Re-Enlivening Romanticism Through Historical Sound Recordings

This is a transcript with audio clips (and one video clip) of a talk I gave on May 18, 2023, at the annual conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, which met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

The study of romantic-era performance practice is significantly and rapidly evolving among musical performers and scholars. The pioneering work of figures such as Clive Brown, Robert Philip, John Barry Steane, and more recently, George Kennaway, Neal Peres Da Costa, and Will Crutchfield, to name but a few, has planted the seeds of a new performance practice community, especially among younger generations of musicians who are curious about romantic music beyond the standard and typical way it is performed today. One such community is the online research and discussion group entitled, “Celebrating Romantic-Era Performance Practice,” which currently has just over 400 international members, in addition to other groups, academic programs, and collaborations, all in pursuit of musical rediscovery. And it is commonly acknowledged, if not emphatically prioritized, that alongside historical writings, such as musical treatises, articles, reviews, and correspondence, early recordings play a vital and crucial role in understanding musical style as conceived and actualized in the romantic period. 

No doubt this new endeavor is the beneficiary in large part of the methodologies and success of the early music movement, which has turned informed performance on period instruments or through earlier styles of singing into today’s presumed practice and realm of influence for shaping and concertizing music up to around 1800. The obvious factor – and it is a major one – that distinguishes early music performance practice studies from romantic-era musical consideration is early recordings. True, such recordings document only the final portion of the romantic era from the very end of the 19th century to around the time of the second world war. As well, historical recordings were made under specific time-limited conditions governed by the recording process itself, especially the acoustical age in front of the recording horn with elevated upright pianos (though sometimes grand pianos were used) or by using reduced and revoiced instrumental ensembles often in crowded spaces, especially recognizable as a tuba replaced the string bass. It is also important to note, however, that whenever music is played, whether in the practice room, in a radio studio, in a reverberant church, in a dry classroom, in a large concert hall or small recital venue, outdoors, and so on, the circumstances of the setting influence the music being made and the performer’s way of making that music. Historical recordings represent just one of those settings. And musicians always have had an amazing capacity for adaptability while adjusting, but not compromising, their artistry. 

According to Colin Symes in Setting the Record Straight, performers on early recordings could be quite sensitive to the posterity factor and were often concerned about how their recordings would live beyond them and whether such recordings were true representatives of their artistry (p. 35). At the same time, many prominent figures expressed confidence in the recordings being made during their lifetimes. Musicians such as Salvatore Fucito, who was Enrico Caruso’s coach and pianist, took an especially positive approach to Caruso's recordings. In Fucito’s 1922 book entitled, Caruso and the Art of Singing, he writes: 

One need only compare [Caruso’s] singing of La donna è mobile or the Racconto di Rudolfo with his singing of Stradella’s Pietà, Signore or of Halévy’s Rachel: quand du Seigneur la grâce tutélaire – to mention only a few of the many superb phonographic records of Caruso’s great art – in order to be convinced not only of the larger attributes of  Caruso’s style, which made his art unique, but of its unusual variety in expression, [and] its flexible representation of his moods as they responded to the significance of the music he was singing (p.187-188). 

Fucito, in other words, considered Caruso’s recordings to be a means of absorbing and understanding the various crucial dimensions of Caruso’s artistry. 

 As well, according to “La Lombardia,” on October 20, 1903, the French operatic composer Jules Massenet listened to a series of gramophone recordings of the famous tenor Francesco Tamagno and other singers and was thoroughly impressed at what he heard. Referring to a recording of Tamagno: 

Massenet [was fascinated] with [Tamagno’s] rendering of a phrase out of Erodiade, which was reproduced on a gramophonic record. The French composer having become enthusiastic about the great singer, admired the perfect individuality and characteristicness of the reproduction of his voice. 

In such instances the artistry of the musician spoke meaningfully in spite of any limitations associated with early recordings, and that meaning is even more relevant to the study of musical style from that era today. 

Historical recordings in the context of romantic-era performance practice have a specific goal and purpose, that is to elucidate and impart detailed aspects of musical style, both when they are similar to, or different from, the stylistic renderings of that same music today. This occurs through close and careful analytical listening both to a single recording or comparatively among several pressings by way of expertly produced transfers. Such detailed repeated listening reveals a great deal about the inherent romantic-era approach to tempo, articulation, manner of use of vibrato, bowings, diction, phrasing, length and quality of high notes for singers, breath, and so on. Taken then as vital information alongside the relevant written resources of the period, the listener may then process, assess, and ponder how the information heard within the grooves can potentially re-enliven and even re-shape the way the same repertoire is performed today, not necessarily to replicate historical interpretations, but to freshen how that music is actualized. Reading about a technique such as portamento is one thing, but hearing how any number of musicians performed and rendered it in a variety of works is another. It is historical recordings, in other words, that especially help musicians to recapture, appreciate, understand, and potentially reinvigorate musical practices that have become excessively routine and grown stale. 

