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Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DTHPS (Sound and Materialism in the 19th Century)

Teaser

The research project investigates a scientific and materialist perspective on music and sound sound in the 19th century. It aims to enlarge substantially our understanding of the dialogue between 19th-century music and natural science, examining in particular how a...

Summary

The research project investigates a scientific and materialist perspective on music and sound sound in the 19th century. It aims to enlarge substantially our understanding of the dialogue between 19th-century music and natural science, examining in particular how a scientific-materialist conception of sound was formed alongside a dominant culture of romantic idealism.

The basic problem being addressed is that idealism / idealist metaphysics has exerted a disproportionate influence over the writing of the history of music during the 19th century: sound as disembodied and intangible, at once a philosophical monstrance and poetic tool of metaphysics. But sound was also regarded by writers as tangible, material and subject to physical laws. This has led to a blind spot in research, where these perspective remain unintegrated.

The research is important for society because (i) we live in a new technological age in which sound objects, devices and technologies continue to change how we interact with sound, often with dizzying speed; by understanding better how this very process took place in the past, we are better equipped to ground our knowledge of the present; (ii) historiographical writing on 19th-century music tends to neglects acoustic theory, the natural sciences, and the philosophy of materialism, all of which were powerful discourses; by excavating these sedimented fields of knowledge and integrating them with music-driven discourses, we will help redress this problem and seek to achieve a more integrated view of musical and scientific culture for the period; (iii) writings in the History and Philosophy of Science have not integrated with musicology well (with one or two notable exceptions), and this project is seeking to bridge the disciplinary divide through its personnel, outputs, and events.

The project’s overall objections, therefore, are:

- to pursue lines of research that can integrate the historical discourses of natural science and music for the period
- to establish an intellectual framework for philosophical materialism that can account for both idealist and materialist metaphysics of sound
- to investigate the role of sound for scientists and mathematicians working on everything from Heat (Fourier) to physiology (Müller) and animals anatomy (Leopardi)
- to establish for the first time a cultural history of the sine wave, as the mathematical emblem of sound
- to pursue research into alternative histories of listening, and other modes of perception
- to probe the gap between silent objects of auditory signification (from manuscripts to resonators), and the actual sensations of sound.
- to examine the means and manner of interaction between materiality and sound in all its manifestations for the period.

Work performed

PI has researched the following major fields:

- Printed sources material available on discourses of materialism from 1850s and 1860s
- the phenomenon of ultrasonics, their material existence and perception
- The role of phrenology in music education, theories of the creative process, and material / mechanical cognition.
- Major, ground-breaking study of a fragmentary manuscript by Franz Liszt, ostensibly as a case study in the gap between tactile sonic object and sensation, but which
had unexpected results (see below)
- 19th-century texts in comparative anatomy in their relation to listening and discourses of ‘hearing differently’

Two major edited collections are in the final stages of preparation:

[1] _Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Scientific Imagination_, ed. David Trippett and Benjamin Walton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2019)
This presents fourteen chapters that offer path-breaking research on a range of topics within the auspices of the project. From studies of stage machinery, sound and hypnotism, auditory prosthesis, and medical studies of hearing loss, it will influence future research directions within the fields of music studies, opera studies, and the history and philosophy of science.

[2] _The Cambridge Companion to Music in Digital Culture_, eds. N Cook, M. Ingalls, D. Trippett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)
This collection of twelve chapters includes a study of the virtual as the flipside of the material. If you define reality at the level of sensation, it makes no different—materially speaking—whether the stimulus originates in the outside world or a computer algorithm. This study is the first text to examine digital culture in the context of materialist discourse, and the first to take a cultural studies approach to music and digitality.

The project has been proactive in fostering interactions between scholars through meetings, talks and conferences.

International conferences:

• ‘After Idealism: Sound and Matter and Medium in the 19th Century’ (17-18 March 2017), CRASSH, Cambridge. The audio for all talks is now available on the project site, and freely accessible. A special issue of _19th-Century Music_, edited by the PI, David Trippett, will offer revised versions of selected papers from this event in 2019.

• ‘Acoustics of Empire’, Max Planck Institute for Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin / Harvard University, Cambridge MA (16-17 March, 23-24 March 2018). These two events will feed into a third, culminating conference in Cambridge on 6-7 December 2018, with edited volume to follow.

