1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910159026303321

Titolo

Sound Knowledge : Music and Science in London, 1789-1851 / / Ellen Lockhart, James Q. Davies

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago : , : University of Chicago Press, , [2017]

©2017

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (264 pages)

Disciplina

780/.05

Soggetti

Music and science - History - 18th century

Music and science - History - 19th century

Music - England - London - 18th century - History and criticism

Music - England - London - 19th century - History and criticism

Science - England - London - History - 18th century

Science - England - London - History - 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Fantasies of Total Description / Davies, James Q. / Lockhart, Ellen -- 1. Music as an Object of Natural History / Dolan, Emily I. -- 2. Celestial Mechanisms: Adam Walker's Eidouranion, Celestina, and the Advancement of Knowledge / Loughridge, Deirdre -- 3. Transparent Music and Sound-Light Analogy ca. 1800 / Lockhart, Ellen -- 4. Charles Wheatstone: Musical Instrument Making, Natural Philosophy, and Acoustics in Early Nineteenth-Century London / Jackson, Myles W. -- 5. Charles Wheatstone's Enchanted Lyre and the Spectacle of Sound / Dickson, Melissa -- 6. Instruments of Empire / Davies, James Q. -- 7. Good Vibrations: Frankenstein on the London Stage / Hibberd, Sarah -- 8. Engine Noise and Artificial Intelligence: Babbage's London / Williams, Gavin -- 9. Hearing Things: Musical Objects at the 1851 Great Exhibition / Willson, Flora -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

What does it mean to hear scientifically? What does it mean to see musically? This volume uncovers a new side to the long nineteenth



century in London, a hidden history in which virtuosic musical entertainment and scientific discovery intersected in remarkable ways. Sound Knowledge examines how scientific truth was accrued by means of visual and aural experience, and, in turn, how musical knowledge was located in relation to empirical scientific practice. James Q. Davies and Ellen Lockhart gather work by leading scholars to explore a crucial sixty-year period, beginning with Charles Burney's ambitious General History of Music, a four-volume study of music around the globe, and extending to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where musical instruments were assembled alongside the technologies of science and industry in the immense glass-encased collections of the Crystal Palace. Importantly, as the contributions show, both the power of science and the power of music relied on performance, spectacle, and experiment. Ultimately, this volume sets the stage for a new picture of modern disciplinarity, shining light on an era before the division of aural and visual knowledge.