Originally posted by lysander:
...Would the greats such as Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner have been affected by this in any way if they had know it. I have a vague idea that at the very end of Wagners life he might have been aware of experiments with recorded sound and telegraphy , but I am only guessing.
I do know that the BBC have a wax recording phonograph recording of the great English Statesman, William Gladstone's speech in 1887, eleven years before his death.
Which makes him roughly contemporary with Wagner.
[This message has been edited by lysander (edited June 04, 2003).]
...Would the greats such as Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner have been affected by this in any way if they had know it. I have a vague idea that at the very end of Wagners life he might have been aware of experiments with recorded sound and telegraphy , but I am only guessing.
I do know that the BBC have a wax recording phonograph recording of the great English Statesman, William Gladstone's speech in 1887, eleven years before his death.
Which makes him roughly contemporary with Wagner.
[This message has been edited by lysander (edited June 04, 2003).]
I don't know if you saw the post recently where Peter mentioned an 1889 cylinder recording of Brahms playing of few bars of one of his Hungarian Dances. It can be found at
http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/groups...ms/brahms.html
Although the sound is very poor, you can hear the melody thru the noise.
I've been going to opera rather than symphony because as everyone here knows I'm nuts about Wagner right now. Plus at opera you get to watch the orchestra plus the singers and set. But your post has made me want to go to the symphony again also.
Wagner may or may not have known about early recording, but his work in many ways anticipates film. There are several instances with detailed stage directions that are simply impossible for a stage and would work well on film (such as one underwater, another showing figures moving on a distant hill). Also he was the first dramatist to turn down the lights in the auditorium.
The sound on cylinders by 1900 was much better than in 1889. I was surprised recently to read that cylinders were still being manufactured until 1929, when flat discs had already taken over the market pretty much for a number of years.
We don't know what the greats would have done with recording, but I wonder if a lot of three minute pieces would have been perfected during the 78 RPM era. Come to think of it, I wonder if any of the modern composers did any three minute pieces for 78s. Does anyone know?
Jazz and pop of the pre-LP era contain a good number of three minute jewels.
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