What follows then are brief examples of recordings from the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings that raise certain issues uniquely linked to romantic-era performance style that, in each case, have largely been set aside, modified, or homogenized in modern performance and musical training. 

Singers who began their careers in the late 1800s, by and large, were still being trained in the bel canto manner. That meant having to accommodate and adjust to the new declamatory style of singing used especially for Italian verismo operas, such as those being composed by Puccini and others. Early recordings reveal a great deal of stylistic distinction between bel canto and declamation, whereas today the two are more or less blended and homogenized. In this rare 1914 recording of tenor Paolo Tuzzo, rather than sustaining each line, he almost talks the opening phrases of “Vesti la giubba” from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, as if the music were only added secondarily to heighten and elevate the text. The pacing of the phrases seem governed more by the natural flow and variation of speech, as opposed to the steady pulse and melodic pull of music. 

Click to listen to Tuzzo (afterward press the back arrow)

The flexible, undulating, and free-flowing manner of pulse, known as tempo rubato, prevailed in the romantic-era, but has been minimized or made essentially non-existent in many modern performances. Associated especially with the music of Chopin, tempo rubato was applied to the works of numerous romantic-era composers. As well, whereas pianists today play with their right and left hands in perfect vertical alignment according to the beat, in historical pianism the hands were often slightly unaligned for the sake of expression. In this 1929 test pressing of the Chopin B minor prelude, performed by Moriz Rosenthal, who studied with Franz Liszt, the left hand often very slightly precedes the right hand on the beat, and the overall phrasing is governed by extensive tempo rubato. 

Click to listen to Rosenthal (afterward press the back arrow)

A commonly held belief is that the use of the French manner of pronouncing Latin disappeared by the end of the 19th century and defaulted to the Italianate style. Yet this recording of the Fauré Requiem made by the Bach Society of Paris in 1930 begs to differ. As can heard in the singing of words such as “ceali,” “movendi sunt,” “seculorum,” and “judicare,” the French approach to Latin was still very much in use. Also, note that the choir, rather than articulating in a precise pitch-centered manner as is done today, pushes or even slides into the pitch at prominent points within the phrase, which was much more known to choral performance of the romantic era. And finally, whereas the common wisdom is to perform the music of Fauré to a steady pulse unless indicated otherwise by Fauré himself, the music slightly accelerates as it builds, and then stretches at the apex. 

Click to listen to Libera me (afterward press the back arrow)

Some contend that portamento, essentially going from one pitch to another by audibly sliding through the pitches in between, was something only done by singers and solo string players of the romantic era, before it was greatly reduced and in many cases done away with entirely in the modern era of performance. The argument is that portamento, even in the romantic period when it was popular, would have been too difficult to coordinate among multiple musicians on the same line. Early recordings, however, reveal that orchestral ensembles frequently used portamento and did so in a perfectly aligned and coordinated manner. Willem Mengelberg’s 1926 recording of the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s 5th symphony is a quintessential example, but plenty of other recordings prove the point as well. In this 1906 recording, Carlo Sabajno leads La Scala’s orchestra in a rendition of the Salut D’amour by Edward Elgar in which upward and downward portamento is very evident in the violins. [Listen to Sabajno example below] In 1915, a recording of the same work was made with Elgar himself conducting, and the portamento is still quite prominent. [Listen to Elgar example below] 

Click to listen to Sabajno (afterward press the back arrow)

Click to listen to Elgar (afterward press the back arrow)

Inspired by these two recordings, conductor Kevin Sherwin, who founded The American Romantics, is seen here in 2019 rehearsing Salut D’amour with the same type of portamento as encountered in the historical recordings. 

Click to watch Kevin Sherwin (afterward press the back arrow)

Early recordings are breathing new life into the reconsideration of romantic-era music and helping to enliven and motivate this relatively new area of performance practice study. The styles encountered in the grooves are not simply brushed aside as old-fashioned, but are assessed for their inherent musical validity and expressive purpose and power. Historical recordings may be old, but they are being heard anew by countless musicians through an ongoing process of rediscovery, with much more to come.

