Defining Phonography: An Experiment in Theory

Abstract

Phonography can be taken to define a period in our relation to music, a period marked by a distinct set of attitudes, practices, and institutions made possible by a particular technology, phonograph.1 The age of phonography came into being with popularization of phonograph as in-home entertainment, cultural medium, and educational tool. With popularization of digital recording and playback techniques (CD, DAT, DCC, etc.), end of age of phonography is at hand. In one of those luminous phrases more often quoted than understood, Hegel said that the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with onset of dusk.2 By this he meant that an era or civilization can be understood only as it begins to disappear from scene of history. Death, for Hegel, is price of intelligibility. Hence there is always something both mournful and belated about historical understanding. We believe that small differences in media of recorded music are not mere trifles for fetishist but have large cultural consequences. The death of vinyl LP is an event of potential civilizational significance and deserves to be mourned properly. This essay is in part a meditation on those graveyards of recorded sound that fill shelf space in our living rooms. Precisely how coming and going of phonography matters is yet to be seen, perhaps partly because LP's death is yet incomplete. The recent analog renaissance may mean return of vinyl in full force;3 it may also be a passing retro phase of fashion cycle that only shows how dead vinyl is. But before speculating on nature of age, we must define nature of technique. This essay discusses phonography as a technology and social practice in contrast to pre-phonographic era and post-