Gabinetes fonográficos in Valencia, 1899–1901

This chapter focuses on the gabinetes fonográficos active between 1899 and 1901 in Valencia—which can be rightly considered as the second main pole of the Spanish recording industry at the time. It discusses the rivalries that Valencia gabinetes maintained with their Madrid counterparts, and analyses how the compactness and connectedness of the city gave rise to a vibrant, yet ephemeral, recording culture. The chapter also discusses briefly the gabinetes located in cities other than Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona, of which few traces have survived.

Consuming and collecting records in Spain, 1896–1905

This chapter draws upon the five major surviving collections of Spanish early recordings in order to attempt to reconstruct who bought wax cylinders in Spain around 1900, what their motivations were and what their listening and collecting practices looked like. It discusses how record buyers were still a small, privileged minority in Spain at the time, and examines how collecting might have helped developed ways of listening focused on music appreciation rather than on purely replicating a collector’s live music experience. It also analyzes home recording practices, which were a significant part of phonograph marketing strategies at this time.

Inventing the recording

This chapter introduces the gabinetes fonográficos that appeared after the introduction of the Spring Motor Phonograph, Edison Home Phonograph, and Edison Standard Phonograph between 1896 and 1898; these were small recording labels which recorded their own wax cylinders employing local musicians and sold them directly to their customers, operating often precariously or for a limited amount of time. The chapter then discusses the gabinetes that were active between 1896 and 1905 in Madrid, then the main center of the nascent Spanish recording industry. The chapter examines how the Madrid gabinetes built upon ways of listening developed earlier in the decade to transform recorded sound into a commodity, and how, in doing so, they drew upon regeneracionista discourses concerning science, technology, modernity, and national identity.

Imagining the phonograph, 1877–1888

This chapter focuses on the initial impact of the phonograph in Spain, arguing that, even though the device was rarely seen or heard in the country in its first decade of existence, it contributed to stimulating discussion and speculation that drew upon, and at the same time contributed to shaping, existing national discourses on science, technology, and modernity. At the same time, however, other key elements of the early reception of the phonograph elsewhere, such as the issue of the disembodiment of the voice, remained practically unexplored. The chapter covers the first accounts about the invention of the phonograph published in the Spanish press in 1877 and 1878, the range of demonstrations which took place between 1878 and 1882 at the hands of scientists and entertainers, and, finally, the multifarious discourses (in theatrical writing, juridical literature, and other realms) that emerged around the phonograph and its potential uses.

(Dis)embodied voices

This chapter discusses the role of singers in shaping the nascent industry of the gabinetes fonográficos in Spain and, in turn, how the newly developing recording industry influenced their careers and on the music profession. It argues that, even though the phonograph did not revolutionize at this stage the working lives of Spanish singers, it planted the seeds for crucial developments that would take place in the following decades. Indeed, a few singers—only a minority of which had acquired celebrity status on stage—conscientiously developed the expertise and skills necessary to go into the studio, and managed to advance their careers on that basis, at least for a short period of time. Although the chapter does not deal with the minute details of performance practice, it discusses aspects of the music profession and its relationship with recordings that might inform study of performance practice.

Science, urban space, and early phonography in Barcelona, 1898–1914

The chapter focuses on the gabinetes fonográficos active in Barcelona from 1898 onward. It aims to analyze why Barcelona’s early recording industry remained more precarious and less successful than that in Madrid, and advances two reasons: the failure of the Barcelona gabinetes to position themselves within local discourses around science, technology, modernity, and Catalan national identity; and their increasingly peripheral location in the developing urban space of Barcelona. The chapter then discusses how Barcelona eventually came to lead the Spanish recording industry after the advent of the gramophone, with a subsidiary of Gramophone and a new generation of record shops opening in the city.

Traveling phonographs, 1888–1900

This chapter discusses the arrival of Edison’s Perfected Phonograph (introduced in 1888) in Spain. Thanks to the improvements in the technology, numerous Spanish funfair impresarios and entertainers acquired devices that they exhibited and demonstrated in front of audiences. The chapter discusses three main issues: firstly, the travels of phonograph demonstrators throughout Spain and how these were informed by and in turn informed discourses about technology, mobility, and modernization; second, the types of sociability spaces in which phonographs were exhibited and how these reveal the different ways in which different social classes engaged with science; and finally, the formats that phonograph demonstrations adopted, which emphasized the phonograph’s capabilities of reproducing sounds familiar to the audience.

Conclusion: From national to global

The conclusion sums up how the cultural history of the phonograph in Spain can prompt a re-examination of the global history of early recording technologies, and lists four areas in which this re-examination might be particularly necessary. Firstly, the role of Edison, his companies, and other recording multinationals in crafting and spreading the idea of the recording as a concept and setting the foundations of the recording industry might need to be further re-evaluated and contextualized. Secondly, increased attention needs to be paid to the national and local characteristics that impinged discourses around modernity in the period at hand. Thirdly, the early history of recording technologies needs to be read as a history of possibilities, shaped by national, regional, and local cultural specificities. Fourthly, greater awareness should develop of how indigenous repertoires contributed to shaping recording practices and ontologies of recording technologies in particular ways, rather than recording technologies being used to passively record what was already there.

Introduction

The introduction sets out the aims of the book—namely, to produce a cultural history of the phonograph in Spain, from the first notices about Edison’s invention in 1878, to the development of the music record as a commercial product and as a cultural artifact. It situates the book within existing research, arguing that telling the early history of recording technologies necessitates a context-sensitive approach that puts the focus on how local discourses, practices, and communities contributed to shaping these transnational technologies. It sets out the historical and political context in which the phonograph arrived to and developed in Spain, focusing on the political and cultural movement known as Regeneracionismo.