sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 7/8

A. Tül Demirbaş / Margret Scharrer (eds.): Sounds of Power

It has long been a historical truism that early modern rulers used music to project their political power. Many musicologists, myself included, have offered examinations of the musical institutions at European courts as political instruments, as well as analyses of musical works as aural proclamations of power. Only in recent decades, however, have scholars broadened such investigations to include sounds beyond the court's musical establishment, giving serious consideration to not just the presence but also the meaning and effect of trumpet fanfares, bells, cannon fire, and other urban and courtly sounds that could be marshalled in service of the ruler. This interdisciplinary book, the fruit of a research project directed by Cristina Urchueguía at the University of Bern and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, makes an important contribution to this broader approach by publishing contributions from two online workshops and an international conference held between September 2020 and June 2021 (the original conference programs are provided in the final pages). In 21 chapters organized into four parts, the book brings together methodologies from musicology and sound studies (as well as history, art history, and organology, among other disciplines), both encapsulating recent approaches and proposing new ways forward. It does so while presenting new research covering a wide geographical range, including areas that have received little attention in Western musicology.

The first part contains two chapters that offer general methodological reflections, providing a theoretical grounding for the case studies that follow. This was a wise decision on the part of the editors, and these two chapters should be required reading for any scholar who wishes to work in this field. In the first chapter, historian Harriet Rudolph proposes a way of making sense of the meaning of sounds by introducing a typology of seven conceptual categories that sounds can fall into, such as sounds of dynasty (sounds that differentiate one family from another) and sounds of sovereignty (sounds reserved only for rulers). The second chapter, by historian Jan-Friedrich Missfelder, takes a more theoretical approach by applying concepts by such modern thinkers as Brandon LaBelle, Judith Butler, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Rancière to the early modern era, focusing on the concept of agency. I had hoped that the authors of the ensuing chapters would draw upon and/or apply Rudolph's and Missfelder's theories in their contributions. Although this is not the case, these opening chapters nevertheless provided a valuable framework for my reading of the rest of the book. At least eleven chapters, for instance, lend themselves well to Rudolph's categories of sound, which allowed me to add my own nuances to the authors' ideas.

The remaining three parts present case studies of the projection of power through sound and music. The division into parts is based on geography, while the organization of the chapters within each part is chronological. Part II contains six chapters on Ottoman court culture extending from the 14^th to the 18^th century, Part III contains five chapters on Habsburg-Burgundian court culture in the 15^th and early 16^th centuries, and Part IV contains eight chapters spanning the globe. Geographical locales discussed in Part IV include Rome, Portugal, Lithuania, Dubrovnik, colonial Mexico City, Korea, and China.

The specific topics and approaches taken by the authors vary widely. The most common approach is to examine court festivities and specific courtly events. Seven of the essays take this approach. Some discuss courtly festivals in the aggregate (such as Moritz Kelber's consideration of the soundscape of imperial diets during Maximilian I.'s reign and Tobias C. Weißmann's overview of the communication strategies of Early Modern popes), and others focus on one specific event, with triumphal entries by far the most common. The next most common approach, found in five essays, is a general consideration of the sounds of urban and/or courtly life. The strongest of these essays, such as Marget Scharrer's examination of the Burgundian court, take both the urban and courtly soundscapes into account, insightfully examining the ways that the court's sounds disrupted a city's prevailing soundscape. Most of the essays focus on just one political entity; only one uses diplomatic relations as its frame of reference: Gamze İlaslan Koç's examination of ambassadorial entrance ceremonies at the Ottoman and Habsburg courts. Other approaches include a focus on music theory writings (three essays), source studies (three essays), and organology (one essay, co-written by musicologist Thilo Hirsch and art historian Marina Haiduk).

Taken as a whole, the case studies provide a valuable overview of recent developments in musicology and court studies, with new approaches far outweighing traditional musicological methods. For instance, even though the institution of the court chapel has long been the starting point for examinations of music at court, only two essays (both in Part III) focus on the chapel and specific musicians. There is also very little discussion of musical works or musical analysis. Only one essay, in fact, discusses specific works in any detail: Daniel Tiemeyer's overview of Pierre de la Rue's Marian masses written for Margaret of Austria. This chapter contains detailed discussions of compositional techniques and is furnished with music examples, but it is telling that the musical discussions contribute little to considerations of power.

As is to be expected from a multi-author collection of essays that originated in a conference, the quality of the chapters is uneven, but on the whole, the scholarship is at a high level. Every case study relies upon primary sources, often presenting new information not available elsewhere in print. The best essays use primary sources not only to present data but also to interpret the meaning and the effect of the sounds, but this does not happen consistently. In Ana Cláudia Silveira's discussion of the urban soundscape of the city of Setúbal in Portugal, for instance, the basic information about the sounds comes from primary sources, but her interpretation of their meaning is drawn primarily from secondary sources about other European cities and courts, which calls into question the trustworthiness of her interpretations. One of the best approaches to the sources is in Grayson Wagstaff's chapter on the urban soundscape of Mexico City, in which he grapples with the paucity of sources and points out that the colonial condition makes it difficult to assume we can transfer ideas from European cities.

The book is amply furnished with color illustrations and graphs. Each chapter has its own list of sources, in lieu of a general bibliography for the entire book. Most of the chapters are in English, but two are in French and one is in German. There is no index, which limits the book's usefulness for those who want to trace larger themes across chapters. Despite this unfortunate lacuna, this book is poised to become a touchstone for anybody working on aural representations of political power in the early modern era.