From the knocking on the gate after Macbeth’s murder of Duncan to the sound of Ugolino’s teeth on the skull of his enemy, the suicide’s violent excretion of words and blood, Calvino’s “king who listens,” the Sicilian bull and the heavenly talking eagle, this essay considers the difference between the sound made by a voice and sounds that are merely instrumental or artificial as a feature of the body politic indicative of tyranny or justice.