I meant to add one more tract to my last post but entirely forgot.
Thought I would also try out Soundcloud to see how it worked and indeed if it worked! I have however left my usual link to the recoding for download by ye olde tried and tested method as it has probably better fidelity.
Not much to say really other than this is Ronald's first attempt at recording a part of the Symphony. Same orchestra but before the name change a few years later. This recording lasted an even shorter period in the catalogues that the 1923 'full' version posed a few days ago. HMV decided to re-record the excerpt in 1915 with another attempt under the same issue number. Clearly a much smaller orchestra than the forces used in 1923 but still Ronald and his 'band of merry men' managed to pack a lot in all the same.
You will hear through this recording a bit of 'rumble' that is prevelent usually when the trombones are playing. I have a feeling that the lower harmonics may have mechanically vibrated the recording machine, either through the floor or to some part of the machine was exposed to their blast - anyway I have left this in the transfer as a sort of curiosity.
Landon Ronald & the New Symphony Orchestra c. 1912
I just love the wording from the October 1912 HMV New Records supplement below. At 19 years of age the work was indeed a 'landmark of modern orchestral music.' I can't think the adjective 'barbaric' would be used today though.
I can't help wondering what the public of 1912 felt about these recordings. Ernest Newman article ‘The Essential Tchaikovsky’ [published in the Contemporary Review, June 1901] succinctly summed up the general opinion a few years early 'It cannot be said that our ordinary musical audiences know Tchaikovsky very well...for the great majority of people Tchaikovsky may be said to be represented by the Sixth Symphony, the '1812' Overture, and the Casse-Noisette Suite - the first earning him the reputation of a hopeless pessimist, the second that of a semi-barbarian, the third that of an adept in graceful trifling.
Side 1 on 30th January 1923 ~ Sides 2,3,4 6 & 7 on 1st May 1923 ~ side 8 on 15th May 1923
sides 5 & 9 on 29th May 1923 ~ side 10 on 23rd June 1923 : [see chart below]
Zip of 4 Flac files , Hereat Mediafire. [about 99Mb]
Oh no! not another Pathétique I hear you say, and yes it has been done before by others, but as I was doing this for my own selfish interest anyway, I thought I could also bore others with my enthusiasm. It is not quite complete as the two repeats in the second movement and fourteen bars at the end of the final movement are cut, plus a couple of notes of timpani between the third and fourth sides of the first movement. It might seem curious that Landon Ronald was chosen to conduct the 'Pathétique' rather than Albert Coates the new conductor on the roster of HMV, however Ronald's association with the piece had a long gestation period. In his two autobiographical works he makes several references to the piece and more than did his part in popularising it in the UK.
Ronald began conducting in 1892 but it was really from 1904 that he started to conduct larger orchestral works. His career really took off as a byproduct from Henry Wood and Thomas Beecham's fall out over the deputy system that was then prevalent with orchestras. Basically a time honoured substitution system that allowed another player to deputise during rehearsals. Henry Wood sacked the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1904 because he could no longer tolerate the deputy system, with the member reorganising themselves into the London Symphony Orchestra Ronald became one of their conductors. The orchestra employed Nikisch and Richter for special concerts with Frederick Cowan, Edward Elgar, Alexander Mackenzie, Max Fiedler, Felix WeingartnerWilhelm Mengelberg, and Ronald taking a half dozen or so concerts each.
Landon Ronald & Henry Wood, 1909
Beecham at this time was also beginning his path to fame and created his own orchestra, he too fell out with his players and so his New Symphony Orchestra became a self governing orchestra from 1909. Ronald was asked if he would conduct some concerts with this orchestra and found himself conducting both the LSO and the New Symphony Orchestra from 1909. The policy of the LSO was not to have a permanent conductor, Ronald wanted to advance his career and although he never sought any permanent position he was disappointed that the orchestra restricted him to between six and eight Sunday concerts per year. 'Had they had any foresight they would undoubtedly have realised that an ambitious young man like myself would not be content to sit down and take crumbs thrown him by the the Directors of the London Symphony orchestra.' (see Landon Ronald: Myself and others [1931]) So it was that Ronald became the chief conductor of the New Symphony and conducted for forty Sundays each year at the Royal Albert Hall.
