This article corrects misconceptions regarding the history of film stereo. I show that the technical and aesthetic innovations regularly credited to Dolby Stereo, to sound designers like Walter Murch, and to films like Apocalypse Now (1979) were not revolutions but extensions of surround-sound practices that Hollywood codified in prior decades. I…[Read more]

In the 1930s, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences implemented a technical standard—known as Academy Mono, or the Academy Curve—that dramatically impaired the sound quality of motion pictures. This article accounts for why the major studios agreed to this restrictive standard. I argue that they adopted Academy Mono to curtail the pow…[Read more]

This article corrects misconceptions regarding the history of film stereo. I show that the technical and aesthetic innovations regularly credited to Dolby Stereo, to sound designers like Walter Murch, and to films like Apocalypse Now (1979) were not revolutions but extensions of surround-sound practices that Hollywood codified in prior decades. I…[Read more]

In the 1930s, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences implemented a technical standard—known as Academy Mono, or the Academy Curve—that dramatically impaired the sound quality of motion pictures. This article accounts for why the major studios agreed to this restrictive standard. I argue that they adopted Academy Mono to curtail the pow…[Read more]

This is a poem about fire.

This article invites the reading of Fernando Pessoa’s Fausto as a rhizomatic work, via three different critical lenses that lead to plurality: Traditions, Transcriptions, and Translations. Regarding different Faustian traditions, instead of seeing Pessoa’s Fausto merely as a competition with Goethe (as proposed by Eduardo Lourenço in his pref…[Read more]

After the period of splendour experienced by the musical chapel of the Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor in Talavera de la Reina during the 18th century, we witnessed a period of decline, which was part of the crisis experienced by Spanish religious music during the 19th century. The effects of the War of Independence, the successive…[Read more]

This article focuses on the personal and artistic career of one of the most representative composers of Spain in the second half of the 18th century and the first third of the 19th century. Ramón Garay, born in 1761 in Asturias, held the post of Chapel Master of Jaén Cathedral for 36 fruitful years, which saw the birth of an extraordinary p…[Read more]

This contribution focuses on strategies to bridge what in anthropology is called ontological incommensurability: Indigenous worlds often seem inaccessible to modern thought. Instead of trying to open Indigenous worlds to Westerners, I rather intend to make Western worlds accessible to Indigenous thought; and likewise, academic disciplines…[Read more]

Osborn, Brad and D.K. Blake. 2019. “Triangulating Timbre in Sigur Rós’s Iceland.” In *Sounds Icelandic*, edited by Thorbjörg Daphne Hall, N. Dibben, Á.H. Ingólfsson, and T. Mitchell. Equinox Press, 208–219.

In this book chapter, Dr. Davis examines the depiction of a dissimulated desire for material improvement (mejora) as it is expressed in the epic poetry of imperial Spain, particularly in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. She shows that within the aristocratic context of the times, the desire for personal betterment or “mejora” is always contingent…[Read more]

The nautical motif of the ex-voto (votive offering) is a lyric genre that reflects poetically the possible experience of a shipwreck survivor. Paradoxically, many of the poets who evoke the perils of sea travel never left Spain or, at most, sailed only the waters of the Mediterranean. Their writing of the sea remained consistently codified in…[Read more]

The celebration of the “Beethoven Year” in Madrid in 1927 resulted in a whole series of celebrations of all kinds that extended throughout that emblematic year to honour the German composer. This resulted in the public performance of numerous concerts by Madrid’s leading orchestral and choral groups, including the Orquesta Filarmónica de Madrid,…[Read more]

This article focuses on the study of the different musical periods that make up the Modern Age in Europe, taking into account from a critical point of view the current state of the art in bibliography. Each period is previously defined according to the chronological problem and according to its technical, aesthetic and stylistic characteristics.

Article about the biography and musical output of the Italian composer Doomenico Scarlatti

The importance of this publication lies in the recovery and study of a musical heritage of extraordinary quality: unpublished musical works by the masters of the Royal Chapel of Madrid, the most important centre in Spain at the time, which until now had slept the sleep of oblivion. In addition to the musical transcriptions, this contribution is…[Read more]

In this early article, written in the wake of the publication of Alessandro Martinengo’s _La astrología en la obra de Quevedo_ (Madrid: Alhambra, 1983), Dr. Davis focuses on the astrological tropes in a Quevedo sonnet on the nativity of Christ to see whether this poetic text can shed additional light on the poet’s documented penchant for…[Read more]

Professor Davis’s early article on appropriations of the Indies by Spanish poets who remained in Spain invites us to contemplate a body of poetry that plays the idea of American treasures against the value of true, spiritual riches.