).19 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 257 (1563) ; StadtA Ulm, A 3669, fo 118vo-119vo (1492) ; Ibid.,

fo 193ro (1499) ; Ibid., fo 440vo (1513) ; A 3680, fo 184 (1529) ; Ibid., fo 212 (1532) ; Ibid., fo 236, 238 (both 1535).

20 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 257 (1563), no 421 (1593).21 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 308 (1569).22 StadtA Ulm, A 3680, fo 57 (1500).23 Beyerbach Johann Conradin, Sammlung der Verordnungen der Reichsstadt Frankfurt

[Frankfurt 1798-1818], online edition : http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/voll-texte/2008/110226/ (9.12.2011), vol. III, nos 28-30; StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 2207 (1756).

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musicians caught at the city gates carrying their instruments on their way out24. In another regulation of 1770, not only dance music, but also « concert » music in public inns in and outside the city was prohibited on Sundays and holy days, which indicates a new trend in public music consumption that at least in the eyes of the city council was no better than dance music25. Restrictions on music making during advent and lent seem to have been lifted for some years before they came to be reinforced in 179526. The 1662 ordinance on wedding celebra-

24 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. IV, no 61, p. 813-814.25 Id., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol.  III, p.  538-539. An interesting case in comparison

could be Leipzig with its coffee-houses and serenade concerts in the first half of the eighteenth-century.

26 IfS Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 25, no 23.

Fig. 1. Frankfurt on the Main, engraving by Matthäus Merian the Elder, ca. 1617/1618.

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tions in Nuremberg forbade the playing of music in front of the bride’s house completely and limited the music to be aired in the house after dinner to two or three sacred pieces27. As regards singing, not only the recitation of « undecent » or « worldly » songs was censured in Nuremberg28, but in the 1730s even the way of singing came to be regulated : after years of dispute between the city council and the headmasters of the city’s schools, poor pupils were allowed to sing and collect alms in the streets, but they had to stick to a prescribed selection of cho-rales and sing them with a clear voice, the smaller boys being required not to deviate from the chorale melody, while the older ones were allowed to sing a bass line. To guarantee the quality of performance, they had to be supervised by tea-chers. Nonetheless, burghers’ complaints about the pupils’ « poor and nuisome singing » seem to have continued in the subsequent years29.

Apart from shouting, singing, and instrumental music on the streets, ordinances were directed against the ringing of door bells or the knocking at burghers’ houses at night30, cracking a whip in the street31, the tumultuous and noisy driving of cattle to the market, including the releasing of dogs32, dogs barking at night33, fireworks around New Years’ Eve34, shouting down from bell towers and the uncontrolled ringing of bells35. At funerals, the tol-ling of bells was limited in Nuremberg in 1705 to half a quarter of an hour36. In the same city, an ordinance of 1574 regulating the administration of hospitals included the injunction that no patient should molest others by « talking, sin-ging, knocking or other noise37 ».

The last example indicates that the group of persons that were accused or suspected of creating noise was wider than one would expect. Naturally, appren-tices, journeymen, and young men in general figure prominently among them throughout the period38. Sometimes, individual professions are mentioned such as butchers’ and shepherds’ boys or the workers who cleaned the streets

27 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 1042 (1662).28 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 89 (1526), 98 (1528), 327 (1571), 372 (1581).29 StadtA Nuremberg, B I/II, no 145 (1734/1737).30 IfS Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 25, no 25 (1796) ; StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 257 (1563), 2586

(1754/1756/1781).31 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 580 (1758).32 Id., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 581 (1712).33 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 2586 (1754) ; Fünfergericht.34 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 540-541 (1713).35 Id., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. XI, p. 3172 (1804). 36 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 1545 (1705).37 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 349 (1574).38 E.g. StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 98 (1528), 2586 (1754/1756/1781).

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at night39. Audible disturbances were also caused by soldiers40, students41, and pupils, especially those singing and begging in front of houses at night, inclu-ding girls, who were told to abstain from this activity completely42. « Dissolute » women also appear in the ordinances43. Members of the lower echelons of society dominate the record, but not exclusively : civic authorities in both Frankfurt and Nuremberg complained in the mid-eighteenth-century that those causing dis-turbance included not only the « rabble » but also « honourable persons » and « people that ought not to be expected to show such unreasonable behaviour44 ».