 

Lost Voices: The Aesthetics and Practices of Romantic-era Choral Performance

Many take for granted the standards of choral performance that regulate choir singing today. This kind of ensemble sound is characterized by cleanliness of attack and articulation, uniformly blended tone within each part and from one vocal section to the next, pitch precision and percussive clarity of diction, and often a sense of rhythmic straightforwardness. Historical recordings and writings from the Romantic era reveal something quite different, however: a choral sound that blatantly contradicts and challenges the way in which the best choirs perform today in any repertoire. 

This video, made from a paper I gave at Indiana University, unpacks and examines choral singing before modern influence. There are several examples from historical recordings to illustrate how choirs sang in the past. Just click the Youtube link to watch and listen to the presentation.

https://youtu.be/dibLbpyKaQw

*note: there is a bit more distortion in the louder passages for a few of the recordings than I would prefer. This is a notorious condition of historical choral recordings. Improvements made to our audio system at Yale would probably address that better today, though this would mean redoing the entire video. Perhaps a project for the future.

Layering the Listen

Guest posting by Kevin Sherwin

Early sound recordings served as the impetus for my further exploration of applying Romantic-era performance practice as a performer. The extraordinary soundscapes, colors, and textures that were evoked by early 20th century recordings of Romantic-era music were so compelling that I felt obliged to understand the ways in which these musical effects were created. Contrary to some modern pedagogical approaches that consider the evocative quality of music to be built into a refined execution of the notes, rhythms, and expressive markings in the score, my artistic intuition felt that more was required to actualize the musical intent of Romantic-era music.

Naturally, the deliberate application of musical approaches beyond contemporary practice and the written score is embraced across performance practice movements. Romantic-era performance practice introduces the source material of early sound recordings. How do we develop an approach toward incorporating early sound recordings into one’s own performance work? I was drawn to the early sound recordings because on listening to them, I was emotionally moved. This led me to consider how I could use the approaches of historical performers to move audiences today. However, my own personal enjoyment of the recordings could not provide the pathway toward gaining some level of artistic facility with the type of musicality on these recordings. After all, these techniques were passed down, refined, and practiced as often the sole occupation of some of the most accomplished performers of over a century ago.

In other words, how could I approach these recordings with the mindset that I’m a complete beginner as compared to the performers that I admire on these recordings? What kind of approach would allow me to begin at “Square 1” in terms of applying Romantic-era performance practice into my own work?

I thought back to early lessons in my own musical development, hoping that some general principles of effective learning could be applied to gaining a practical understanding of historical sound recordings. The main problem I found was that when you’re listening to a recording, you are confronted with an overwhelming amount of information that is passing you by in real-time. It’s essential to find a way to process the recording’s performance practice information aurally, because the process of performance has to involve a highly active aural attention. After all, I considered that starting at Square 1 should also involve refining the training of my ear in a way that would have some relation to the early 20th century performers. Nevertheless, I needed some way to break down the process of listening into manageable pieces that could be further considered. Then, these analytical pieces could be back together into an artistic process.

These considerations led to the process that I’ll call “Layering the Listen.” The first stage is to consider the different expressive devices heard on recordings in different “listening passes.” After I feel that I’ve digested the recording as a whole, I start a series of listening passes, each one focused on a different element of the performance. I find it most effective to start with more “macro” oriented elements and then proceed to more “micro” details of expression.

Often at first, I will consider tempo and tempo rubato. Within the category of tempo rubato, I will generally consider this from two angles. The first is “macro” tempo rubato. Are there sectional tempo changes that are not marked into the score? Are there noticeable changes in pulse from phrase to phrase? Then, I will consider “micro” elements of tempo rubato. How is the pulse varied (or not varied) within a phrase? How are agogic accents used from note-to-note?

For me personally, I like to have multiple printouts of the score, and a pencil in hand when listening. Each “listening pass” can involve pauses within the listening, and multiple listenings. I remain on each listening pass until I feel comfortable that I’ve understood each element well enough before moving on.

I will then do a listening pass for tone quality and dynamics. How does the performer vary dynamics in response to written expressive markings? Do they always start dynamic changes right when they are marked in the score? Or are there other patterns of their dynamics in relation to score markings? Also, how would I describe tone of the performer? How does the performer vary the timbral quality and create different shadings within a phrase, and across the piece? Timbral quality is created in highly different ways depending on the instrument, and the more understanding that the listener has of these different technical processes, the fuller understanding one can develop.  

