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To: "'VOCALIST'" <vocalist>
Subject: RE: The charm of the old (was Renee Fleming &C.)
Date sent: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 11:17:11 +0100
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

I spent last night listening to (mostly) turn of the century recordings with
a friend. One of the selections we listened to was a recording of 'Vieni fra
queste braccia' made around 1903 by Francesco Marconi and a soprano called
something like Guarany. What was amusing was that both his and her voice
were very present and clear in their individual verses, yet both suddenly
became rather distant when they sang together. The reason? During their
individual voices they could lean right into the horn to record: when they
sang together there was no room to do this, so they had to stand back.

All of which prompts some reflections on these early recordings. Over the
years I have collected many early recordings (well, I'm over twenty-one and
my habit harms no-one)and , I must say, I find them very honest and useful
documents. There is a sense in which they capture the voice much better than
later technologies. I find you can hear what the singers do (that is to say,
the technique with which they sing) much more easily than on later
recordings, a phenomenon which does not always flatter the singers. For
example, what irritates most hearers of the castrato Moreschi (all now
gathered on one CD for Pearl: Music Minus Two) is not the timbre of his
voice, but his practice of attacking from the speaking voice. But many have
sung this way. In the theatre you simply don't notice the tiny grace note,
but poor old Moreschi was obviously singing with his head jammed down the
horn, which picked up everything. When he stands back (as when he sings with
the chorus), you hear the attack. Actually later singers are sometimes
caught out by this too: compare Corelli's earliest studio recordings (way
too close to the mike, so audible gulp) with his contemporaneous theare
recordings (attach as clean as a whistle) and you get the same phenomenon.
Same thing with Flagstad. And del Monaco. And Bastianini, and Colzani and
Margarita Grandi and....

But even when the singers stand back these are vivid documents. Its as
though you can hear the space in which these people were performing. Prima
voce said that the experience of listening to an old recording through a
horn gramophone is the closest thing yet devised to having the singer stand
in front of you, and I must say, though I've only done it a few times, I
think that's very true. Of course, they take a lot of getting used to, what
with the hiss and the peculiar 'small' acoustic space in which these
recordings fit, but it's worth persevering because they do reveal much more
about technique than more advanced recordings. The difference between the
different timbres in the voice is so much more marked in these recordings.
If you're to find the way to turn your voice from the passaggio by imitation
(and many have, to the chagrin of their teachers), better you use a Caruso
or Journet recording than a high-tech Pavarotti or Bruson one. If you are
looking for a model for immediacy of attack or what we are now encouraged to
call 'onset', will you anywhere find a clearer, more vivid (Mr. LaFont
would doubtless say 'viscous') model than Melba? Truly a remarkeable
generation of singers, as can be most clearly heard by examining the
recordings of the second-stringers. I have the Bongiovanni disc of
second-rate baritones from the teens and twenties of this century. None
(with the exception of Giuseppe Bellantoni, who had a voice of incredible
quality: a Nicolae Herlea avant la lettre) had a voice of the first quality,
but all had techniques which would put them in the front rank today.

I get the impression that many people nowadays find these old recordings
more trouble than they're worth. I also feel sometimes that many singers
nowadays never listen to anything recorded before 1970, because of lower
production standards before that date. For myself, the most a recording is
'produced', the more I am conscious that I listening to an electronic
signal, and not flesh and blood, catgut and cane. So perhaps the appeal of
these old recordings is nothing more than the sense of listening to real
people, complete with financial problems, ex-wives, halitosis and unwanted
nasal hair.

What do you all think?

Happy Singing.

Regards / vriendelijke groeten

Laurie Kubiak
Commercial Analyst - Europe & Africa SMMS
Sales and Contract Support, Shell Services International
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA
Telephone: +44 171 934 3853; Fax: +44 171 934 6674
Mobile: 07771 971 921: E.mail: Laurence.l.Kubiak-at-is.shell.com
Office: LON-SC 631