Abstract
In an age of accelerated technological innovation in sound recording and post-production technologies, pristine digitally enhanced aural images of performances have become the established norm in the classical recording industry. Since the advent of analogue editing, which made possible the elimination of any unwarranted extra-musical sounds, listeners have become increasingly habituated to unblemished classical performances on (and off) records and to the effacement of any physical traces of the performer, as hinted at by sounds of touch, breath, or effort captured during the recording process. As Richard Beaudoin makes us fully aware, however, many classical recordings exhibit, intentionally or unintentionally, all kinds of extra-musical sounds—whispers, sighs, murmurs, grunts, creaking chairs, podium stamps—that have long been ignored, suppressed, or relegated by listeners, critics, and music scholars alike. Against this cultural backdrop, Beaudoin’s book is a bold and original investigation. It unveils this rich archive of unwritten musical sounds and compels us to pay close attention to the ways they contribute to a recording’s (and a performance’s) complex material-sonic-affective ecosystem.