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?
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| 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.
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