One listens to thousands of pieces or very precise movements of sonatas, suites, etc.
I feel like listening to an adagio and I listen to it without listening to the first movement of Mozart's Sonata K 332, for example. Or some files... or even old music cassettes and why not... vinyl.
But in the end... how much does the recording have to do with the music? We take it for granted, but in effect, nothing is further from music.
In fact, fewer and fewer people listen to concerts and live performances of the music itself, losing very important factors such as: the gestures, the physical presence, the expressions etc. etc. of the performer, not to mention the psychological atmosphere of the hall.
In the 1800s, the advent of photography took away from painting the ability to be the sole medium for immortalizing images. What has recording taken away from music and the performer?
O
Organista94
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Reply 2 by Organista94
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Isn't it just the usual story of the glass half full/half empty?
A very intelligent point for reflection... However, I also want to highlight the other side of the coin, just to play Devil's Advocate: what would have been the artistic loss without the possibility of recording? How would we have transmitted to posterity the great masterpieces conducted by Masters of the caliber of Karajan or Celibidache?
Even at a historical level and in terms of the history of interpretation, how precious can it be to be able to listen to the interpretations of Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, or Debussy playing their own compositions?
In my opinion, rather than focusing the discussion on the invention of recording techniques, the focus should be shifted to "how human beings reacted to the product" and how this modified their lives and habits. In my view, the fault is not to be identified in the invention itself, but in how it is used by human beings. As I always like to remind people, even the law of relativity is a formula that describes the intrinsic energy of matter; then there are those who thought it wise to use it to make atomic bombs.
There are some recordings of 1800s pianists on wax cylinders, if I'm not mistaken EDISON, but Rattalino was also talking about Peugeot cylinders. Not much can be found online. Only Edison cylinders for phonographs can be found, but...
Do you happen to have a file of one of the first piano recordings?
I know, for example, that the first recordings of opera singers were already experimented with, with results that were not appreciable, around the second half of the 1800s.
I am attaching a found file. The first recording of the human voice
I have 13 Duo-Art roll recording discs. Discs that we made with the Director of the Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome. With the disc of Chopin's preludes played by Ferruccio Busoni, we even won the grand prix du disque. It involved live recording compositions onto pneumatic rolls applied to a Steinway of his own property. Seeing the keys move from the "ghost" of past pianists was emocionante. Reproduction of 16 levels of expression and much pedaling. It was an unforgettable experience. Since we sometimes proceeded even at night, the performances were even more spectral. Having Prokofiev or Rachmaninoff in person playing for us was incredible. Some rolls were very old and also the performance style was very different from the modern style. There are few collectors in the world of rolls from this system, which was certainly the first to faithfully reproduce the true "nuances" of performing pianists. Such rolls were controlled and edited and subsequently signed by the great pianists themselves. You can still find some things in shops. The label is Fonè from Livorno. Period 1950s omni microphones were also used for sound recording.