I will then do a listening pass for articulation. How do the performers interpret the notated articulation markings? Are accents always treated the same way? Are dynamic markings solely a change in volume, or do they involve an articulation that creates the “effect” of louder or softer? After all, there is a difference between the effect that the listener perceives and the process that the performer employs. This is especially true for Romantic performance practice. One example is how a listener can perceive a passage to be louder, or more intense, but the performer’s process is to speed up of the tempo. Another example can be seen in instances of accent markings: rather than just play these notes louder, the performer sometimes creates a slight separation or lift between notes.

As the listening passes continue, I start to build connections between the different elements. If a performer today were to actualize gestures of tempo rubato without any consideration of dynamics or timbral shading, one would sound mechanical (think of the performance of a piano roll as an example, which due to the limitations of the technology, was generally devoid of recording dynamic information from the performer). We can agree that that effective performance brings together the expressive elements into an artistic whole. Separating the elements through the listening passes is a means to an end: for me personally, I need to be confident in understanding each element before feeling like I can thoroughly engage in the more complex stage of drawing connections between the elements.

Then, for orchestral, choral, string, or chamber music recordings, the next listening pass will be for portamento. There are many different kinds of portamento, and a variety of techniques that string players or singers employ to create different shadings of portamento. The more understanding that the listener has, the more specific the observations can be. It’s also important to develop connections with how the portamento functions in terms of the overall interpretation. Portamento can sometimes be a stand-alone expressive effect meant to pop out and catch the listener’s attention. More often though, portamento serves a wholistic impact on the interpretation. Within phrases, portamento can create an extra sense of legato. Portamento can also contribute to the pathos of the interpretation, whether it generates excitement, sadness, or longing, to name a few affects. Portamento is also often intimately linked with tempo rubato. Certain gestures of tempo rubato rely on the portamento to come off in a musical way. Vice-versa, certain gestures of portamento that are executed without tempo rubato sound forced and unnatural.

The listening passes can continue for as many distinct elements as one feels necessary to begin their understanding of a recordings. Other listening passes I often find important include listening for balance/voicing, expressive dislocation of melody and bass line, and rhythmic alterations (as apart from agogic accents).

As I mentioned earlier, “Layering the Listen” is by no means a way to become as artistically fluent as the accomplished performers we hear on early sound recordings. Since early sound recordings are so immediate to our ear, I think it’s an easy mistake to make to consider that artistically re-creating the musical ideas that we hear could be a relatively immediate process of direct application. Rather, it’s more reasonable to assume that convincingly taking on the artistic costume of another time period is a process that needs to be broken down into manageable steps that can be digested one at a time. For me, “Layering the Listen” is that first step in gradually incorporating the advanced artistic stylings of some of my favorite performers on early sound recordings.

Are Historical Recordings Reliable?

Are historical sound recordings a trustworthy source of performance practice information and insight, or can their limitations be so severe that they are able to misrepresent the music made in their own time? Could the circumstances of the recording process and their impact on the performers have potentially inhibited the music captured in the grooves or does any of that performativity-type consideration really matter? 

Edward Elgar leading a recording session in 1914

Many discredit historical recordings upon initial encounter due to a visceral reaction against their audio fidelity limitations, especially 78s of the acoustical age. Because these listeners are not able to hear the full palette of sound that not only replicates, but supersedes, the live listening experience (as is the case with modern studio-produced recordings), they put up a mental blockade against listening into the grooves for what is actually there. They often will complain that the recorded sound is cold, distant, unrealistic, and artificial. And that automatically translates into untrustworthy.

Others, perhaps less bothered by the lack of audio fidelity, will cite (and even contrive), deficiencies in the recording process to discredit the music being heard. Probably the most common of these is that the music was played or sung by the musician(s) too quickly, so that a work would fit on a time-limited disc side, especially for 10-inch 78s or those, such as “Berliners,” that were even shorter (7 inches). Other complaints include that the musicians were often under-rehearsed, that the recording cone misrepresented vibrato, that singers especially sounded too shrill in a way that could not be at all realistic, that the recording room conditions encouraged bad playing, and so on. (Interestingly, surface noise seems to be less of an issue now than, say, a decade or so ago, due to the resurgence of interest in LP disc recordings, whereby the non-musical pops and crackles actually are welcome as part of the sonic ambience.)

Complaints with these recordings were not invented in the modern era. Musicians and listeners had mixed reactions to recordings back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well. Wildly popular among the masses, 78s caused skepticism among many musicians of the time. These musicians considered the gramophone or phonograph a novelty item or toy for dance music and the like, not a serious mechanism to convey classical music (Symes, 2004, p. 35, 38-40). They also often bemoaned the conditions under which they had to record (not unlike bemoaning having to record today). There is no doubt that the process of recording, whether one hundred years ago or at this very moment, alters and affects the mental state of the musicians being recorded. Knowing that an audio document of a performance will exist indefinitely for others to hear in a variety of circumstances, as opposed to the performed sound disappearing into the air, can have impact on the musical decisions being made and how they are rendered, both consciously and unconsciously. But that does not automatically invalidate those musical decisions in either circumstance.

