On what we cannot speak, we must stay in silence.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus)
If we could express it with words, we would not need to dance.
(Isadora Duncan, dancer)
INTRODUCTION
Aura. Mood. Ambience. Genius Loci. Stimmung. For a few years, the concept of atmosphere has been gaining broad consideration in various fields such as aesthetics, ethnography, architecture, urban planning, and organizational studios (Bille 2019, Griffero 2020, Julmi 2017, Schroer, S.A., Schmitt 2017). Of old phenomenological origin and brought back into the international debate in 1995 by Gernot Bhöme, the notion refers to the specific quality of a precise place and lived space (2018).
As Griffero sintetizes: to perceive an atmosphere means to capture the sensation of the space around us (2014:12). In this sense, an atmosphere is neither a mere subjective state of being nor a mere objective external state of being. On the contrary, the notion highlights the intersection between the two aspects as parts of a generated sensation lived by the encounter of an actor incorporated in an external world, which results on a double level: sensible and perceptible (ibidem:36). From this immersive aspect derives a central role of the intersection of the five senses in radicating and giving shape at the atmosphere of a certain environment or context. Sight, touch, hearing, smell, and, in small amounts, taste participate in the creation of a sensible texture in which the experiential quality is rooted in the individual and their relation with the surroundings (Howes 2019).
With the following, I would like to analyze, from an anthropological perspective, three case studies to draw key topics related to sound, especially music, and its role in qualifying a certain atmosphere (Gruillebau 2019). Far from representing a static and isolated object, music, dynamically and in different ways, fills the acoustic space of the surroundings according to parameters such as volume, source’s location, structural quality (rhythm, timbre, texture), and resonances (echoes and reverbs). In this way, interacting with the natural, social, and cultural context in which it is executed or reproduced, music participates in the generation of a specific atmosphere that influences the experience of the social actors, “painting” them in specific senses, intensities, and affectivities (Riedel Torvinen 2021).