Gavin Williams | King's College London (original) (raw)
Books by Gavin Williams
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2022
Shellac was essential to the gramophone industry throughout the first half of the twentieth centu... more Shellac was essential to the gramophone industry throughout the first half of the twentieth century, yet the material has long kept a low profile. At once inaudible and urgently required, shellac was a plastic and colonial commodity with wide-ranging applications. In reconstructing shellac’s economic and scientific networks, this article argues that the material was a multiplicity, which entailed both the entangled knowledge systems of its production and a decisive switch: from bodily techniques of production into those of mediated musical listening. It aims to decenter North American narratives about the development of sound reproduction technology, showing how South Asian knowledge, labor, and environments were profoundly involved, even if they were only rarely acknowledged in mediated musical experiences. Indeed, in an age before synthetic hydrocarbon polymers, shellac fulfilled the role of musical plastic through its inconspicuousness: its capacity to hold and harmonize multiple disc ingredients, while disappearing into the background it supplied.
What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the... more What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible--or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
Hearing the Crimean War, 2019
Hearing the Crimean War, 2019
What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the... more What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible - or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
Articles by Gavin Williams
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2022
Few figures loom larger in the early history of recorded sound than Enrico Caruso. This article i... more Few figures loom larger in the early history of recorded sound than Enrico Caruso. This article inquires after what made him a reproducible person: it portrays him as a singer celebrity deeply involved in his own celebrity through the media of caricature, sculpture, film and opera house. Yet, through analysis of Caruso's productions for New York's Italian diaspora and farther afield, it argues that an ensemble of media meant he was reproduced beyond familiar, cosmopolitan circuits of operatic celebrity. It also shows how politics of celebrity reproduction were transformed following Caruso's death, through the writing of history, into new imaginations and techniques for listening.
Published in 19th-Century Music: 10.1525/ncm.2013.37.2.113
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2011
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2016
Chapters in Edited Books by Gavin Williams
Music and Science in London, 2016
Funded by the British government, Babbage’s Difference Engine was supposed to be the world’s most... more Funded by the British government, Babbage’s Difference Engine was supposed to be the world’s most powerful mechanical calculator, able quickly to produce tables of numerical solutions for relatively high-order polynomial equations. But it was never built (at least not in his lifetime). In contemporary accounts, the device emerges as an object of wonderment and excitement, but also anxiety: the machine seemed to be capable of substituting for human labor and even human thought. Commentators understood its mysterious powers in sonic terms: the click of a hand crank, the whir of silver rings displaying numbers, the ring of a bell at the end of the calculation—noises were read as signs of intelligent activity, but, disturbingly, in the absence of a human agent. I argue that these unsettling sounds, emerging from the internal mechanism, distill the Marxian problematic of replacing human labor with machines. The Difference Engine’s internal sound world can thus be put into dialog with the noisy cityscape of early-nineteenth-century London—a volubly disruptive environment of “street nuisances” (to wit: itinerant musicians) that Babbage himself deplored and actively campaigned against. Indeed, the noises of the urban environment and those of the Difference Engine provide an illuminating contrast, presenting diverse aspects on noise and the human-machine interface within what was at the time the world’s most industrialized city.
Italy’s most successful ballet of the late-nineteenth century was Luigi Manzotti and Romualdo Mar... more Italy’s most successful ballet of the late-nineteenth century was Luigi Manzotti and Romualdo Marenco’s _Excelsior_ (1881). Its subject was the technological progress of modern times; its principal characters were allegories of “Civilization” and “Obscurantism,” which featured alongside further nonhuman actors such as the steam engine and manmade electricity.
Yet _Excelsior_’s projected meanings evolved throughout the 19th-century. A marionette production opened in 1884, its emphasis on the accurate reproduction of dance gestures, as well as on the music’s powers to kindle lifelike animation. Other modifications followed in subsequent revivals: at La Scala in 1909, the ballet was updated to incorporate the airplane and cinema, even though faithfulness to Manzotti’s original choreography remained crucial. More significantly, in 1913 the same production was made into a film, billed at the time as a novel experiment in _cine-fono-coreografia_ (this has recently been restored at Rome’s Cineteca Nazionale, with Marenco’s music re-synchronized to the moving image). The film offers a rare glimpse of nineteenth-century ballet in motion, as well as raising new questions about audiovisual interplay and the cultural interpretation of gesture.
My paper traces a twin concern with technological progress and the reproduction of gesture in _Excelsior_’s reception history from its premiere into the early-twentieth century. Drawing above all on writings stemming from Siegfried Kracauer’s canonical essay “The Mass Ornament,” which argued that contemporary dance reflected modern factory conditions along the production line, I argue for a political approach to the analysis of gesture: one that aims to reestablish a persistent link between _Excelsior_’s bodily movements and its technological ideology.
when probing sonic epistemologies, whether sensorial, affective, or physical. In this chapter, I ... more when probing sonic epistemologies, whether sensorial, affective, or physical. In this chapter, I probe the historical uses of the word ‘futurism’ as applied to sound—beginning with the Italian Futurists in Milan—and explore tangled cultural connections between timbre, on the one hand, and imagining musical futures, on the other.
