Madrid’s great sonic transformation: sound, noise and the auditory commons of the city in the nineteenth century

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a key question attending historical sound studies: How do cities shape, intervene in and manage auditory cultures? Focussing in particular on nineteenth-century Madrid, the article seeks to make sense of some of the ways in which shifting imaginaries of the metropolis are also reflected in new imaginaries of the city as soundscape. How did shifting segmentational logics of the city and changes in the public imagination of cities as sites of both sociability and isolation impact on the sonic liveability of the city of Madrid? I approach the question of sonic experience by drawing on the work of Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue (2006, Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds. Translated by Andra McCartney and David Paquette. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press) who, as members of the CRESSON research group based in Grenoble, have developed an impressive and subtle series of analytical tools for thinking about sounds in urban spaces. Another key concept that will prove useful in this article is one developed by Antonio Negri, namely, “the commons”.

KEYWORDS:

• Cities
• Madrid
• soundscapes
• Galdós
• listening

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ian Biddle is a Senior Lecturer in Music and Cultural Theory at the International Centre for Music Studies, School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University. He completed his PhD at Newcastle in 1995 and has taught at UEA, Norwich (1996–1997) and at Newcastle University (since 1998). He has published widely on Austro-German music; music, gender and sexuality; and music and the Holocaust. His works include Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300–1918 (Routledge, 2016) Sound, Music Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013, with Marie Thompson), Music and Identity Politics (Ashgate 2012), Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History (Routledge, 2011), Masculinity and Western Musical Practice (Ashgate 2009 with Kirsten Gibson) and Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local (Ashgate, 2006 with Vanessa Knights). Email: [email protected]

ORCID

Ian Biddle http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8555-7048