Musicians such as Salvatore Fucito, who was Enrico Caruso’s coach and pianist, took a more recordings-positive approach, however (Caruso, after all, was the first person to sell over a million recordings). In Fucito’s 1922 book entitled, Caruso and The Art of Singing, he writes:

One need only compare [Caruso’s] singing of La donna è mobile or the Racconto di Rudolfo with his singing of Stradella’s Pietà, Signore or of Halévy’s Rachel: quand du Seigneur la grâce tutélaire – to mention only a few of the many superb phonographic records of Caruso’s great art – in order to be convinced not only of the larger attributes of Caruso’s style, which made his art unique, but of its unusual variety in expression, [and] its flexible representation of his moods as they responded to the significance of the music he was singing (p.187-188).

Fucito, in other words, considered Caruso’s recordings (played on 1922 phonographs no less) to be a sufficient means of absorbing and understanding the various crucial dimensions of Caruso’s artistry. 

Achieving a high-fidelity audio experience is therefore not necessary toward gaining performance practice information from the grooves of the historical recording (even the scratchiest, noisiest early cylinder or Berliner will yield some sort of limited information). Having superior audio engagement that electronically surpasses the sound of the concert hall is not the purpose; hearing the performance elements captured on the recording, as many as possible and by the best means available, is. The listener does not need to be enraptured by the sound quality, or even have all of the elements of reality present, to study various stylistic features in the recorded performance that can be compared to the stylistic features of other recordings of the time, as well to music as it is performed today. Of course, the playback conditions should guarantee that the historical recording is heard as truly and completely as possible, which includes being played either by a reliable high-quality transfer, or on a superior audio system with a turntable at the right speed with a good stylus (see Bailey, ”Historical Recordings and Performance Practice Listening). Listening for the sake of performance practice insight is about gathering and assessing audio information however it presents itself, not about prioritizing or insisting on an aesthetic experience while doing so. That is to say, how the listener reacts to the recording overall is secondary to the performance practice information the recording reveals, whatever and however much is there.

The aria “Magische Töne” from Goldmark’s Die Königin von Saba, through various recordings, illustrates the point. In this first example, tenor Nicolai Gedda provides a remarkable recorded performance enhanced by full sonic audio fidelity. His rendition is intimate, personal, and deeply moving; all the elements of sound are in place. This recording understandably leaves many listeners in awe, and his performance practice stylization is clearly evident. 

In contrast, Leo Slezak’s 1905 recording of the same aria comes nowhere near to matching the audio fidelity mastery of Gedda’s (including the fact that an upright piano is used for the accompaniment, rather than full orchestra). But the listener should put that aside and focus on Slezak’s voice and his phrasing and articulation. Really focus. There is abundant performance practice information apparent – phrase shape, musical contrast, diction stylization, manner of declamation etc. – enough to generate pages of notes on Slezak’s manner of singing this aria.

Hermann Jadlowker also recorded this aria around the same time as Slezak. Listening again with razor-like focus to his voice and its expressive details yields abundant performance practice information, especially in comparison to Slezak. His use of portamento, briefly, toward the beginning of the aria is in and of itself a notable detail of contrast (0:48 - 0:56) compared to Slezak at that same spot. 

With the high-fidelity nature of Gedda’s recording, the listener may sit back and take it all in. With the historical renditions of Slezak and Jadlowker, the listener must lean in and listen with uninterrupted focus and attention, and both recordings will provide ample performance practice musical information, achieving magnificence in their own right. [The youtube links are posted out of convenience, but with some reluctance. Ideally one would listen to all three recordings under the circumstances described in the previous blog posting. Nevertheless, these three fairly well-done transfers should sufficiently convey the point being made, while encouraging the listener, whenever possible, to use higher quality transfers.]

