My talk will explore the links between the history of European theatre and spatial acoustics in the long 19th century. Hence, the talk aims at an archaeology of spatial-acoustic knowledge and asks why an explicit consideration of "good hearing" emerges in the context of the theory of theatre architecture around 1750, even before the establishment of spatial acoustics in a scientific context. A central point of departure will be George Saunders' A Treatise on Theatres (1790). This text demonstrates that the topos of "good hearing" marks a cross-section of very different discursive threads; to wit, Saunders seeks to explore the connections between the architecture of theatres, cathedrals, concert halls and lecture halls. Saunders also seems to be one of the first architects to carry out experiments on sound propagation, and he takes into account the materiality of sound production. Moreover, he engages explicitly with the sense of hearing – which provides an opportunity for interrogating the physiology of the senses and the philosophy of perception with a view to determining to what extent the homo audiens was (re-)considered around 1800. What connections were established here to synchronic efforts to make the theatre into a political instrument for educating human beings and thereby to foster new forms of theatre?
