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Historical Acoustemology: Past, Present, and Future

Mansell, James

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Abstract

This article surveys the field and methodology of historical acoustemology, an interdisciplinary area of study dedicated to understanding past sounds, hearers, and listeners in their historical contexts. The article charts the field’s emergence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, accounts for the field’s present trends (which center on the politics of listening subjectivity), and identifies future directions of inquiry. The article argues that historians should take account of a broader spectrum of past listeners, not just listening experts, and develop greater criticality about their own knowing-through-listening. The article makes the case for a future sound historical field grounded in the analysis of nonwritten sources, particularly sound archives and material culture, and argues that the use of new digital methods and the engagement of listening publics through a new public sound history should also become central to the work of the sound historian.

Citation

Mansell, J. (2021). Historical Acoustemology: Past, Present, and Future. Music Research Annual, 2, 1-19

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 30, 2020
Online Publication Date May 31, 2021
Publication Date May 31, 2021
Deposit Date Jun 13, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Music Research Annual
Electronic ISSN 2563-7290
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 2
Pages 1-19
Keywords historical acoustemology, sound studies, listening, soundscapes, public sound history
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5684243
Publisher URL https://musicresearchannual.org/mansellhistorical-acoustemology/
Additional Information The copyright of each article on this website is held by its author and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The author and the journal require that a citation to the original publication of the article in Music Research Annual be included in any attribution statement satisfying the attribution requirement of the Creative Commons license referenced above. For each article, the article’s author retains the ownership of all rights under copyright in all versions of the article, and all rights not expressly granted to Music Research Annual.

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