Danger: music zone

For violinist Matthew Faust, things finally got so bad that playing in big orchestral works felt like being in a war zone. Even his “full metal jacket” -- custom-molded earplugs with maximum filters -- wasn’t enough to protect him.

“I needed a crash helmet,” he says.

To Seth Mausner, a violist with the San Francisco Symphony, the experience can feel like “being assaulted.”

Marcia Dickstein, a harpist who often performs with Los Angeles Opera and the Long Beach Symphony, likens it to “somebody driving nails through your head.”

At symphony concerts, audiences may thrill to a piece played at maximum volume. But if you’re a musician sitting with your back to the brass section, the sensation can be overwhelming.

An often-cited study by Canadian audiologist Marshall Chasin measured hearing loss among rock musicians and found that about 30% were afflicted in some way. Among their classical music counterparts, the figure was 43%. Yet while noise-induced hearing impairment is a well-known issue in the rock world, long highlighted in educational campaigns featuring the Who’s Pete Townshend and rapper Missy Elliott, the discomfort from loudness suffered by classical musicians is generally kept hush-hush.

“Classical musicians do suffer from hearing loss related to the volume of sound onstage,” says Steven Braunstein, a bassoonist with the San Francisco Symphony. “It’s a real problem for many people,” especially if “you have four trumpets and four trombones right behind your head. It gets very, very loud.”

Measured in decibels, in fact, symphonic sound can soar up to 110, equivalent to the sound of a jackhammer or power saw.

Last year, the European Union set a maximum limit of 85 decibels for the workplace, including concert halls, in a directive that generated derision but also debate.

“All orchestral music in this country is facing what can only be described as a quiet revolution,” Martin Kettle wrote in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, describing possible changes to the repertory itself. “Loud works like Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ and the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler may have to be scheduled more rarely and surrounded by quieter pieces.”

In the United States, where symphony halls are regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (allowing a 90-decibel level over an eight-hour day in any workplace), nobody is suggesting scrapping Mahler. But to guard against debilitating decibels, an increasing number of orchestras are experimenting with unorthodox seating arrangements, motorcycle windshields and firing-range earplugs.

“What’s important to understand,” says Craig Kasper, an audiologist in New York, is that “it doesn’t make a difference if it’s classical music, rock or a jackhammer. Hearing loss depends on how loud, how intense and how long the individual is exposed to it.”

The crescendo effect

As music moved from 18th century private salons to 20th century concert halls, small chamber ensembles -- often a group of string and woodwind players -- grew into symphony orchestras with large brass and percussion sections.

“Composers want more people onstage, more sound, and the instruments become super-charged,” says UCLA musicologist Robert Fink, describing this evolution. “What happens between Mozart and Mahler is the industrialization of the orchestra. Orchestras become analogous to factories where sound is produced. You punch in, you punch out. And at the same time, the instruments are getting more efficient.”

As brass instruments in particular became bigger, the orchestra’s sound increased. At the same time, so did audience expectations.

The result is that music “has gotten more exclamation points,” says Florence Nelson, a piccolo player and secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Musicians. “People want that today. They want that loud sound.”

Onstage, though, rapture sometimes gives way to misery.

“There’s a kind of loud where everything starts vibrating, and it’s thrilling, right on the edge of being painful,” says harpist Dickstein. “Then there are the times when I’m right in front of the timpani, and I start to cry, my eyes start to water, and I have to put my head between my knees to plug in the earplugs.”

In a survey of more than 400 musicians, Allison Wright Reid, a British health and safety expert, found that close to 80% had experienced pain because of loud noise, and about a third of them complained that their hearing had become duller.

“You don’t go stone deaf,” says Reid, who wrote “A Sound Ear,” a report sponsored by the Assn. of British Orchestras. Rather, musicians may lose their perfect pitch, or experience increasingly inaccurate and unreliable hearing with “all sorts of extra noise thrown in,” she says. “It’s like driving a very old car: You don’t know if it’s going to get you there, and it constantly worries you because [of the] noise.”

In other industries, people can learn to depend on visual aids, she says. “But you can’t lip-read a piccolo.”

In practical terms, loud noise can destroy the tiny hairs in the inner ear that translate sound waves into nerve impulses for the brain.