The New Symphony had quite an amazing group of players for the time, now alas for the most part all but forgotten; the leader was John Saunders with his pupil Albert Sammons, deputy leader; Waldo Warner lead the violas; Jean Prewvenners the cellos (until 1911 when succeeded by Warwick Evans); Charles Draper first clarinet; Arthur Forman, first oboe; Aubrey Brain, first horn; Peter Anderson and H. Goddard, trumpets; Eli Hudson first flute and chairman of the orchestra; and F.C. Barker, harp.
With the series of concerts every Sunday at the Albert Hall with the New Symphony Orchestra Ronald was able to bring his orchestra to HMV and pioneer a number of orchestral recording experiments. This is why this orchestra and a number of its players individually began to be employed by HMV around this time. When the New Symphony Orchestra renamed itself the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra in 1915 Ronald was named as its permanent conductor, a position he held until the orchestra ceased to exist after 1928. Under Ronald it also became the first orchestra in Britain to have a recording contract, naturally enough with The Gramophone Company.
Ronald in 1920
Now why the Pathétique? Well quite simply he played it more often than anyone else between about 1910 and 1920. According to his autobiography Ronald relates 'It had been our custom to give the audience a voting paper during the season, and ask them to place a cross against any particular item which they would care to have performed at the last concert. I always counted the votes most carefully myself, and the program was duly advertised in the papers two or three days before the concert. As a matter of interest I may mention that nearly all the Plebiscite programmes I have conducted in London and the Provinces as a rule contained the same items. The Symphony receiving the greatest number of votes was either Tchaikovsky'sPathétique or Beethoven's No. 5 the Overture chosen was generally Tannhäuser, Meistersingers or Leonora No. 3, and the two most popular suites were the Casse Noisette of Tchaikovsky and the Peer Gynt of Grieg - The Delibes Suite de Ballet Sylvia running the two very close.'
All of the above compositions were recorded by Ronald and the New Symphony or Royal Albert Hall Orchestra.
This advert from The Times of 27th April 1919 clearly shows all the other items on the bill were also recorded by Ronald. I presume that these were 'Ronald's' pieces and although quite a number of them were the plums of the concert repertoire it would seem he had first pick not only because of his position in the Gramophone Company but was one of the few conductors prepared to take on the arduous task of recording them.
The recording of such a long piece was fraught with difficulties. Side 1 took four takes on the 30th of January 1923. I have a gut feeling that these four takes, the only waxes recorded by Ronald and the Orchestra, were all sound tests. They would have worked out various different positions for the players at this session and probably many more takes were cut than the four which were mastered. Only these four proved technically, or at least visually, alright when the waxes were examined before processing. This supposition seems to be born out by the general clear run of recordings on the 1st of May.
The last movement though proved to be a bit of a problem. The sheer volume of sound produced by trombones, trumpets, horns, timpani etc. not to mention the tuba replacement for double-bass all playing over long sections of the recording must have been just a bit too much for the small recording diaphragm and the wax grooves. HMV were not happy until a 7th take was made on the 23 June 1923 although it appears that they initially passed the 4th take of 29th May that lasted only a month or so before being replaced, it would be quite interesting to hear this take too. The sound scape changes a bit on this last side indicating some form of damping taking place although I have ameliorated this in my transfer.
Anyway for the lunatics like me around the world I have charted the recording session takes with blue = issued and green = initially issued but then withdrawn. Interesting also to note that Tuesday seemed to been the main free day for recording of this orchestra.
The set was marketed in July 1923 but was effectively replaced by Albert Coates and the 'Symphony Orchestra' (actually the LSO) new electrical recording issued on HMV D1190-1194 in March 1927, Ronald's version still lingered on until June 1927.
There is everything to like about these records. It is the first Tchaikovsky Symphony to be recorded, it is conducted by a woman, it has not been heard much, the records are uncommon, difficult to play and equally hard to transfer and listen too in decent sound. What more could a record buff wish for!
The symphony is more than a bit curtailed for some two-thirds of music has been lopped out, but by some very clever arranging the essence of the work still somehow holds together. One wonders why Lilian's name did not appear on the records for Pathé in March 1912 mentioned that The Imperial Symphony Orchestra directed by Lilian Bryant was increased to 30 players. Anyway this is the first attempt at a complete recording of the Pathétique; indeed one of the earliest 'complete' anything symphonic from this period. Landon Ronald and the New Symphony Orchestra recorded the third movement, or at least 4 minutes of it in January 1912 and in 1913 recorded the second movement, maybe they where thinking to do more but nothing came of it. It was not until 1923 that all four movements were attempted again and this time the work was indeed complete running to 20 sides and once again conducted by Ronalds.. As the symphony was performed every year at the Proms from 1898 to 1974 excepting 1927 (three time in 1898, 1899 and 1904 and often twice in several other season) it was certainly then, as now, very popular.