What then of the contention that performers played music faster than normal to fit a work (or a segment of that work) onto a side of a disc? There is ample evidence to show that, as a universal rather than anecdotal contention, this notion lacks foundation. The genesis of the comment is a reaction against the tempos heard on historical recordings, which to some seem faster than normal. Yet the vast majority of recordings, including those that are 10 inches and smaller, still have 20-30-40 seconds left at the end, even a minute in some cases, meaning there was more room on the disc (and even 30 seconds more is quite a bit of time in terms of tempo for a short work or excerpt). The engineers overseeing the recording process also were experts in terms of timing and were particularly exacting in those calculations. For instance, many recordings have cuts, large and small, that enabled the piece or except to fit just fine. Furthermore, this contention has been made over transfers, or the 78s themselves, that actually were being played at the wrong speed, as very many recordings need to be played slower than 78 rpms. This even applies to radio transcription discs of the 1930s and 1940s. Note the following transfer of Pablo de Sarasate playing his Zigeunerweisen in 1904, which is a whole step too high. This also means the tempo is too fast (his quicker passages sound almost inhuman). 

Again, especially in 1904, it was a common occurrence that a recording needed to revolve slower than 78 rpms (sometimes faster as well). Here is a transfer of the same recording much closer to the right speed and therefore the tempo Sarasate actually played.

The transfer at the wrong speed plays for 4:46 and the one at pretty much the right speed for 5:37. Listening to the faster transfer at the wrong speed shaves almost a minute off the performance and of course sounds excessively fast, while the pacing of the phrases is rushed and unnatural. This is why phonographs had speed adjustment. Some musicians also tend to slow down in recording sessions for a sense of caution and are urged to go faster to realize their normal tempo. If other musicians were performing faster than they were used to, which certainly could have been the case in specific circumstances, then it is likely to be apparent in their manner of playing. If, on the other hand, they pulled it off, that also says something about performance practice, all of which becomes part of the listener’s assessment process.

But what if musicians, in certain circumstances, had to endure less than ideal, or even sometimes arduous, recording conditions? What if the room was cramped and hot, the sight lines were off, the spacing was awkward, timing was an issue, and the process was fatiguing? The answer to all this is that it doesn’t matter. Again, It doesn’t matter. The only thing that is concrete and stable is the sound in the grooves, however it got there. To try to factor in any extra-musical elements can only amount to conjecture further colored by modern bias, because there is no way actually to determine just how much these factors actually had impact on the sound of a particular recording, if at all. This is not musicology. This is listening closely to, and assessing, the actual sound documented on the disc. And yes, once we reach the age of radio broadcast recordings, then it is instructive to compare those live studio performances (or Metropolitan Opera broadcasts) with the ones released on commercial 78 rpm recordings. But, again, one does not invalidate the other, it only shows the range of possibility. Who is to say a musician was any less so in certain circumstances, especially to validate bias? The sound captured on the recordings is the only actual music under consideration, and there is plenty there to ponder, compare, and contrast. (I especially appreciate that in J. B. Steane’s The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record and his Voices, Singers & Critics, he never disparages historical recordings nor cites any of their “deficiencies” as factors in his understanding of the vocal sound he assesses on the recordings themselves.)

There are certain factors regarding the recordings themselves that can have impact on the way the music is heard. For instance, occasionally the apparatus in the acoustical age would wind down in process. This caused a gradual reduction in pitch and tempo, yet some of those recordings were released commercially nonetheless. The A pitch was not standard; in various places it was lower than 440 and in other places a bit higher. Soprano Nellie Melba, for instance, preferred to sing and record at A-435. Singers also transposed arias from time to time to suit their voices, which did not always have to do with their age. Caruso’s 1906 recording of “Che gelida manina” from La Bohème, for example, is a half step lower by intention. Vertical cut 78s by Thomas Edision et. al. require special playback settings, and some recordings were made with groove distortion in louder passages. Reputable companies that make transfers of historical recordings will take all of this into account. When listening directly from the turntable, however, these are things to keep in mind.

Romantic-era performance practice and musicology (especially when musicology is concerned with performativity) may intersect in some musical studies, but they are not the same field. And the concepts articulated in this essay are a response to the latter, through numerous comments in numerous settings may serve to inhibit or even discredit the former when discussing historical sound recordings. The goals of these two disciplines are different as well. Performance practice on record is not endeavoring to recreate the world in which the music was written – an endeavor laced with traps that, arguably, the Early Music movement fell into toward the beginning – nor is it proposing simply to copy the performances on those recordings today. It is rather about enlivening the modern ear with a multitude of sounds generated in a different era, and, through close listening and comprehension, attending to the details that carry and convey those particular sounds as music. Nothing in the understanding of the conditions of how that sound came to be will alter the recorded sound itself, and any influence those conditions may or may not have had will be conjecture. When the topic is musical style and performance as heard on disc, as it is here, the grooves are all that matter.

References

Fucito, S, Beyer, B. J. (1922, Dover 1995). Caruso and The Art of Singing.

