The True Story Behind The History of Sound: From Ben Shattuck’s Prose to Edison Cylinders
When author Ben Shattuck first imagined two young men traversing rural New England with an acoustic phonograph during the First World War, he anchored their fictional journey to an authentic technological milestone: the fragile, mechanical capture of human song on wax. As detailed in a historical analysis by the HistoryExtra Report, the narrative of The History of Sound draws straight from the legacy of early twentieth-century American folk song collectors who hauled heavy machinery into remote communities before traditional oral cultures faded into industrial standardization.
The story’s transition from literary page to screen adaptation, directed by Oliver Hermanus and starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor, reignited broad curiosity around this forgotten era of sonic preservation. What began as Shattuck’s Pushcart Prize-winning short story evolved into a major cultural touchstone, examining how acoustic vulnerability, queer intimacy, and mechanical recording intersected during one of the most volatile periods in American history.
📌 Key Takeaways:
- Literary Provenance: Shattuck’s original story secured national acclaim before winning the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award in October 2025, validating its focus on rural New England heritage.
- Historical Reality: Lionel and David’s journey mirrors real-life collectors like Cecil Sharp, John Lomax, and Frances Densmore, who relied on Edison wax cylinders to document vanishing oral traditions.
- Authentic Performance: Mescal and O'Connor underwent rigorous vocal training to perform early twentieth-century modal ballads live on set without modern vocal polish.
Ben Shattuck's New England Vision and the Mark Twain Award
The genesis of The History of Sound sits inside the coastal hamlets and overgrown logging trails of Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Ben Shattuck, an essayist and historian who serves as director of the Cuttyhunk Writers’ Residency, wrote the original short story out of an obsession with place-based memory. He wanted to understand what New England actually sounded like before radio networks flattened regional dialects into generic mid-Atlantic cadences.
His collection struck an enduring chord. In October 2025, the Mark Twain House & Museum awarded Shattuck the prestigious Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award for the book, recognizing its authentic vernacular and sharp depiction of New England life. The story follows Lionel and David, two young men who meet at the Boston Conservatory in 1916. David later convinces Lionel to spend the summer of 1919 journeying down back roads with an Edison phonograph to capture working-class laborers, hymn-singers, and reclusive farmers on wax.
Shattuck avoided romanticizing the era as a sepia-toned pastoral dream. Rural New England in 1919 was shell-shocked by the influenza epidemic and grieving soldiers lost in European trenches. Songs were not mere decorative art; they served as living memorials passed down through bloodlines. By weaving this collective grief into David and Lionel’s unspoken affection, the narrative framed the mechanical recording device as a desperate instrument against oblivion.
The Acoustic Archaeology of Edison Wax Cylinders
The machine at the center of the story is the phonograph invented by Thomas Edison, utilizing hollow, rotating cylinders made of a metallic soap and stearate compound. Recording on location in 1919 presented immense logistical headaches that modern digital creators can barely fathom. There were no microphones, vacuum tubes, or electrical cords. Sound waves struck a thin diaphragm through an acoustic horn, vibrating a tiny sapphire cutting stylus that carved physical grooves directly into the rotating cylinder.
| Field Technology | Active Era | Key Physical Limitations | Historical Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edison Wax Cylinders | 1888, 1925 | Max 2, 4 minutes; extreme thermal fragility; rapid groove degradation. | Pioneering field captures by ethnographers like Frances Densmore and Percy Grainger. |
| Aluminum Disc Cutters | 1930, 1948 | Bulky car battery power requirements; heavy cutting arms; needle hiss. | John and Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress Southern prison and Appalachian tours. |
| Portable Tape Recorders | 1950, 1985 | Tape degradation over time; print-through; mechanical motor flutter. | Mid-century folk revival documentation across Newport and the UK. |
Because the process required pure physical energy, singers had to position their faces inches away from the metal horn, projecting at full volume so the vibrations could cut wax. If an acoustic cylinder softened under high summer heat, it turned unusable. If dropped on gravel, it shattered like eggshells. Lionel and David’s obsessive care for their wooden storage boxes reflects the brutal material realities faced by actual pioneers like Frances Densmore, who recorded over 2,000 Native American songs on wax, and Percy Grainger, who lugged a phonograph across rural Lincolnshire.
Training Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor as Folk Troubadours
When production assembled the cinematic adaptation, director Oliver Hermanus avoided lip-syncing over pre-recorded commercial tracks. Casting two of contemporary cinema's most in-demand actors, Paul Mescal as Lionel and Josh O'Connor as David, demanded that their musicality register as authentic period work. In an interview published by The Guardian in January 2026, vocal coach and folk musician Sam Lee detailed the extensive preparation required to turn the actors into plausible folk troubadours.
