Creatures of the Air

An account of nineteenth-century music in Atlantic worlds told through the history of the art’s elemental medium, the air.

Often experienced as universal and incorporeal, music seems an innocent art form. The air, the very medium by which music constitutes itself, shares with music a claim to invisibility. In Creatures of the Air, J. Q. Davies interrogates these claims, tracing the history of music’s elemental media system in nineteenth-century Atlantic worlds. He posits that air is a poetic domain, and music is an art of that domain.

From West Central African ngombi harps to the European J. S. Bach revival, music expressed elemental truths in the nineteenth century. Creatures of the Air tells these truths through stories about suffocation and breathing, architecture and environmental design, climate strife, and racial turmoil. Contributing to elemental media studies, the energy humanities, and colonial histories, Davies shows how music, no longer just an innocent luxury, is implicated in the struggle for control over air as a precious natural resource. What emerges is a complex political ecology of the global nineteenth century and beyond.

“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

“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