• ‘Sensing the Sonic: Histories of Hearing Differently,’ (15-16 June 2018), CRASSH, Cambridge. This conference comprised talks from leading figures in sound studies and historical sound studies; we will soon upload the audio files to the project site, and an edited volume with either Bloomsbury or Chicago University Press is planned.

Co-organised events:

• ‘Music and the body Between Revolutions’ (31 March 2017), with Columbia Society of Fellows

• ‘The Audible Spectrum: Sound Studies, Cultures of Listening and Sound Art’ (7-9 June 2018), with Université Paris 8 and Philharmonie de Paris.


Unexpected outcomes:

The PI sought a case study in the agency of sonic objects, and specifically the gap between a tactile sonic objects and auditory sensation in the mid-19th century, so began examining in detail a fragmentary manuscript by Franz Liszt whose contents had been dismissed as illegible and fragmentary (Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Weimar). After forensic examination, he discovered that the manuscript contained not some inconsequential fragments of music, but the full, continuous draft of the first act of an Italian opera.

This proved a significant find, and the result was an international success story with major international exposure: I created a critical edition of the music (forthcoming with Editio Musica Budapest), and orchest

Final results

Already the research underway progresses beyond the state of the art:

Trippett (PI): has published
• the first Anglo-German studies of phrenology and music, which specifically scrutinizes the relation of philosophical materialism and mechanical cognition to music
composition and pedagogy. The discourses of mid-century materialism are virtually uncharted within the filed of music and sound studies.

• an unprecedented article on transhumanism, prosthetic hearing and ultrasonics in the 19th century. Published by OUP (The Musical Quarterly), this long article
(25,000wds) has already achieved an Alt-Metric of 50, and has smaller versions published by The Conversation, and on the World Economic Forum website

• a detailed, historical study of Liszt’s lost opera Sardanapalo that draws on the widest range of manuscript sources for the first time. This long article (24,000wds)
accepted by the Journal of the Royal Musical Association demonstrates for the first time that the manuscript N4 contains the full first act of Liszt’s only mature opera,
which was hitherto unheard.

The PI\'s monograph will examine the scientific and philosophical materialist context of sound writ large in the 19th-century for the first time. It is provisionally entitled _Musical Bodies_, and is in preparation.

Van Drie (Research Associate): is examining alternative sensory perception, specifically modes of deafness and vicarious sensory experience, for the first time. Her monograph, provisionally entitled _Stages of Hearing: performance as research in fin de siècle French art and science_, is in preparation.

Gillin (Research Associate): is studying the special, formative role of sound in British scientific and mathematical work during the 1820s – 1860s. This includes debates on pitch regulation that have never been considered before. His monograph, provisionally entitled _Sound Philosophy: authority, science, music, and the study of acoustics in nineteenth-century Britain_, is in preparation.

Kromhaut (Research Associate): is studying the cultural history of waveforms, in heat and sound. This includes particularly the sine wave, its mathematical origins in Fourier’s analysis of heat, and Ohm’s application of this to sound. This kind of work is entirely new to the field of historical sound studies. His monograph, provisionally entitled _Wave, Spectrum, Signal, Sound_ is in preparation.

The wider social implications of this work have thus far been focussed principally on the wide scholarly community connected to sound studies, musicology, opera studies and history and philosophy of science: through publications, three major international conferences, two co-organised events, keynote talks, invited colloquia, special panels at the _Royal Musical Association_ (2017) and _American Musicological Society_ (2018), and conference presentations (36 individual presentations to date in total), as well as via the main project site. The project\'s goal of relativising and historicising the influence of idealist metaphysics on 19th-century music is proving successful, and I anticipate that as the research reaches the stage of publication, there will be ever greater public engagement.

*NB Liszt opera*: One unexpected discovery from the project’s research into sound objects was the music for Liszt’s incomplete opera, _Sardanapalo_. This has lain silently for nearly 170 years before the PI established that it could be rescued. The PI’s work into this, including the creation of a ground-breaking first edition (Editio Musica Budapest), and the immense task of orchestrating this according to Liszt\'s instructions (Schott Music), has made modern performances possible.

_International media interest_:
The initial story was carried by a wide range of international press, including the New York Times, London Times, Global Times (China), Telegraph, Independent, Hungarian Times (Hungary), BBC, CNN etc. as well as a

Website & more info

More info: http://www.sound-matter.com.