Inventing the Recording: The Phonograph and National Culture in Spain, 1877-1914(Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music)

Inventing the Recording focuses on the decades in which recorded sound went from a technological possibility to a commercial and cultural artefact. Through the analysis of a specific and unique national context, author Eva Moreda Rodríguez tells the stories of institutions and individuals in Spain and discusses the development of discourses and ideas in close connection with national concerns and debates, all while paying close attention to original recordings from this era. The book starts with the arrival in Spain of notices about Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877, followed by the first demonstrations of the invention (1878-1882) by scientists and showmen. These demonstrations greatly stimulated the imagination of scientists, journalists and playwrights, who spent the rest of the 1880s speculating about the phonograph and its potential to revolutionize society once it was properly developed and marketed. The book then moves on to analyse the 'traveling phonographs' and salones fonográficos of the 1890s and early 1900s, with phonographs being paraded around Spain and exhibited in group listening sessions in theatres, private homes and social spaces pertaining to different social classes. Finally, the book covers the development of an indigenous recording industry dominated by the so-called gabinetes fonográficos, small businesses that sold imported phonographs, produced their own recordings, and shaped early discourses about commercial phonography and the record as a commodity between 1896 and 1905.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Imagining the phonograph, 1877-1888 Chapter 2: Travelling phonographs, 1888-1900 Chapter 3: Inventing the recording: gabinetes fonográficos and early commercial phonography in Madrid, 1896-1905 Chapter 4: Science, urban space and early phonography in Barcelona, 1898-1914 Chapter 5: Gabinetes fonográficos in Valencia, 1899-1901 Chapter 6: (Dis)embodied voices: recording singers, 1896-1914 Chapter 7: Consuming and collecting records in Spain, 1896-1905 Conclusion Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Bibliography

About the Author :
Eva Moreda Rodríguez is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Glasgow. A specialist in the political and cultural history of music in modern Spain, she is the author of Music and Exile in Francoist Spain (Ashgate, 2015), Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain (Oxford University Press, 2016), and numerous articles and book chapters. In 2018-19 she held a Leadership Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and her work has also received funding from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust.

Review :
"Eva Moreda Rodríguez reveals the multiple journeys, life stories and identities of the phonograph in Spain with discernment and dazzling erudition. This elegant and energetic book will durably fascinate and inspire scholars of early recorded sound." -- Elodie A. Roy, author of Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove "This rich, exhaustive and compelling exploration of the rise of early phonography in Spain offers an innovative and much needed perspective on the social and cultural debates that divided Spanish society at the turn of the twentieth century. Inventing the Recording represents a pioneering contribution to the study of sound cultures in Spain and an essential reading for anyone interested in the history of sound technologies." -- Samuel Llano, University of Manchester, author of Discordant Notes: Marginality and Social Control in Madrid, 1850-1930