Streets and lanes, often narrow and heavily built-up (fig. 2), were of course the primary objects of early modern sound regulations. In Frankfurt, the new avenues and large squares of the eighteenth-century soon attracted noisy folk and hence came to be controlled45. Other places mentioned include bridges46, the streets around the town hall during council sessions47, and churchyards48. One injunction from Nuremberg dating from the mid-sixteenth-century refers precisely to churchyards, the area around St. James’s Hospital, and the lanes at the foot of the castle hill49. A regulation from Frankfurt contains the explicit remark that it applies to the Jews’ lane as well, which lay just outside the old medieval town wall, following it in a crescent-like shape (fig. 3)50. As already mentioned, the authorities’ controlling activity did not stop at the doors of institutions and private houses.

Usually, the ordinances contain explanations for why some particular disturbance ought to be stopped. Public swearing and shouting at night as well as music on Sundays and holy days incurred God’s wrath, thus risking divine punishment for the entire town : this explanation occurs well into the second half of the eighteenth-century, although it is not among those used

39 Loc. cit.40 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 587 (1619).41 StadtA Würzburg, Sammlung der hochfürstl.-wirzburgischen Landesverordnungen…

auf Befehl von Adam Friderichs Bischof zu Bamberg Würzburg…, vol. 1. Teil : 1546-1728, Würzburg 1776, p. 271-272 (1668).

42 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, S. 494 ; StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 204 (1556), 327 (1571), B I/II, no 145 (1705).

43 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 2586 (1754/1756/1781).44 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 579 (1744) ; StadtA Nuremberg, A 6,

no 2586 (1754/1756/1781).45 Id., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 580 (1758).46 Loc. cit.47 StadtA Nuremberg, B I/II, no 145 (1705).48 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 132 (1537), 189 (1553).49 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 189 (1553).50 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. X, no 54, p. 1889-1890.

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Fig. 2. Nuremberg, Weissgerbergasse (2010).

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most frequently51. It occurs for instance at such times of plague as in Frankfurt in 1563, when all kinds of musical activity in public, especially on the occa-sion of weddings, were prohibited52. Injunctions against disturbing services or sermons which in the case of Nuremberg applied to the city itself as well as to the surrounding villages sometimes contained the remark that talking and shouting in front or even within the church distracted the preacher and hin-dered the pious audiences from listening to the gospel53. Most often, though, town councils referred to the irritation and fright of women in childbed and ill people54. Complaints by neighbours led to the prohibition of dance music and yelling in Frankfurt inns after the ringing of the night bell in 167255. In Nuremberg, a so-called captain of the lane (« Gassenhauptmann ») handed in to the city council in 1781 a petition against disturbances caused by street cleaners at night that was signed by twenty-four men and women from the

51 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol.  III, p.  532 (1704), 539 (1713) ; StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 204 (1556), 227 (1756).

52 IfS Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 16, fos 139-141 (1563).53 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 132 (1537 : referring to surrounding villages), 189 (1553,

referring to the city itself), 329 (1572).54 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 541 (1713) ; StadtA Nuremberg, A 6,

nos 257 (1563), 550 (1616), 1127 (1674), 2586 (1754/1756/1781).55 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 529.

Fig. 3. Frankfurt on the Main : Judengasse, engraving by Matthäus Merian the Elder (1628).

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quarter, after previous ordinances of 1754 and 1756 seem to have come to be disregarded56. Another argument was that general fright and alarm could be caused, and making noise was only regarded as justified in cases of emergency like fire or hostile attack57.

Astonishingly, domestic quiet (« heußliche Ruhe ») is only referred to in one ordinance from Frankfurt of 179658. More often, town councillors became active because the political sphere was affected. For twelve years, from 1705 to 1717, the Nuremberg council complained about council meetings being dis-turbed by the singing of pupils begging for alms in the lanes around the town hall59. Shouting and yelling on the streets was also regarded as irritating foreign guests, especially envoys60. During the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg in 1542, every inhabitant was ordered to be quiet on the streets61. When the electors of the Reich met there in 1580, the city council issued the injunction that begging pupils were only allowed to sing Latin responsoria, but no German chorales, which can probably be regarded as a measure of politique with respect to the Catholic electors and their followings62.

