Creatures of the Air

“Erudite and virtuosic, this beautifully written book changes our understanding of the European nineteenth century in significant ways by exploring how cultural reveries about atmosphere, breath, and air were allied to musical aesthetics, performance, and sound making. Davies’s work addresses environments and their impact on humans, the global transmission of cultural artifacts, and colonialism’s legacy. What emerges is no less than a seismic shift in our understanding of Western art music.” * Carolyn Abbate, Harvard University * “With Creatures of the Air, Davies offers a sweeping, multicontinent analysis of air as a matrix for nineteenth-century European colonial genealogies of music, which he argues were fundamentally biopolitical and entangled with racial capitalism. ‘Music’—in contrast with earlier European paradigms like aria—emerges in Davies’s account as an artful sounding abstracted from its potentially dangerous source elements and environments. This extractivist impulse, he shows, required intensive management of sound production and built sound environs from Gabon to New York, Amazonia, and industrial Britain. Elegantly written and replete with fascinating case studies, Creatures of the Air makes a major contribution to ecomusicology, nineteenth-century cultural history, and European music studies, and it will undoubtedly be read and assigned for years to come.” * Olivia Bloechl, University of Pittsburgh *