While Schopenhauer makes a great anecdote, I think the reality is some people think better with silence, and others think better with background noise. I think recorded music in particular has ushered in an age where productive thinking can even be enhanced through "noise" rather than diminished.
"Every time a siren shrieks on the street, our conscious minds might ignore it, but other brain regions behave as if that siren were a predator barreling straight for us. Given how many sirens city dwellers are subject to over the course of an average day, and the attention-fracturing tension induced by loud sounds of every sort, it’s easy to see how sensitivity to noise, once an early warning system for approaching threats, has become a threat in itself."
I see this come up over and over in these types of articles, on adrenal response to stimulus, like noise or driving or even conflict in the workplace. I think this is an extremely primitive way of thinking about the human brain. Yes, hearing evolved to be sensitive due to natural selection. Over-reacting to non-threatening stimulus? Hardly. The brain is not static. We are, in fact, highly adaptable to our environment. And I don't see any evidence suggesting a modern din is snuffing out our intellect.