Research based on French and Italian sources has pointed out the impor-tance of sound in the reinforcing of the hierarchical structure of early modern society63. The ordinances I have studied corroborate this impression. How exactly the acoustic space was managed to function in this way could vary considerably. The most remarkable evidence so far in my sample comes from Nuremberg. There, the city council issued an ordinance in 1603 containing meti-culous regulations concerning wedding festivities, including wedding music64. In the church, members of the old patrician dynasties were allowed music for two to three choirs, two organs, the use of the choir loft, and three tower pipers (« turmpfeiffer »). Greater merchants could enjoy music from the choir loft and organ, but to them, only one choir and organ as well as two tower pipers were granted. Lesser merchants and new burghers had to limit themselves to choir music, but not from the choir loft. Burgher artisans’ weddings were only to be accompanied by the organ and two town pipers (« stattpfeiffer ») but « no

56 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 2586 (1754/1756/1781).57 Loc. cit. ; IfS Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 3, no 42, p. 4-5 (1644).58 IfS Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 25, no 25.59 StadtA Nuremberg, B I/II, no 145.60 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 550 (1616) ; Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III,

p. 578 (1741).61 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 147 (1542).62 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 370 (1580).63 Garrioch D., « Sounds of the city… », art. cit., p. 15-19.64 StadtA Nuremberg, A 468 (1603).

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further music », whereas lesser artisans, horse merchants, and riders had to marry without the sound of the organ. In the case of a wedding of a Nuremberg burgher with someone from another town, the music had to be adapted to the latter’s social status. But the regulations did not stop there : during the festivities at home, members of the old patrician families could listen to four town pipers and four other musicians ; greater merchants were allowed to hire five musicians in total, namely, one trombone, cornet (« zinck »), bass, and discant player each, and one further musician. Whoever was found guilty of a transgression of that part of the ordinance dealing with wedding music had to pay a fine of twenty florins ! Correspondingly, figural music at funerals in Nuremberg was reserved to the highest orders of society throughout the early modern period65. In mid-eighteenth-century Würzburg, burghers were not allowed to have musicians at their « private » festivities playing trumpets and kettle drums ; court musicians were forbidden to play these on such occasions66.

The privileges enjoyed by local musicians were a constant matter of dis-pute. In 1798, the city council of Frankfurt prohibited music-making by foreign musicians during the intervals between the fairs67. In Nuremberg, competi-tions between town and country musicians for jobs at weddings were solved more equitably68. In the same town, a quarrel between the deputies responsible for the market and musical affairs respectively arose in the 1770s about who was authorised to grant allowances to foreign musicians to play at fairs. In the voluminous proceedings of that dispute, both sides referred to precedents having occurred in the past four decades69.

As regards punishments for transgressions against the well-ordered acoustic sphere, measures taken by the city councils varied considerably. Mostly, fines were imposed, as has already been mentioned. Other examples from Nuremberg include a fine of twenty-five florins for employing musicians playing dance music on Sundays and holy days, and one of even fifty florins for a bridegroom playing music in front of his bride’s house (other participa-ting musicians having to pay only three florins each)70. If fines proved to be inefficient, the city council at Frankfurt threatened to take away the licenses of inn owners and arrest them71. In the mid-eighteenth-century, musicians

65 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 509 (1611), 1545 (1705).66 StadtA Würzburg, Sammlung der hochfürstl.-wirzburgischen Landesverordnungen,

vol. 2, Würzburg, 1776, p. 345f. (1743), 527f. (1748) ; vol. 1, Würzburg 1776, p. 544f. (1704).67 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. X, no 54, p. 1889-1890.68 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 2329 (1762). 69 StadtA Nuremberg, B 19, no 402.70 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, nos 2207 (1756), 1042 (1662).71 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 529 (1797).

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could be faced with the confiscation or even immediate destruction of their instruments72. The youth who were found guilty of disturbing the service on Sundays by being noisy in the churchyard incurred corporeal punishment in the poors’ asylum or hospital in Frankfurt73. The same applied to noise that could be understood as alarm74.

