20/3/07
Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Sound and loudness
Excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and to fill it with terror. The noise of vast cataracts, raging storms, thunder or artillery, awakes a great and aweful sensation in the mind, though we can observe no nicety or artifice in those sorts of music.
Suddenness
A sudden beginning, or sudden cessation of sound of any considerable force, has the same power. The attention is roused by this; and the faculties driven forward, as it were, on their guard. Whatever either in sights or sounds makes the transition from one extreme to the other easy, causes no terror, and consequently can be no cause of greatness. In every thing sudden and unexpected, we are apt to start; that is, we have a perception of danger, and our nature rouses us to guard against it. It may be observed, that a single sound of some strength, though but of short duration, if repeated after intervals, has a grand effect. Few things more aweful than the striking of a great clock, when the silence of night prevents the attention from being too much dissipated.

Intermitting
A low, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it seems in some respects opposite to that just mentioned, is productive of the sublime.

I have already observed, that night increases our terror more perhaps than anything else; it is our nature, that, when we do not know what may happen to us, to fear the worst that can happen us; and hence it is, that uncertainty is so terrible, that we often seek to be rid of it…

Now some low, confused, uncertain sounds, leave us in the same fearful anxiety concerning their causes, that no light, or an uncertain light does concerning the objects that surround us.
But a light now appearing, and now leaving us, and so off and on, is even more terrible than total darkness; and a sort of uncertain sounds are, when the necessary dispositions concur, more alarming than a total silence.