{"id":2195,"date":"2016-11-03T20:14:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T20:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cpanel.fuelmedserver.com\/~decibelhearing\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2016-11-03T20:14:14","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T20:14:14","slug":"musician-hearing-loss-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/musician-hearing-loss-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Musician Hearing Loss Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"musicianAs we work through the clinic day, we may find ourselves jealous of\u00a0our patients with those high frequency hearing losses due to concert their attendance.\u00a0 Often these were the lucky ones with the premier tickets, close to the stage, the musicians, and the speakers as well. As audiologists we now know that those that had the good tickets and those on stage are almost four times as likely to develop noise induced hearing loss as the general public.\u00a0These individuals are also 57% more likely to develop tinnitus. Study after contemporary study, such as Schink et al (2014),<\/a>document\u00a0hearing loss among musicians\u00a0and those that listen to loud music on a regular basis. \u00a0While many audiologists consider this malady also to have affected past lovers of music from swing, rock & rollers, punk, rappers, it is interesting that hearing loss among musicians seems to be a\u00a0comparatively new phenomenon.
\n\"hearingOf course, depending on who you read, the most famous classical hearing impaired artist, Beethoven<\/a>, may have had more than loud noise exposure compounding his hearing loss.\u00a0 Speculation\u00a0by forensic otolaryngologists, pathologists\u00a0and others\u00a0suggest evidence that Beethoven could have had lead poisoning due to his habit of drinking wine, and lead was used to preserve wine during his time.\u00a0 Others have presented many other causes for his deafness, but why no consideration of noise exposure?\u00a0 It seems reasonable to assume that if there is danger of reduced hearing due to noise exposure among contemporary artists, there must have been some issues in previous centuries as well?\u00a0 Were not ears susceptible to the same issues of noise exposure in those days?\u00a0 Didn\u2019t tinnitus exist in other centuries?
\n\"musical
\nAn expert on the history of music, Sherman (2000, 2016) feels that it is unlikely that Bach<\/a>, Schubert<\/a>, Handel<\/a>, Vivaldi<\/a>\u00a0and others had noise induced hearing losses from their music.\u00a0 In his opinion, the typical ensembles of their time were small and designed for compactness.\u00a0 (Click on the small ensemble version of Air by Johan Sebastian Bach for music). \u00a0While there were some larger bands of the time Corelli<\/a>, for example,\u00a0was \u00a0still extremely small compared to that of later composers (Wagner<\/a>, Mahler<\/a>) of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Even in the late 18th century ensembles performing Mozart operas in houses that were comfortable to audiences of 500, orchestras were chamber sized.\u00a0 Additionally,\u00a0singing techniques\u00a0incorporated \u201csmall voice\u201d opera techniques<\/a> lending themselves to a low volume.\u00a0 By the 1840s the lowered larynx and continuous vibrato techniques were necessary for singers to\u00a0sing over the larger, louder orchestras of the time.\u00a0 The orchestras\u00a0became louder as the musical instruments had been modified by that time to provide a higher intensity output to satisfy the changing economic landscape of venues\u00a0which\u00a0were necessarily becoming larger, seating more paying middle class customers.\u00a0 As the 19th century matured,\"opera aristocrats no longer funded the arts for their personal pleasure and funding came from performances, the more present the higher the purse.\u00a0The more present the louder the performances became.
\nBy the late 19th century larger populations had access to art music,\u00a0requiring\u00a0larger and larger concert halls filled with sufficient sound, voices, instruments and ensembles cranking up the volume to ear damaging levels.
\nAs a result many violinists, who sat for centuries in front of the brass,\u00a0began to\u00a0notice substantial hearing losses as a result of the increased volumes by the early 20th century.\u00a0\u00a0(Click on the Wagner\u2019s Ride of the Valkaries to check out the contrast between opera voices\/ larger ensembles and the smaller ones by Bach and earlier composers).
\nThus the issues of loud music did not just begin with the swing or rock and rollers, it has been with us for many years, probably the past 150-175 years as the ensembles became louder for commercial purposes.
\nOf course these days we can be exposed to extremely loud music, loud restaurants and other loud places and we find it part of the experience.\u00a0 It is necessary for us to be careful these days as to the places we find ourselves and take appropriate precautions when in loud environments.\u00a0 These days most professional musicians use some sort of musician\u2019s earplugs or a monitoring system to insure that they will be able to hear the notes just as well 30 years from now as the do their current performances.\u00a0 If the musicians of the 18th and early 19th centuries could see\u00a0a full football stadium of adoring fans and the funds that it would afford them for these loud performances, they would be the first to sign up for the use of earplugs and monitors\u2026\u2026.it was a different time when much was simpler and noise exposure was the least of ones worries, wow how the times have changed.
\nReprinted with permission from hearinghealthmatters.org.
\nPlease visit http:\/\/hearinghealthmatters.org\/ for the original article: Musician\u2019s Hearing Loss over the Centuries<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we work through the clinic day, we may find ourselves jealous of\u00a0our patients with those high frequency hearing losses due to concert their attendance.\u00a0 Often these were the lucky ones with the premier tickets, close to the stage, the musicians, and the speakers as well. As audiologists we now know that those that had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"The Musician Hearing Loss Evolution | Decibel Hearing | Simi Valley","_seopress_titles_desc":"As we work through the clinic day, we may find ourselves jealous of\u00a0our patients with those high frequency hearing losses due to concert their attendance","_seopress_robots_index":"","schema":"","fname":"","lname":"","position":"","credentials":"","placeID":"","no_match":false,"name":"","company":"","review":"","address":"","city":"","state":"","zip":"","lat":"","lng":"","phone1":"","phone2":"","fax":"","mon1":"","mon2":"","tue1":"","tue2":"","wed1":"","wed2":"","thu1":"","thu2":"","fri1":"","fri2":"","sat1":"","sat2":"","sun1":"","sun2":"","hours-note":"","locid":"","rating":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decibelhearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}