Lee stripped away modern pop vibrato and dramatic projection. Traditional singers of the early 1900s sang without affectation; they performed ballads unadorned, relying on modal intervals, natural nasal resonance, and straightforward phrasing learned across kitchen tables. Mescal, an Irish actor familiar with traditional Sean-nós phrasing, and O’Connor, who possesses an earthy British baritone, had to synchronize their natural voices while performing outdoors under unpredictable weather conditions.
Their vocal training focused heavily on the tactile connection between sound and breath. Lee had them sing while hiking uneven trails, hauling vintage camera rigs, and cranking antique machinery to build genuine vocal fatigue into the takes. When Lionel and David sing together in the film, the performance feels unvarnished, exposing the underlying intimacy that the characters cannot articulate aloud in 1919 society.
Soundtrack Construction and the Realities of New England Filming
The film's sonic architecture depends heavily on a soundtrack designed to bridge archival history with modern emotional resonance. As reported by NME during the score's official rollout in late January 2026, the soundtrack combines restored early-century wax cylinder artifacts with newly arranged Appalachian, Celtic, and Anglo-American modal folk tunes. Instead of applying orchestral swells beneath emotional climaxes, the musical direction leans on raw acoustics: clawhammer banjos, solo fiddles, harmoniums, and unedited room noise.
Visual authenticity required an equally rigorous geographic footprint. While Shattuck’s story is set across rural Maine and western Massachusetts, the production scouted preserved landscapes that still hold early twentieth-century agricultural topography. According to location breakdowns published by Countryfile, the production team utilized remote stretches of northeastern woodland, historic farms in the Hudson Valley, and rugged expanses across the UK and Italy to recreate a postwar America untouched by power lines, asphalt highways, or commercial radio towers.
Every exterior location was selected for its acoustic footprint. Hermanus and his sound engineering team recorded environmental room tones at each site, creaking floorboards, river currents, and distant forest birds, layering these authentic ambient frequencies under every phonograph performance.
The Human Urge to Freeze Vanishing Voices
Why does The History of Sound generate such emotional traction more than a century after its setting? The story strikes directly at an elemental human panic: the terror that our voices, laughter, and personal histories will evaporate into nothingness. When David and Lionel capture an elderly woman singing an unwritten song carried across three generations from the Scottish border, they are freezing an artifact that would otherwise die with her.
This early acoustic era marked the exact moment humanity learned that voices could outlive bodies. Prior to the phonograph, once a singer stopped, the music ceased existing in the physical world. The Edison cylinder unlocked mechanical immortality, but it came with immense melancholy. To record someone was to acknowledge their mortality.
By framing this technological awakening through a private, fragile romance between two young men in 1919, the story reveals how personal and historical archives mirror one another. Both are acts of defiant preservation. Decades after their summer trek, Lionel is left listening to degraded wax cylinders, hearing crackling surface noise, the hiss of turning gears, and the faint, unmistakable voice of a man he loved.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1: Is The History of Sound based on real historical figures?
A1: Lionel and David are fictional characters created by author Ben Shattuck. However, their methods and field expeditions are directly modeled after authentic twentieth-century folk music collectors such as Cecil Sharp, John Lomax, and Frances Densmore, who recorded oral folk traditions using Edison acoustic phonographs.
Q2: Did Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor actually sing their own tracks in the film?
A2: Yes. Both actors performed their songs live on set. Under the vocal coaching of British folk musician Sam Lee, Mescal and O'Connor trained extensively to master early twentieth-century unornamented folk singing styles, avoiding studio playback or synthetic vocal corrections.
Q3: How were genuine wax cylinders preserved during the 1910s?
A3: Cylinders were stored in cardboard sleeves lined with soft fleece to protect their delicate stearate surfaces from dust and scratching. Collectors had to keep them in climate-controlled wooden boxes, as excessive heat could melt the grooves, while cold made the wax brittle enough to shatter during playback.
What The History of Sound Rescues from Vanishing American Memory
The enduring power of The History of Sound lies in its quiet refusal to let the mechanics of early audio overshadow the human souls who spoke into the horn. Ben Shattuck built a world where technology does not automate human feeling, but instead catches it at its most exposed, fleeting moment.
As the adaptation moves through theaters and cultural discussions throughout 2026, it serves as a timely reminder of what is lost when culture trades tactile preservation for frictionless digital ubiquity. Those early Edison wax cylinders were flawed, hissing, and notoriously prone to decay. Yet in their grooved surfaces sat the genuine breath, hesitation, and vulnerability of everyday people, recorded once, preserved against the odds, and defying silence across a hundred years.
