Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe ed. by Daniel Morat

Reviewed by: Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe ed. by Daniel Morat Kate Lacey (bio) Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe. Edited by Daniel Morat. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. Pp. 352. $110. There is a great deal of fine scholarship and fascinating historical detail in this collection. It brings together studies of a century of sound in relation to various subjects—among them science, literature, music, media, medicine—and various contexts, from everyday domestic and urban environments (via concert halls and recording studios) to the sonic extremes of the two world wars. Readers will find accounts of how sound was reproduced technologically, how it signified aesthetically, how it was codified in relation to social hierarchies, and how practices of listening have changed over time in both public and private spaces. Along the way, there are contemplations on the interplay of science, sound, and the body; on how sound and noise figure in various cultural forms and modes of public congregation [End Page 675] and experience; and how sound recording inspired new contemplations on death, beauty, intimacy, and eternity. What this collection offers, then, is a richly polyphonic series of cultural histories that tune in to and amplify the sonic dimensions of modernity in Europe. In his introduction, Daniel Morat tells us the collection sets out to ask if the study of sound can open up “previously unknown historical perspectives.” Situating the collection at an intersection of modern history, sound studies, and the history of the senses, it also aims “to find new explanations for historical problems and … to disclose unknown historical connections” (pp. 1–2). While this is a noble and appropriate ambition, the case for taking sound and the senses seriously in historical work has long since been made. Thus, these fine essays are more a testament to the maturity of the field than a pioneering venture. While the individual case studies might be new (or newly translated into English), the general themes are already familiar: for example, questions of representation, realism, and reproducibility in relation to sound media; the quieting of audiences; the sounds of protest and conflict; the negotiation of changing urban soundscapes; the role of sound in the exercise of power. Similarly, most of the essays deploy very traditional techniques of interpreting written texts. This is a not a criticism per se, but it is frustrating that the introduction overstates the claim to novelty, while underplaying the collection’s value in demonstrating the quality and diversity of work being produced in this field. Indeed, Mark M. Smith’s pithy contribution at the start suggests that the field is reaching such a stage of maturity that its insights, approaches, and vocabulary might be expected increasingly to figure in historical enquiry more generally, in both academic and public representations of the past. Morat is quite right to claim that the essays here demonstrate with great flair that sound does matter in history. They also raise many questions that are often left just out of earshot: for example, how do these national case studies relate to each other and to histories beyond Germany and its neighbors? Do the stories of urban soundscapes relate to stories from the suburbs and the countryside? Does putting sound at the center of the frame run the risk of displacing categories of analysis that have, arguably, more critical or political purchase, such as gender, race, or class? The chronological ordering of the essays also could elide the question of whether there are multiple or competing auditory regimes during the period. Indeed, it does seem that the chronological structure of the volume tries rather hard to impose a particular coherence on an eclectic group of articles. But it is for me just this lack of coherence in terms of discipline, context, period, methodology, source material, or even critical intent that is the singular advantage of taking sound as a category of analysis. Precisely because human experience takes place with and within sound, it opens an exciting interdisciplinary space, as Sounds of Modern History shows, where [End Page 676] scholars and scholarship from different fields can listen to and learn from each other...