Book Reviews by Gavin Williams
Papers by Gavin Williams
Twentieth-Century Music, 2018
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2016
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2022
Shellac was essential to the gramophone industry throughout the first half of the twentieth centu... more Shellac was essential to the gramophone industry throughout the first half of the twentieth century, yet the material has long kept a low profile. At once inaudible and urgently required, shellac was a plastic and colonial commodity with wide-ranging applications. In reconstructing shellac’s economic and scientific networks, this article argues that the material was a multiplicity, which entailed both the entangled knowledge systems of its production and a decisive switch: from bodily techniques of production into those of mediated musical listening. It aims to decenter North American narratives about the development of sound reproduction technology, showing how South Asian knowledge, labor, and environments were profoundly involved, even if they were only rarely acknowledged in mediated musical experiences. Indeed, in an age before synthetic hydrocarbon polymers, shellac fulfilled the role of musical plastic through its inconspicuousness: its capacity to hold and harmonize multiple disc ingredients, while disappearing into the background it supplied.
What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the... more What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible--or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
Hearing the Crimean War, 2019
Hearing the Crimean War, 2019
What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the... more What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible - or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2022
Few figures loom larger in the early history of recorded sound than Enrico Caruso. This article i... more Few figures loom larger in the early history of recorded sound than Enrico Caruso. This article inquires after what made him a reproducible person: it portrays him as a singer celebrity deeply involved in his own celebrity through the media of caricature, sculpture, film and opera house. Yet, through analysis of Caruso's productions for New York's Italian diaspora and farther afield, it argues that an ensemble of media meant he was reproduced beyond familiar, cosmopolitan circuits of operatic celebrity. It also shows how politics of celebrity reproduction were transformed following Caruso's death, through the writing of history, into new imaginations and techniques for listening.
Published in 19th-Century Music: 10.1525/ncm.2013.37.2.113
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2011
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2016
Music and Science in London, 2016
Funded by the British government, Babbage’s Difference Engine was supposed to be the world’s most... more Funded by the British government, Babbage’s Difference Engine was supposed to be the world’s most powerful mechanical calculator, able quickly to produce tables of numerical solutions for relatively high-order polynomial equations. But it was never built (at least not in his lifetime). In contemporary accounts, the device emerges as an object of wonderment and excitement, but also anxiety: the machine seemed to be capable of substituting for human labor and even human thought. Commentators understood its mysterious powers in sonic terms: the click of a hand crank, the whir of silver rings displaying numbers, the ring of a bell at the end of the calculation—noises were read as signs of intelligent activity, but, disturbingly, in the absence of a human agent. I argue that these unsettling sounds, emerging from the internal mechanism, distill the Marxian problematic of replacing human labor with machines. The Difference Engine’s internal sound world can thus be put into dialog with the noisy cityscape of early-nineteenth-century London—a volubly disruptive environment of “street nuisances” (to wit: itinerant musicians) that Babbage himself deplored and actively campaigned against. Indeed, the noises of the urban environment and those of the Difference Engine provide an illuminating contrast, presenting diverse aspects on noise and the human-machine interface within what was at the time the world’s most industrialized city.
Italy’s most successful ballet of the late-nineteenth century was Luigi Manzotti and Romualdo Mar... more Italy’s most successful ballet of the late-nineteenth century was Luigi Manzotti and Romualdo Marenco’s _Excelsior_ (1881). Its subject was the technological progress of modern times; its principal characters were allegories of “Civilization” and “Obscurantism,” which featured alongside further nonhuman actors such as the steam engine and manmade electricity.
Yet _Excelsior_’s projected meanings evolved throughout the 19th-century. A marionette production opened in 1884, its emphasis on the accurate reproduction of dance gestures, as well as on the music’s powers to kindle lifelike animation. Other modifications followed in subsequent revivals: at La Scala in 1909, the ballet was updated to incorporate the airplane and cinema, even though faithfulness to Manzotti’s original choreography remained crucial. More significantly, in 1913 the same production was made into a film, billed at the time as a novel experiment in _cine-fono-coreografia_ (this has recently been restored at Rome’s Cineteca Nazionale, with Marenco’s music re-synchronized to the moving image). The film offers a rare glimpse of nineteenth-century ballet in motion, as well as raising new questions about audiovisual interplay and the cultural interpretation of gesture.
My paper traces a twin concern with technological progress and the reproduction of gesture in _Excelsior_’s reception history from its premiere into the early-twentieth century. Drawing above all on writings stemming from Siegfried Kracauer’s canonical essay “The Mass Ornament,” which argued that contemporary dance reflected modern factory conditions along the production line, I argue for a political approach to the analysis of gesture: one that aims to reestablish a persistent link between _Excelsior_’s bodily movements and its technological ideology.
when probing sonic epistemologies, whether sensorial, affective, or physical. In this chapter, I ... more when probing sonic epistemologies, whether sensorial, affective, or physical. In this chapter, I probe the historical uses of the word ‘futurism’ as applied to sound—beginning with the Italian Futurists in Milan—and explore tangled cultural connections between timbre, on the one hand, and imagining musical futures, on the other.