“This work compellingly argues that the marriage between visual and audio cultures is not a late twentieth-century phenomenon, but has roots in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By drawing upon a plethora of technical devices deployed in operas and popular performances, Loughridge demonstrates how listeners' practices and thought were shaped by numerous mechanical contraptions and scientific instruments. This book represents a significant contribution to both musicology and the history of science.”

Myles W. Jackson, New York University

“Haydn’s Sunrise, Beethoven’s Shadow is a rich account of the history of early romantic listening. Imaginative and learned, this book reveals that behind the music’s power to transport lurked audiovisual technologies—telescopes, peep boxes, and magic lanterns—that informed listeners’ musical experiences. Loughridge shows us how to hear canonical works in new ways and casts light on a wealth of understudied repertoire.”

Emily Dolan, Harvard University

“With a captivating sense of intellectual adventure, this book presents a history of modern audiovisual culture that is both longer and more complex than most scholars have recognized, all the while radically reshaping our view of some of the most canonical moments in Western music. Haydn’s Sunrise, Beethoven’s Shadow shows, with great elegance and erudition, that romantic musical metaphysics became thinkable only via the mediation of new visual technologies and the multisensory experiences that they promoted.”

Nicholas Mathew, University of California, Berkeley

“This is an important, ambitious, and timely study. It uncovers fascinating source material and weaves together original ideas about practice that challenge our understanding of musical romanticism—and some of its core repertory—and encourage us to think about nineteenth-century culture in fresh ways. Haydn’s Sunrise, Beethoven’s Shadow will have strong appeal to specialists across fields, as well as to the broader public.”

Sarah Hibberd, University of Nottingham