Music recorded in 1896
The year 1896 was a turning point for the late 19th century, when the world simultaneously advanced toward "empire expansion" and "urbanization," accelerating the integration of communications, finance, and entertainment. National boundaries were redrawn through military force and treaties, and events in distant places began to be shared widely through newspapers and performances. This contemporary tension and enthusiasm absorbed themes such as war, disasters, accidents, and mass events into music and oral performances, further strengthening the trend toward recording media fixing these as repeatable information.
In international politics, Ethiopia defeated the Italian army at the Battle of Adwa on March 1, 1896. Following the First Italo-Ethiopian War, independence was reaffirmed with the Treaty of Addis Ababa on October 23, 1896. In Southeast Asia, the discovery of the secret society Katipunan (official name: Kataastaasan Kagalanggalang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan) by authorities in August 1896 triggered the emergence of the Philippine Revolution as an armed struggle. In the island nation of Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa, the Anglo-Zanzibar War on August 27, 1896, was quickly resolved, demonstrating the reality that military power and diplomacy can rapidly change the form of governance. In the United States, Plessy v. Ferguson (163 US 537 (1896)) was decided on May 18, 1896, and the "separate but equal" principle, which made racial segregation legal, had a long-term impact. William McKinley (1843–1901) was elected in the 1896 United States presidential election that year (voting day: November 3, 1896), and the conflict over the monetary system was symbolized by William Jennings Bryan's (1860–1925) "Cross of Gold" speech (July 9, 1896). In North America, gold was discovered in Bonanza Creek (formerly known as Rabbit Creek) in the Klondike River system in August 1896, which triggered the Klondike Gold Rush.
In science, technology, and society, 1896 saw simultaneous advances in the fields of "measuring, connecting, and projecting." In communications, Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) filed a British patent application for wireless communication in June 1896, redefining the premise of remote communication. In climate science, Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) quantitatively discussed the impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on temperature in his paper "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground" (April 1896). In finance, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was first published on May 26, 1896, ushering in the widespread adoption of a framework for describing economic trends using a single index. On the other hand, the acceleration of modernity also brought crises, such as the declaration of an epidemic of bubonic plague in Bombay (now Mumbai), British India, in September 1896, and problems of urban sanitation and mobility destabilizing social order. In Japan, the Meiji-Sanriku earthquake and tsunami of June 15, 1896, caused enormous damage, and the experience of disaster was deeply engraved in the memories and records of the region.
These global changes were directly linked to the popular media of image and sound. On April 23, 1896, Edison's Vitascope had its first theatrical exhibition at Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New York, and images rapidly became a public entertainment venue. In the recording industry, Thomas Edison (1847–1931) incorporated the National Phonograph Company on January 27, 1896, establishing a supply system for recording machines and recordings. The use of incidents and spectacles as musical material also grew, and Scott Joplin (1868–1917) published "The Great Crush Collision March" (first published in 1896, also titled "The Crush Collision March"), a work about a crowd accident. The year 1896 saw the outlines of how world events were being entertainmentized and then frozen into repeatable information through recording technology become even clearer.
Ruben Collection
The Ruben Collection (Ruben-samlingen) is a collection of Denmark's earliest wax cylinder recordings, produced in Copenhagen by Gottfried Moses Ruben (1837–1897) between 1889 and the mid-1890s. MOPM has collectively organized the wax cylinder recordings made between 1889 and the mid-1890s as the "Ruben Collection," and has posted a list of the recordings on a dedicated page.
