Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918

Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918 presents a range of historical case studies on the sounding worlds of the European past. The chapters in this volume explore ways of thinking about sound historically, and seek to understand how people have understood and negotiated their relationships with the sounding world in Europe from the Middle Ages through to the early twentieth century. They consider, in particular: sound and music in the later Middle Ages; the politics of sound in the early modern period; the history of the body and perception during the Ancien Régime; and the sounds of the city in the nineteenth century and sound and colonial rule at the fin de siècle.

The case studies also range in geographical orientation to include considerations not only of Britain and France, the countries most considered in European historical sound studies in English-language scholarship to date, but also Bosnia-Herzegovina, British Colonial India, Germany, Italy and Portugal. Out of this diverse group of case studies emerge significant themes that recur time and again, varying according to time and place: sound, power and identity; sound as a marker of power or violence; and sound, physiology and sensory perception and technologies of sound, consumption and meaning.

General Introduction Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson

Part 1: Historicizing Aurality

Introduction Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson

1.‘Sowndys and melodiis’: Perceptions of Sound and Music in Late Medieval England Lisa Colton

2. The Physiologist at the Opera – Claude Perrault’s Du bruit (1680) and the Politics of Pleasure in the Ancien RégimeVeit Erlmann

3. Georges Kastner’s Les Voix de Paris (1857): A Study in Musical Flânerie Emily Laurance

4. Refashioning Rhythm: Hearing, Acting and Reacting to Metronomic Sound in Experimental Psychology and Beyond, c.1875–1920 Alexander Bonus

Part 2: Sound Politics

Introduction Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson

5. Orphée at the Forains: Silencing and Silences in Old Regime France Hedy Law

6. Sound as Promise and Threat: Drumming, Collective Violence and Colonial Law in British Ceylon Jim Sykes

7. Cannons, Church Bells and Colonial Policies: The Soundscape in Habsburg Bosnia-Herzegovina Risto Pekka Pennanen

Part 3: Urban Soundscapes of Europe

Introduction Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson

8. City Life and Music for Secular Entertainment in the Empire of Maximilian I Helen Coffey

9. Sonic Afterworld: Mapping the Soundscape of Heaven and Hell in Early Modern Cities Daniele V. Filippi

10. The Sounds of the City, 1598: Everard Guilpin’s London in Skialetheia Adam Hansen

11. The Soundscape of the City in the Nineteenth Century Olivier Balaÿ

12. Porosity and Modernity: Lisbon’s Soundscape from 1864–1908 Joao Silva.

Bibliography

Index