The past as repeatable presence: How phonography changed music from ephemeral event to ever accessible object (a comparison between Sweden and Italy during the interwar years)

The aim of this project is to investigate an important condition for music production, distribution and listening in today’s digital world. More specifically it asks the question: How did music change from being regarded as an ephemeral event to becoming an ever-accessible object?

The question betrays a historical perspective. Not only was music regarded as an event, a collective and communal activity, since ancient times; its change into an ever-accessible object to be listened to at will, even in solitude, only came about over a course of several years. Although recorded sound played a major role, this “turn” did not occur automatically.

Previous research has located it to the interwar years of the 20th century and the project will investigate important areas affecting the changing status of music, such as music poetics, copyright, radio broadcasting, and record reviews.

This investigation raises a virtually unrecognized question. Whereas different ideas about what music “is” are widely acknowledged in ethnological comparisons of different cultures (music taken broadly), such differences are hardly noticed in historical research (which rather dwells on changes in compositional styles, genres, performance and listening).

By contrast, this project will put the change in the Western view of music at center stage. In doing so it will contribute to music history, mediatization research and to sound and technology studies, with findings and with new research questions.