Creatures of the Air : Music, Atlantic Spirits, Breath, 1817-1913

The University of Chicago Press

Creatures of the AirMusic, Atlantic Spirits, Breath, 18171913\nAuthor(s): J. Q. Davies\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: The University of Chicago Press, United States\nImprint: University of Chicago Press\nISBN-13: 9780226826134, 978-0226826134\nSynopsis\nAn account of nineteenth-century music in Atlantic worlds told through the history of the arts elemental medium, the air.\n\n 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 musics elemental media system in nineteenth-century Atlantic worlds. He posits that air is a poetic domain, and music is an art of that domain.\n\n 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 s.