Lilian Bryant
'Lilian Bryant might not be a household name to many music lovers and record collectors today, as it but rarely appears undisguised on the many thousand recordings she was heard on between the late 1890s and 1928. One of the pioneers of the British recording industry, she became "musical director" for the Edison-Bell cylinder recording studio shortly before the turn of the last century - a position that meant rehearsing with singers and instrumentalists, playing piano accompaniments for them, but also arranging and orchestrating music for recording purposes, and last not least conducting the in-house orchestra. As the early studio orchestras consisted mainly of wind instruments that registered well on the primitive recording equipment, they were mostly recruited from local military bands and led by military bandmasters. It is thus a particular exception to find a woman in this position, apart from the fact that woman conductors and composers were anyway considered an oddity in late-Victorian England. Despite these unfavourable circumstances, Mme. Bryant made her career, that had started at the very beginning of commercial record production in London, with various major companies over more than two decades: From 1905 to 1908 she was employed by Louis Sterling, in whose studios both Sterling cylinders and Odeon discs were recorded, to conduct for stars like John McCormack, and organize the first complete recordings of Gilbert & Sullivan operas ever. When Sterling had to sell his enterprise to Pathé Frères, that company promptly dismissed their former musical director in her favour. With the "Imperial Symphony Orchestra" under her direction, British Pathé produced pioneering recordings of symphonic and concert music. Beside all this studio work, Bryant found time to tour as piano accompanist (e.g. for Peter Dawson), compose, and conduct theatre orchestras in and around London. When the Great War put an end to Pathé's London studio, she worked as rehearsal pianist for HMV for several years (occasionally recording under her married name "Mrs. George Baker"), and in the 1920s, she resumed her career as musical director in the recording studio, this time for the newly-founded Crystalate company ("Imperial" and "Chantal de Luxe" labels). Her final recordings were made for Columbia in the mid-1920s.' This biography from taken from True Sound Transfers
Pathé records
14" records are difficult to play, the rumble on these records is appalling. Pathé recorded onto master cylinders and through a mechanical pantograph mechanism could transfer the master cylinder onto different sizes of disc. The unfortunate byproduct of this process was a lot of rumble. I have alleviated it a lot but did not want to loose any more of the lower frequencies than I really had to. On the other hand because they used such a large master cylinder the sound that was captured was often very good even though quite faint. A short article on this method of recording can be found at The Mainspring Press Record Collectors' Blog As was usual practise at this time the two records were announced at separate times with the first two movements issued in April 1912 and the last two movements in July 1912. The records were deleted, as were all 14" discs at the end of 1916.
Understanding Pathé numbering
The record label, or rather etched lettering infilled with an ochre dye, at first looks a bit confusing. The record number is within the lozenge at 6'oclock [2079]; below this another number is the transfer number for the pantograph process [81098 - R.A.] and the matrix number is at 7'oclock [79629].
One other interesting facet of these records is a very, very faint date that can be discerned to the left of the transfer number. This mirror image scratched in gives us the day on which the stamper was made. Only the fourth side in this set has this complete reading '28/9/12' - side 3 just having 8/9 and side 2 with just letter 'B' this may just equate to side 2. In any case it gives a date that the recording could not be after. I have flipped and and inverted the image above to make it a this a bit clearer.
Maybe not the best day to push something Russian onto 'my public' just one of those coincidences.
One real problem to bedevil 78s before the advent of the LP age was the how much music could be fitted on each side.
Noel Pemberton Billing (1881-1948) had an aswer as he realised that if the needle could be made to travel through the groove of a disc at a constant speed then more could be recorded on each side.
Noel Pemberton Billing
Pemberton Billing was eccentric to say the very least. His biography on Wikipedia reads like some Boy's Own story. Early aviation pioneer and pilot in the WW1, independent Member of Parliament, politically very right of centre, getting carried out of the House of Commons for hurling abuse, publishing periodicals including one called the The Vigilante including such purple stuff by him as 'The Cult of the Clitoris', then defending himself in the ensuing liable case and winning, homophobic, inventor, the list just goes on and on, if not insane he made a very good impression of being barking mad. But this is getting off the point for his claim to fame on this blog is through the invention and marketing of World Records.
