Baldwin as phonographer

Abstract

ABSTRACT William Baldwin wrote a variety of kinds of books, but through them all he displayed his skills as a phonographer, as a writer of sound. Geoffrey Streamer’s story about hearing animals speak is the best known of these works, but Baldwin’s compilation of ‘sayings’ of philosophers, his ballading of The Song of Solomon on the model of Sternhold’s Psalm tunes, his noisy tour of Hell in his satire on the death of Bishop Paul III of Rome, the transcribed voices collected in A Mirror for Magistrates, and his ‘funerals’ for Edward VI are all sound-rich books. What is more, the sounds in these books are located sounds. They are associated with particular acoustic environments, and they challenge readers to place themselves imaginatively in those environments. In this respect, Baldwin’s phonographies resemble the art of contemporary sound artists like Brandon LaBelle in Acoustic Territories.