Animal Musicalities
Rachel Mundy
ANIMAL MUSICALITIES
Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening
Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
© 2018 Rachel Mundy
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill
Typeset in Minion Pro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mundy, Rachel, author.
Title: Animal musicalities : birds, beasts, and evolutionary listening / Rachel Mundy.
Description: Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, [2018] | Series: Music/culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018002992 (print) | LCCN 2018010580 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819578082 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819578068 (hardcovder)
Subjects: LCSH: Animal sounds. | Birdsongs.
Classification: LCC QL765 (ebook) | LCC QL765 .M86 2018 (print) | DDC 591.59/4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002992
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Cover illustration: “Great Carolina Wren and Dwarf Bick-eye,” John James Audubon. From Audubon’s Birds of America, originally published as a series between 1827 and 1838.
CONTENTS
ONE Why Do Birds Sing? And Other Tales 17
IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE, AND KNOWLEDGE
TWO Collecting Silence: The Sonic Specimen 41
THREE Collecting Songs: Avian and African 60
FOUR Songs on the Dissecting Table 84
POSTMODERN HUMANITY, SUBJECTIVITY, AND PARADISE
SIX Listening for Objectivity 125
Conclusion: The Animanities 168
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have benefitted greatly from the help of many generous and thoughtful people while writing this book. Many mentors, colleagues, friends, and generous strangers have encouraged me to think about human and nonhuman animals during the time between my dissertation and the book you are reading now. I am particularly grateful for Suzanne Cusick’s mentorship, guidance, and inspiration concerning my questions about the relationships we build with other “others.” Jason Stanyek’s encouragement and fabulous reading recommendations gave me the confidence to get started, and to keep on writing about animals. Michael Beckerman, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Stanley Boorman provided thoughtful feedback and much-needed cheerleading during my dissertation and beyond it. Judy Tsou, Una Chaudhuri, Ana Maria Ochoa, Martin Daughtry, and Judah Cohen were generous with their time, teaching, and conversation, and helped me work through important ideas about animals, gender, historiography, and race. I have been especially fortunate in having colleagues and friends whose conversation, ideas, and critical eyes helped this project develop and grow. I especially thank Daniel Asen, Robert Fallon, Gregory Radick, David Rothenberg, Tes Slominski, Nicol Hammond, Anna Nisnevich, Emily Zazulia, and Gavin Steingo for their thoughtful and supportive readings of portions of this text. I am also indebted to my fabulous editor at Wesleyan University Press, Marla Zubel, whose insights and support were invaluable, and to the entire staff at the press for their incredible expertise, help, and high standards.
I am grateful for the institutional support that made the space this book needed to grow. Henry Martin, Lewis Porter, Ian Watson, and Dean Jan Lewis at Rutgers University–Newark made possible a crucial research leave in the fall of 2015. I benefitted tremendously, and am still benefitting, from the exchange of ideas and questions at the 2016 Wesleyan Race and Animals Summer Institute, and I especially thank Lori Gruen for her work hosting and organizing the institute. I am likewise indebted to Karin Bijsterveld, Joeri Bruyninckx, and the Sonic Skills Group at the University of Maastricht in 2012 and 2014, whose ideas and shared conversations helped me think through key questions about the transcription of sound. Many thanks to Deane Root, James Cassaro, Paolo Palmieri, Andrew Weintraub, and other friends and faculty at the University of Pittsburgh for their support and encouragement. This project owes so much to the enthusiasm and support of the music faculty at Columbia University during my postdoctoral fellowship in 2010–2012, and I am grateful as well for the American Musicological Society’s Eugene K. Wolf Travel Grant, which allowed me to read my way through French ornithology journals while waiting for archival boxes at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2010. Finally, the lively ideas and conversation of members of the American Musicological Society’s ecocriticism study group gave further depth to my questions and ideas.
I am indebted in so many ways to the patience and generosity of librarians, and to the availability of collections under their care. My thanks to Suzanne McLaren and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History; to Suzanne Mudge at Indiana University’s Archives for Traditional Music; to Mai Reitmeyer and the special collections staff at the American Museum of Natural History’s research library; and to the archivists at the American Philosophical Society Library, the New York State Archives, the New York Public Library, Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts and Archives, and the Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections. And it is hardly possible to properly thank historian Dr. Richard Burkhardt, who responded to my cold-call inquiry about Wallace Craig’s correspondence by sending me a cardboard box that contained his own careful photocopies of Craig’s letters. Thank you so much, Dr. Burkhardt!
I am grateful to the students and colleagues whose conversations and ideas have helped