Cylinder Talks: Pedagogy in Literary Sound Studies

The SpokenWeb Podcast

Together we listen back to select "Cylinder Talk" sound production assignments created by Concordia graduate students, and unpack the experiences, ideas and discussions that the production and study of sound can incite across disciplines. A 3-minute audio project assigned to students in Jason’s most recent graduate seminar - Literary Listening as Cultural Technique - the Cylinder Talk draws on a history of early spoken sound recordings, inviting us into an embodied sonic engagement with literature studies.The episode features sound work by Alexandra Sweny, Sara Adams, Aubrey Grant and Andrew Whiteman.

SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from (and created using) Canadian Literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. To find out more about Spokenweb visit: spokenweb.ca . If you love us, let us know! Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada.

Episode Producers:

Jason Camlot (SpokenWeb director) is Professor in the Department of English and Research Chair in Literature and Sound Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. His critical works include Phonopoetics (Stanford 2019), Style and the Nineteenth-Century British Critic (2008), and the co-edited collections, CanLit Across Media (2019) and Language Acts (2007). He is also the author of four collections of poetry, Attention All Typewriters, The Animal Library, The Debaucher, and What the World Said.

Stacey Copeland is a media producer and Communication Ph.D. candidate at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She received her MA from the Ryerson York joint Communication and Culture program and a BA in Media Production from Ryerson University. She is currently the podcast project manager for The Spokenweb Podcast and the supervising producer of Amplify Podcast Network. website: http://staceycopeland.com/

Cylinder Talks Featured:

• Alexandra Sweny, “Ethics of Field Recording in Irv Teibel’s Environments Series”
  • Sound Clips: Original recordings of Montreal by Alexandra Sweny.
• Sara Adams, “Henry Mayhew and Victorian London”
  • Sound Clips: “Victorian Street.” British Library, Sounds, Sound Effects. Collection: Period Backgrounds. Editor, Benet Bergonzi. Published, 1994.
• Aubrey Grant, “Poe’s Impossible Sound”
  • Sound Clips: Lucier, Alvin. I Am Sitting in a Room, Lovely Music Ltd., 1981.
• Andrew Whiteman, “Bronze lance heads”
  • Sound Clips:
    • “Robert Duncan Lecture on Ezra Pound” March 26, 1976, U of San Diego; accessed from Penn Sound Robert Duncan’s author page. (https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Duncan.php)
    • “Ezra Pound recites Canto 1” 1959; accessed from Penn Sound Ezra Pound’s author page (https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Pound.php)
    • —“The Sound of Pound: A Listener’s Guide” by Richard Siebruth, interview with Al Filreis May 22, 2007. (https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Pound.php)
    • Sampled 1940s film music; date and origin unknown.
    • Original music; composed by Andrew Whiteman, Dec 2020.

References:

• Eidsheim, Nina Sun. The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality in African Music. Duke UP, 2019.
• Feaster, Patrick. “’The Following Record’: Making Sense of Phonographic Performance, 1877-1908.” PhD Dissertation. Indiana University, 2007.
• Hoffman, J. “Soundscape explorer: From snow to shrimps, everything is a sound to Bernie Krause.” Nature, vol. 485, no. 7398, 2012, p. 308, doi:10.1038/485308a.
• Kittler, Friedrich. Grammophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, Stanford University Press, 1999.
• Krause, Bernie. The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places. Little Brown, 2012.
• Peter Miller, “Prosody, Media, and the Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe,” PMLA 135.2 (March 2020): 315-328.
• Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor, 1851.
• Picker, John. Victorian Soundscapes. Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Bells”, Complete Poems and Selected Essays, ed. Richard Gray, Everyman Press, 1993, pp. 81-84.
• Robinson, Dylan. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. University of Minnesota Press, 2020.
• Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Inner Traditions/Bear and Co., 1993.
• Siegert, Bernhard. Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Rea. Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. Fordham UP, 2015.
• Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York University Press, 2016.
• Teibel, Irv. Environments 1: Psychologically Ultimate Seashore. LP Record. Syntonic Research Inc., 1969.
• World Soundscape Project - Sonic Research Studio - Simon Fraser University. https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/worldsoundscaperoject.html. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Additional Sound Clips:

• Camlot, Jason. Ambient Music for “Cylinder Talks”.
• “A Christmas Carol in Prose (Charles Dickens: Scrooge’s awakening )(w Carol Singers [male quartet]).” Bransby Williams, performer. Edison 13353, 1905.
• "Big Ben clock tower of Westminster - striking half past 10, quarter to 11, and 11 o'clock" (Westminster, London, England). July 16, 1890. Recorded by: Miss Ferguson and Graham Hope, (for George Gouraud). Edison brown wax cylinder (unissued). NPS object catalog number: EDIS 39839.
• bpayri. “crowd chattering students university loud”, Freesound, 2015.
• Humanoide9000. “Glacier break”, Freesound, 2017.
• “Micawber (from ‘David Copperfield’).” William Sterling Battis, performer. Victor 35556 B, 12”
• disc, 1916.
• New, David, director. R. Murray Schafer: Listen, National Film Board of Canada, 2009.
• sbyandiji. “short alarm bell in school hall”, Freesound, 2014.
• Spliffy. “Hallway of University in silence”, Freesound, 2015.
• “Svengali Mesmerizes Trilby.” Herbert Beerbohm Tree, performer. Gramophone Concert Record, 10” Black Label Disc, GC 1313, 1906.
• “The Transformation Scene From Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Len Spencer, performer. Columbia matrix, [1904] 1908.
• Udall, Lyn. “Just One Girl.” Popular Songs of Other Days, 2012/1898.
• Westerkamp, Hildegard. “Kits Beach Soundwalk.” Transformations, Empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 1031, Enregistrements i Média (SOPROQ), 1989/2010. https://electrocd.com/en/piste/imed_1031-1.3.