Sounds of Breath

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 2 analyzes breath sounds as music. Medical definitions of musical breath, non-musical breath, and wheeze are presented alongside a discussion of respiration’s role in homeostasis. The field of psychology provides evidence of the impact of audible breaths on mood perception. Audible inhales and exhales are shown to be as diverse and complex as chords. A typology of breath sounds is presented via recordings by Goode teaching Beethoven, Balestracci recording Barrière, Quatuor Mosaïques recording Haydn, several quartets recording Debussy, Bassingthwaighte recording Varèse, Kashkashian recording Bach, and Burton recording a song sermon. The categories include breath as rhetoric, as anacrusis, as expectation, as motive, as climax, as phrase marker, and as narration. Spectrographic and score-based analyses determine the precise location, duration, and spectral content of specific inhales and exhales.