Orchestras are becoming louder every year. As the argument goes, concert halls grow larger and orchestras have to get louder, especially as a louder and louder world causes earlier and earlier hearing loss. The cost hs been “a drastic degrading oftone colour” and, in particular, the drowning of the strings in a wash of brass. “Today’s musical instruments are like freakishly gigantic vegetables: the volume is prodigious, the flavour insipid. “