Sound Studies Review

Harmonics straddle the frontier between experimental science, instrumental technique, music theory, and compositional practice. Named by Joseph Sauveur as a central element of his new science of acoustics, a harmonic subtracts from the complex sound of a vibrating string all but a single mode of vibration, analogous to Newton’s decomposition of white light into its spectral colors. Though French science legitimized string harmonics, musical practice elsewhere resisted them until Paganini showed their virtuosic power. In contrast, Hermann von Helmholtz’s piano experiments demonstrated an additive account of timbre through the superposition of harmonics and paved the way almost singlehandedly for piano harmonics, previously unknown. Ernst Mach’s popularization of Helmholtz and a controversy between Hugo Riemann and Georg Capellen brought piano experiments further recognition. After that, Arnold Schoenberg pondered piano experiments during his marital crisis (1908) and then began using piano harmonics in compositions. In the process, Schoenberg aligned his “secret science” of musical composition and the emancipation of dissonance with the counterintuitive discoveries of modern science.

From Los Angeles to Paris, from Shanghai to Hamburg, architectural acoustics have defined the live music experience of classical music for more than one hundred years. Using as a case study Hamburg’s recently built Elbphilharmonie (2017), the concert hall is viewed as a contemporary listening environment dedicated to the fetishization of acousmatic music listening, whereby live music is heard as a sound recording. The exaggerated claim of “perfect acoustics” by Yasuhisa Toyota, the famed acoustician of the Elbphilharmonie, is of concern here as such a presumption of a sonic ideal in live music listening is based on a patented soundscape similar to that found in a recording studio. Thus, in this instance, one starts to understand that even in a live music performance, the concert hall is a reflection of the contemporary politics surrounding accuracy and truth in today’s media.

The Early Music movement has evolved through decades of interactions between musicians, instrument makers, and scholars, as well as record labels, producers, and sound engineers. The frictions implicit in these collaborations have created a peculiar aesthetic that I term “hyperreal authenticity,” a heightened, “more-than-perfect” state in which a façade of historical authenticity conjures an idealized past (usually through the use of historical materials) that is obligatorily mediated through modern technologies. Hyperreal authenticity is unique and essential to Early Music recordings and productions, but its role lies beneath the surface and often remains implicit and unnoticed. Its clearest characteristic is its ability to communicate multiple modes of listening and production simultaneously, its primary tool the instrumentalization of historical places and spaces. Space and hyperreal authenticity are so integral to the Early Music recording industry and the way it has shaped listening that it is possible to piece together a sonic history of the movement since World War II by following this common thread. This article focuses on a selection of four influential instances in which the relationship between space and hyperreal authenticity has changed the course of Early Music history since the second half of the twentieth century.