Symes, C. (2004). Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording.

Historical Recordings and Performance Practice Listening

Listening to historical sound recordings so as to absorb the most musical information imparted in the groves requires a few levels of consideration and setup. Quite often there is more music on the recording than the listener is hearing because of some less than adequate factor in playback. This not only can cause the listener to miss valuable aspects of a performance on record, but even to misinterpret or misunderstand what is being heard. 

Although all romantic music performance practitioners are welcome to hear recordings at a place such as the Yale collection’s studio, the feasibility of that for so many is obviously limited. Most people, rather, listen to historical recordings remotely. In such cases, there are certain things to keep in mind and account for to hear everything on the recording.

Five types of historical recordings

There are five basic groups of historical recordings that are of particular value to the romantic music performance practitioner: acoustical recordings, electrical recordings, transcription discs, test pressings, and private recordings. These categories by and large exist on disc formats (with the exception of cylinders), while more recently, LPs, CDs, and digital files provide for historical reissues (while formats such as reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, and DAT tapes are outdated). Here is each group summarized using an historical lens:

Acoustical recordings appear near the end of the 19th century in two contrasting formats: cylinders, which were associated with Thomas Edison, and flat discs, which were associated with Emil Berliner. In the first decade of the 20th century, Edison experimented with flat discs and eventually yielded to them. Acoustical recordings were produced mechanically and characterized by the use of the cone (or “horn”) to capture sound vibrations in the recording process with a cutting stylus responding to those vibrations, making grooves in the master recording. Generally these discs existed in 7-inch, 10-inch, and 12-inch shellac formats, single and eventually double sided; most were laterally cut (in terms of the grooves), but some were vertically cut as well. They generally played at 78rpms, though often, depending on the record label especially, these recordings could play slower or even faster. Acoustical classical recordings favored singers accompanied by pianos or instrumental ensembles, but also included solo instrumentalists, and eventually works for groups of musicians. The ensembles, both solo and accompanimental, were reconfigured according to the recording circumstances. Much smaller in size than a full orchestra, these particular multi-instrument recordings featured arrangements that put the tuba on the bass line and transferred many melodies to the clarinet, both of which were more easily picked up by the recording horn. Innumerable acoustical recordings were made and sold throughout the world. An artist such as tenor Enrico Caruso, 1873-1921, is heard only on acoustical recordings.

An Edison cylinder and 7-inch Berliner

In the early 1920s, electrical recordings began to take over. Instead of a cone, microphones were used to capture the music, and electricity was applied throughout the recording process. The most noticeable difference was the enhanced audio fidelity that resulted. As well, regular orchestras could be used with no need to transcribe the instrumentation for smaller, more specialized ensembles. At this point, 10-inch and 12-inch shellac double-sided recordings were the format of choice. Several artists, such as pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1873-1943, and soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, 1882-1963, recorded both acoustical and electrical recordings, while many others younger in age only recorded electricals. 78 rpms was the preferred speed, though many recordings still played faster or slower.  

In the late 1920s (and especially expanding into the 1930s), radio broadcasts of live performances and programs could be captured on electrical transcription discs. These recordings, usually 12-inch, 14-inch, or 16-inch, were distributed for rebroadcast, but also could serve as keepsakes for the performing artists. The Metropolitan Opera began recording its broadcasts in the mid 1930s. Special events such as world fair concerts were even recorded outdoors, as in the early 1940s. The discs generally played at 78 rpms early on, but eventually could also play at 33 rpms. It is not uncommon to encounter a transcription disc that plays with the stylus starting at the label and going to the outer rim. Most discs were made with lacquer, which can exist over glass or aluminum in some cases, though there exist fully aluminum transcription discs as well.

Lacquer peeling off a glass base

Test pressings are another beneficiary of the electrical age. These are unpublished takes of a recording session by an artist or group of artists. Before splicing and editing was a possibility, each recorded version of a piece could be distributed to the executives and performers to decide which one to publish. They were produced for temporary use, similar to transcription discs, which is why many have deteriorated beyond playability. Numerous others still exist, however, and reveal a great deal about performance artistry, including consistency and inconsistency from one take to the next, common or uncommon mistakes, and so on. These play at the same speed as the released commercial version, often 78 rpms, though sometimes a bit slower or faster. The Yale collection, for example, has several test pressings in the late 1920s of pianist Moriz Rosenthal, 1862-1946, playing works by Chopin and Liszt, some of which were published and others that were not. Early test pressings, often called “acetates,” were made like transcription discs, and later on (past the point of this discussion) they were made of vinyl for LPs.

Similar to test pressings, private recordings are unpublished. They also can be extremely rare and hard to obtain, the most difficult to find of any of the other recording types mentioned. Whereas they may contain music, as often they include interviews, family messages, discussion at social gatherings, special announcements and greetings, field work, and an array of informational snippets. These are not only historical but still are being made in abundance. Those older recordings that are on disc generally are made of lacquer and were designed for impermanence (even if they have survived to today), mostly playing at 78 rpms or thereabouts. Very likely the contents on these recordings will be one of a kind.

The listening setup

The easiest way to listen analytically to historical recordings is to rely on expertly made digital transfers (in WAV format) by reputable recording engineers and companies, such as Marston Records (Marston audio transfers currently are only available in CD format, but soon will be downloadable). Extraordinary care and research goes into making these transfers. Also, perhaps a step down from WAV file transfers and CDs, are the high quality streaming files provided by reputable sources such as The Great 78s Project (curated by George Blood) and the files posted on a site such as the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR). Yet another option are those institutions such as Yale that will make digital transfers of 78s on request (Yale provides 30-day streaming access, though other arrangements can be made under special circumstances).

Youtube videos, and the like, can be extremely unreliable, depending who made them. At the very least, the audio quality will be reduced (unless heard on a different platform such as Bandcamp, which maintains higher-quality transfers). These publicly posted, largely homemade, transfers can be fraught with problems, such as the wrong listening speed and pitch (which is also a problem on certain LP reissues), excessive noise reduction (which also diminishes the musical sound), the wrong stylus, dubious audio quality, original ensembles replaced by modern orchestras (which happens a lot with Caruso transfers), zero noise reduction where some is merited, and much more. All these things can blur and lessen the sound of articulation, diction, and other stylistic effects. These recordings may be sufficient for basic entertainment, but not for analytical study.

Listening to historical recordings in order to extract the most detailed musical information from them requires either high-fidelity speakers and/or earphones (the latter being the less expensive option). Laptop built-in speakers are insufficient, as are average desktop computer speakers. Earbuds in most cases also are not enough, as opposed to earphones that cover and insulate the ears.

Audioengine, for instance, makes quality laptop/desktop speakers that will serve the digital files listening experience well, including the HD6, A5+, and HD3 models, which support tabletop listening (all three speakers have amplifiers of varying specifications built into the left speaker). These speakers are also ideal for giving presentations in seminar rooms (the HD3s are especially portable). There are other companies that make similarly impressive speakers as well.

Audioengine A5+ left speaker

To upgrade the audio quality beyond computer speakers, a Digital-Analog Converter (DAC) will allow digital files to play on an analog stereo system. This is ideal for close listening, assuming a high-quality audio setup. A variety of DACs are available at a range of prices (the best being just over $1,000 US), and, once installed, they will require nothing more than the turn of a knob or pressing the right button.

Digital-analog converter (DAC)

If the romantic music performance practitioner desires to listen to the source recordings themselves, this laudable and perfectly possible goal becomes more detailed and complex. It also goes beyond the scope of this essay other than a few suggestions and observations. The stereo system will require an amplifier and preamplifier or a high-quality integrated amplifier with turntable possibilities (this should not be an issue). McIntosh is an undisputed leader in audiophile amplification components, though there are less expensive options. Ideally there would be two turntables, one set up for LPs (and 45s), the other for 78s – otherwise, as 78s and LPs use different cartridges and styli, the listener will frequently have to switch one for the other. Also the turntable dedicated to 78s must have notch by notch speed adjustment and be able to accommodate 16” transcription discs for the sake of some radio broadcast recordings. Of course, so as not to place wear on the 78 if frequent play is expected, an audio component that allows for the digitization of the recording will be necessary, either onto CD-R or to a digital file. This also means obtaining the recordings themselves and building the collection, which is an endless task (though it can be done in conjunction with collecting digital files and LP or CD reissues). 

Audio components, including McIntosh pre-amplifier and amplifier, with two turntables

Turntable setup for 78 rpm recordings

Head shell, cartridge, and stylus for 78 rpm recordings

As a final note, it is highly instructive to listen to 78s played on original phonographs or gramophones (though the discs themselves should be copies and not valuable, since repeated playback will cause wear). Hearing the 78s as they did at the beginning of the 20th century creates a strong connection and even bond with that period. It can open further avenues of awareness and understanding, but it does not provide the means for close, analytical listening for the sake of performance practice study. Modern and sophisticated audio components are best for that.

Early 1920s non-electric phonograph