Syncopation and Volume. Sounding out Sonic Modernity, 1890-1945

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jens Gerrit Papenburg
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 467278579

The research project is based on two theses: (I.) Not only music has a history, but also its sound. The history of sound cannot be reduced to the history of music. It can be reconstructed as a history of media- and culture-specific sound concepts. (II.) Specific sound concepts are connected or articulated with peculiar conceptions of modernity. The two subprojects of the project develop these theses under the keyword of a syncopated modernity from 1890 to 1930 (SP I) as well as a voluminous modernity from 1920 to 1945 (SP II). Starting points are the primarily temporal conception of sound as a temporalized entity (SP I) and the primarily spatial conception of sound as a voluminous or spacious entity (SP II). The projects' corpus includes historical sonic media technologies and instruments, historical journals and manuals, fictional discourses, musical pieces and sound recordings, and historical self-testimonies of actors. A sonic modernity is not only a sonically articulated modernity, but above all a modernity that is in contrast to conventional cultural-sociological theories of modernity and that can be described and analyzed in terms of sound concepts. The aim of the research project is thus not so much the analysis of sound in modernity, but primarily the probing of a sonic modernity, which is to be contoured in its specificity via the concepts of syncopation and volume. It will be shown that in a sonically structured modernity in relation to technologization and mediatization, characteristic syncopated temporal orders and voluminous and dynamic spatial orders emerge, in which listening is cultivated and managed in a peculiar way and new forms of masses are increasingly constituted as sonically addressable entities. To this end, the research project combines theory building with detailed material analyses. At the interface of music, cultural and media studies (supplemented by digital humanities), a concept of sound is being developed and refined that promises - with specific accentuation - a transdisciplinary impact comparable to the concept of text in literary studies, the concept of image in art history or the concept of performance in theater studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants