“Sound Knowledge is admirably interdisciplinary, combining more traditional musicological perspectives with cultural studies, sound studies, and the history of science. The collection engages with a number of important issues—such as the period’s sometimes bizarre clashes between aesthetic and scientific concerns, and the ways sight and sound were imbricated in the production of knowledge. This book will appeal to a number of different audiences, from Victorianists and musicologists to readers interested in arcane technologies and Anglophiles eager to learn more about London’s rich musical and scientific life.”

Melina Esse, University of Rochester

“This exhilarating volume illuminates London’s centrality in the history of nineteenth-century music through an investigation of music’s centrality in the history of nineteenth-century science. Davies, Lockhart, and their contributors offer compelling insights into the intersections of aural and visual realms, popular experiments and theatrical performances, and musical and scientific instruments in a way that both defamiliarizes the period while offering a novel account of how music was understood at the time.”

Benjamin Walton, University of Cambridge

“The book valuably picks up on recent work on the history of soundscapes, on scientific exhibitions and lectures, and on the sites of metropolitan knowledge production and consumption and connects them in ways that it would be hard not to find stimulating. . . . Clearly written and thoroughly documented.”
 

Isis