Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense. Ed. by Gavin Williams
Journal: Music and Letters
Year: 2020

The cover of Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sounds and the Unmaking of Sense offers an image of orchestrated stillness. A photograph dated 1856, the year the Crimean War (1853–6) ended, features two Royal Artillery trumpeters, decorated with the Crimean Medal, resting on an ammunition carriage and staring into the distance, bugle and drum mute by their sides. In this picture, silence and sound, the real and the imaginary, are held in tension. In his introduction, the editor Gavin Williams high