City Symphonies
Sound and the Composition of Urban Modernity, 1913–1931
- 232 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Cinema scholars categorize city symphony films of the 1920s and early 1930s as a subgenre of the silent film. Defined in visual terms, the city symphony organizes the visible elements of urban experience according to musical principles such as rhythm and counterpoint.
In City Symphonies Daniel Schwartz explores the unheard sonic dimensions of these ostensibly silent films. The book turns its ear to the city symphony as an audible phenomenon, one that encompasses a multitude of works beyond the cinema, such as musical compositions, mass spectacles, radio experiments, and even paintings. What these works have in common is their treatment of the city as a medium for sound. The city is neither background nor content; rather, it is the material through which avant-garde works express themselves. In resonating through the city, these multimedia pieces perform experiments that undermine the borders between sight and sound.
Applying an interdisciplinary approach, City Symphonies expands our understanding of the genre, breaking out of the confines of the cinema and onto the street.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: City Symphonies: Sound and the Composition of Urban Modernity, 1913–1931
- 1 In the Concert Hall: Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noises and The Awakening of a City
- 2 On the Street: The Sound and Silence of Arseny Avraamov’s Symphony of Sirens in Baku (1922) and Moscow (1923)
- 3 On the Screen: Sounding the Inaudible in the City Symphonies of Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov
- 4 On the Air: German Experimental Radio and the Radio City Symphony
- 5 Around the World: Sight and Sound in the Global Symphonies of Vertov and Ruttmann
- Coda: Listening to City Symphonies
- Notes
- Index