From Lviv

Old sounds, new contexts

A musical moment in the center of Lviv, May 2024. (Photo: Olivia Giovetti)

Earlier this year, I spent a few weeks in Lviv, in part to report on a story about the Lviv National Opera for the Financial Times (read it for free here). One of the ideas that didn’t make it into that piece was the overall soundscape of Lviv, a little over two years into the war. I was able to touch on the way the streets come to a halt when a fallen soldier is brought back home to rest, the blare of Orthodox music from the funeral procession heard as people on the sidewalk fall to their knees in a show of honor, a visual that came to resonate with several moments I saw onstage at the LNO (“This war brings new contexts to such things,” artistic director Vasyl Vovkun told me when I mentioned this to him, a response I’ve thought about a lot in the ensuing months).

Beyond that, however, the war brought several new sonic contexts to the city. The thrum of generators made some of the main streets sound like they were beset by an army of invisible lawnmowers, especially on days where it was too hot to forego the air conditioner. There were also, of course, the air-raid sirens, and the many sounds that resembled air-raid sirens (vacuum cleaners, a revving engine, hearing a pop song the wrong way on the radio in a grocery store).