This project ran between 2015-2021 and was funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council.
 
It examined how a scientific-materialist conception of sound was formed alongside a dominant culture of romantic idealism. Placing itself at the intersection of historical musicology and the history and philosophy of science, the project investigated the view that sound, ostensibly the property of metaphysics, was also regarded by writers, composers, scientists and engineers as tangible, material and subject to physical laws; that scientific thinking was not anathema but—at key moments—intrinsic to music aesthetics and criticism; that philosophies of mind and theories of the creative process also drew on mechanical rules of causality and associative ‘laws’; and that the technological innovations brought about by scientific research—from steam trains to stethoscopes—were accompanied by new concepts and new ways of listening that radically impacted the sound world of composers, critics and performers.
 
A team of six brilliant postdoctoral researchers, Ross Cole, Edward Gillin, Melle Kromhout, Ariana Phillips-Hutton, Stephanie Probst and Melissa Van Drie worked  the project.