Seminar “Music criticism and phonosphere”. Discursive thread and performative event in the Elizabethan Spain

Inside the seminars of the project Sound Cities. Urban Phonospheres of the Mediterranean (1500-1900) (FonUrMed), we will hold a session for the reconstruction of the 19th century sound experience on 26 and 27 March.

30 de march de 2026

Seminar “Music criticism and phonosphere”. Discursive thread and performative event in the Elizabethan Spain
Seminar “Music criticism and phonosphere”. Discursive thread and performative event in the Elizabethan Spain
  • Thursday 26 and Friday 27 March 2026
    • 1st session: Thursday, 26/03/2026, 4:00pm. "Music criticism and phonosphere. Discursive thread and performative event in the Elizabethan Spain"
    • 2nd session: Friday, 27/03/2026, 10:00am. "Do sources have an opinion? Ontological modeling, language models, and epistemic structure in historical musical texts".
  • Boardroom – Department of French and Italian Philology (Av. de Blasco Ibáñez, 32 València)

INSCRIPTIONS AND MORE INFORMATION:

📧 andrea.bombi@uv.es | ferran.escriva-llorca@uv.es

Music criticism and phonosphere. Discursive thread and performative event in the Elizabethan Spain

The activity will have the participation of the speakerTeresa Cascudo García-Villaraco (University of La Rioja / LexiMus), with Lluis Bertran Xirau's responses (Complutense University of Madrid – Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences),Marina Hervás Muñoz (University of Granada) andDaniel Martín Sanz (University of Salamanca).

Thematic summary

Starting from the research of Dr Teresa Cascudo, the seminar will explore the leading figure of Joaquín Espín y Guillén (founder of La Iberia Musical) to itemise the two discursive threads that structure the critics of the time:

  • The evaluative-aesthetic thread: the use of a transnational and “imported” lexicon that defines the literate listening and the conceptual framework in which the sound becomes a significant experience.
  • The technical-circumstantial and performative thread: a record of the specific acoustic phenomena in theatre, where the audience stops being a passive listener and becomes an active agent (clapping, muttering, booing…), integrating the show as a global performative event.

Is music criticism a valid source to reconstruct the phonosphere of the 19th century urban spaces? The question seems to imply an immediate positive answer: if discovering how theatres, squares, and streets sounded is what matters, the journalist texts that talk about music should provide this access. However, the analysis of the early Spanish music criticism reveals that the relation between critical text and sound phenomenon is more complex than what the answer suggests. According to Karel Volniansky (2021), if we think about phonosphere as a concept that operates in two levels simultaneously –the totality of acoustic phenomena in a physical given place, and the sound sphere of an entity or a conceptual system–, the main methodical problem consists in establishing which level documents each element from the critical text. This communication suggests that the identification of differentiated discursive threads in criticism may provide enough linguistic indicators to access each of those levels. (…) [Read more]

The case of Joaquín Espín y Guillén (1812-1881), founder of La Iberia Musical (1842), then La Iberia Musical y Literaria (1842-1846), author of every musical entry from the Enciclopedia Moderna (1851-1855), allows to examine this question with particular clarity, due to the fact that in his artistic production the critical practice and the lexicographic encoding of musical vocabulary come together. In the opera criticism published by Espín on his journal, it is possible to identify at least two discursive threads that continuously intertwine without being confusing.

Participants

Teresa Cascudo(UR / LexiMus) ;Lluis Bertran Xirau (UCM - ICCM) ;
Marina Hervás Muñoz (UGR) ;Daniel Martín Sanz (USAL)

About FonUrMed

This project, Sound Cities. Urban Phonospheres of the Mediterranean (1500-1900) (FonUrMed), continues the research made by the Emerging Group “Ciudad sonora. Música, sonido y ruido en Valencia (1609-1813)” [CIGE/2021/165], which has consolidated significant results in the proposed area: the study, under the perspective of urban musicology, of how urban music and culture evolved in Valencia between the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609, and the absolutist restoration of 1813 with the entrance of Fernando VII to Valencia.

Research Project: Sound Cities. Urban Phonospheres of the Mediterranean (1500-1900) (FonUrMed)