Blunt trauma -- an explosion or other high-impact sound -- can cause immediate and permanent hearing loss. But hearing can also be damaged gradually by constant exposure to an above-normal decibel range, with the damage manifest as a limited ability to pick up certain frequencies -- a sort of muffled sensation -- or as tinnitus, a constant buzzing or ringing tone.

The risk faced by musicians depends on what section of the orchestra they are seated in, what instrument they play, how often they perform and rehearse, acoustics, and repertory.

And noise damage doesn’t stop at the ear.

Among brass players, for example, the force needed to play at very high levels can also result in torn lip muscles and damage to the control of the soft palate.

According to several studies, musicians may also experience an accelerated heart rate, increased blood pressure, muscle contractions, tension, irritability and anger.

“Initially I didn’t tell anyone about it,” violinist Faust, 43, says about the hearing problems he began having in 1990. In orchestras, “there’s a little machismo. It’s something you don’t share. It’s seen as sort of a weakness.”

At first, Faust’s doctor said he was suffering from sensorineural hearing loss caused by noise. Eventually, Faust developed tinnitus. Having hoped since high school “to win a chair in a full-time orchestra,” he tried earplugs, acupuncture and herbs, as well as moving to quieter sections of the orchestra. The management of the Oregon Symphony, his employer, was helpful and sympathetic, but its concern wasn’t sufficient. Faust acquired “a phobia,” he says. “You develop a fear of loud sounds.”

During concerts, he was trapped.

Finally, Faust, who fell in love with the violin at age 5, left the Oregon group last year on disability.

Sound measures

While some British orchestra “noise teams” have considered changes to the standard repertory, American orchestras have preferred less drastic measures to avoid damage and discord.

Backstage at Walt Disney Concert Hall, free foam earplugs are available for players. In San Francisco, plexiglass shields have been attached to orchestra chairs -- a common, if imperfect, sound barrier. At Los Angeles Opera, where the orchestra sits enclosed in a pit, the musicians routinely keep one ear on the seating arrangements.

“We’re always cognizant of the proximity of one musician to another,” says Greg Goodall, principal timpanist and chairman of the orchestra committee. “We have to be a little careful that the piccolo player is not sitting too close to a violinist and the percussion is not too close to the brass.”

Ultimately, finding the right balance is a matter of courtesy, he says, adding that when he is playing, he customarily warns the musicians near him of hard hits ahead.

“Personally, I’d like to think no one has been angry at me,” he says, “but there have certainly been times when people have been angered by one player playing very loudly close to somebody else.”

Some players spend hundreds of dollars themselves on custom-made earplugs. As a result, a cottage industry has grown up around musicians’ ears.

Whereas foam earplugs reduce the sound in high frequencies, making everything sound muffled, these high-tech plugs offer better fidelity, as filters reduce volume across the spectrum.

Bay Area audiologist Lisa Tannenbaum used to sell hearing aids but decided she preferred “the preventive side of things.” These days, she makes earplug molds for as many as 40 ears in a day.

At a Hollywood recording studio recently, a Tannenbaum sales presentation resembled a Tupperware party.

“Do you guys want to start getting molded up?” she asked, then with a soothing stream of chatter pushed a small foam plug on a string into the left ear of Nathen Maxwell, a 25-year-old bassist with the punk band Flogging Molly, who pinched his nose in discomfort. The foam, inserted past the second bend inside the ear, protects the inner ear from the silicone paste that Tannenbaum uses to make her molds.

“It’s going to feel a little weird,” she said as she pulled a pink syringe from her black canvas bag.

“Say bye-bye,” she said, injecting the silicone.

“Ah,” Maxwell exclaimed. He looked happy. “Everything’s gone nice and quiet.”

Increasingly, Tannenbaum is molding ears that belong to classical musicians. She has made earplugs for several San Francisco Symphony players and a couple from the Los Angeles Philharmonic in addition to musicians from Metallica and members of Santana.

“Volume is volume,” she says.

Recently, she fitted earplugs for Dickstein, who says hearing loss “is a very frightening prospect.”

Still, the harpist remains infatuated with the volume of large orchestral works.

“It’s a phenomenal physical experience: You’re completely enveloped by the sound,” she says. “I always tell people, ‘You’d understand how thrilling classical music is if you were sitting onstage.’ ”

Contact Louise Roug at Calendar.letters@latimes.com.