If one considers the frequency of reissuing ordinances concerning the urban soundscape, which is particularly remarkable for sixteenth-century Ulm with an average of one ordinance every other year, suspicions arise as regards the success of town councils’ efforts. Authorities were well aware of this, and a considerable number of ordinances begin with verbose complaints about their subjects’ diso-bedience to preceding injunctions75. One ordinance from Nuremberg of 1592 even reports about town watchmen and honourable burghers being chased away by noisy rowdies whom they had tried to appease76. The councillors often appea-led to the responsibility of the « house fathers » for their household members77. In Frankfurt, rewards of one third of the fine or up to ten florins were promised to those who would report noisy inhabitants to the authorities78.

Court records, minutes of examinations, and petitions preserved in local archives allow one to look behind the official statements of the ordinances and reveal the concerns of minor officials and burghers. For both Nuremberg and Frankfurt, complaints by night watchmen are preserved that report on night wor-kers and apprentices shouting and yelling in the streets, one report adding that several burghers had already complained about the noise79. In Frankfurt in 1684, a shoemaker reported his neighbour, a painter, to the authorities for making incessant noise at night and for having bought a shawm (« Schalmey ») for his son who now « bravely lets himself be heard all the time » ; other neighbours, artisans as well, contributed to the report, too80. On the other hand, there were people like the inhabitants of Ulm who complained about the loss of urban sound markers. When Ulm lost its status as a free city of the Empire in 1802-03 and became part of Bavaria, the royal town commissioners’ department soon decided to abolish the ringing of church bells in the evenings and during the night. The

72 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. IV, no 61, p. 814 (1750) ; StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, No. 2207 (1756).

73 Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. III, p. 539 (1713), 581 (1758).74 IfS Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 3, no 42, p. 4 (1644).75 E.g. StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 230 (1560).76 StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 414 (1592).77 E.g. StadtA Nuremberg, A 6, no 230 (1560).78 IfS Frankfurt, Edikte, vol. 25, no 25 (1796) ; Beyerbach J.C., Sammlung…, op. cit., vol. IV,

no 61, p. 814 (1750).79 IfS Frankfurt, Criminalia, Sig. 1616 (1616) ; StadtA Nuremberg, B I/II no 952 (1764).80 IfS Frankfurt, Criminalia, Sig. 1620 (1684).

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commissioners might have expected that the inhabitants were happy to get rid of this disturbance of nightly silence, but they were wrong. In January 1808, all the heads of the town’s districts (« Viertelsmeister ») wrote a petition to the commis-sioners’ department, requesting the restitution of the traditional bell-ringing on behalf of the entire citizenry. They argued that a few individuals’ displeasure was no legal cause for abolishing it, and explained their position by referring to each bell individually, waxing eloquently about their « sweet sound » and the necessity to ring them81. These few examples demonstrate not only that regulating sound was a concern of civic authorities, but also that evidence can be found of town dwellers interacting with their local acoustic regime by complaining about noise or by defending the soundscape of their town against innovation.

Obviously, a lot of research still has to be done on a local level in order to assess the implementation of and responses to regulations regarding sound. These moreover have to be seen in relation to contemporary ordinances affec-ting the other senses – from orders to remove dung heaps from the streets to prohibitions of extravagant dress – for only in this way can one hope to find out how much sound actually mattered in early modern urban life. Although the source material analysed in this essay originates from only a few central German towns, it nevertheless indicates that the history of what sound – and controlling it – meant to the authorities and inhabitants of early modern towns does not follow a grand narrative of the decline of the aural semiotic system. It rather seems that up to well into the nineteenth-century the per-ception of sound was to a considerable extent shaped by factors that differed from town to town : the size, population density, function (free or territo-rial, seat of a residence or university), and social structure of the town, its confessional identity, the relationship between town council and church, local traditions of music making and popular culture in general, and the extent of the town’s openness to external influences. The same applies to changing cir-cumstances that could abruptly change or slowly transform the urban sounds-cape. Writing the aural history of early modern towns thus means taking into account all of those aspects ; it is an intersectional enterprise.

81 StadtA Ulm, A 3981 (1808).

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