Some technical stuff. At 78rpm a standard 12 inch or 30cm record gets through some 275 metres of groove – at a constant 78rpm the outer edge of one turn of the disc traverses about 0.95 metres groove with the needle travelling at some 1.25 metres per second. By the time the record enters its last turn needle only has to get through 0.38 metres at about 0.50 metres per second.
Pemberton Billing noted that this 275 metres of groove was being traversed faster than was really necessary at the outset of a disc and it would be better if the speed could be made constant through the groove. At about 0.50 metres per second a record side could accommodate 9 minutes of recording time without any loss of recording quality.
World Record Controller
His invention, a fearsome looking lump of wheels and governor had to be screwed to the side of the turntable to manage the speed of the turntable. The patent explains the concept in the usual patent language but in simple terms a large rubber wheel ran on the record surface this was connected by a worm drive to a governor, this governor restricting the wheels rotation to a constant speed. The large wheel is also connected through a thread drive which allows it traverse across the record to the centre, something like a liner pick-up arm traverses the record towards the centre. By this arrangement the turntable speed could be slowly increased in speed from 30 to 80 rpm however the speed at which the groove travelled under the needle woodlouse be constant - maybe read the original patent as it is easier to show than explain [Patent]
Anyway this can be done by using software as long as we can know the initial and end pitch of the record and calculating the rate of acceleration over a side – I have pitch the record at A at 452Hz the standard Military Band pitch in the UK at this time. Each side actually has a timing printed on label; the first side comes to exactly 8m 50s the second side is printed at 8m 10s although I make it 8m 12s at A 452Hz– quite probably the pitch could have gone to A453.8 as the room temperature increased but this is so slight I have left both sides at A452. These timings printed on the labels must mean a stopwatch was probably used during the recording session – maybe printing on the labels was part of the advertising. An oddity in the recording is the slight hum on side one reducing from 216-210-204Hz and on side 2 moving through 222-211-213Hz – this must be to do with the recording mechanism but can't fathom what would cause such inconstancy – anyway it is not annoying
Enough of this waffle. World Records never had any star names – The performers included military bands, dance bands, quite a number transferred of which came from Emerson masters, vocal records that included Carrie Herwin, Robert Carr and John Thorne, a few educational records, Scottish Pipers and then good bit of Chamber music by Leo Abkov String Quartette – records I have never seen nor heard of anyone having; anyone out in the æther have any of these?
Vocalion Records manufactured the records with only 163 examples known to have been issued between 1922 and 1924.
Pemberton Billings left for Australia in 1923 endeavouring to further the export of the records and did not return to Britain until 1926. In the meantime Vocalion purchased all the rights to the records in January 1925 and began to issue there own Vocalion Long Playing Records Only 19 of these are known but the venture proved hopeless and by middle of 1926 the venture had stopped. These records are very uncommon, they must have been sold in very small quantities and of those sold very few seem to survive.
Of the artist on this particular example a short history can be found [here] from which I quote:-
'The Welsh Guards are the youngest of the foot guards, being raised in 1915. On 8 September of that year, Mr Andrew Harris, of the Royal Artillery (Gibraltar) was appointed to be the first bandmaster, and in November the band itself was formed. The regimental history tells us that the funds to buy the instruments were provided by the City of Cardiff.
Band of H.M. Welsh Guards in London 1929
'With the prospect of having to live up to the high standards set by the existing guards bands, the Welsh Guards faced a tough challenge. Their first appearances on 1 March 1916, St David's Day, however, dispelled any doubts that may have been harboured; a guard mounting at Buckingham Palace followed by a performance at a Welsh Patriotic Meeting at the London Opera House with Lord Harlech and Major-General Sir Francis Lloyd in attendance, demonstrated clearly the musical quality of the new band.
'Coming together in the midst of The Great War, it was not long before the bandsmen were sent overseas. On 28 October 1916 they proceeded to France for duty with the Guards Division, meeting the 1st Battalion, then returning from the front line, a few weeks later and playing the guardsmen back to their billets.
'In May 1917 the Band, resplendent in full dress, formed part of the massed bands of the Brigade of Guards which gave concerts at the Trocadero and the Tuileries Gardens, Paris. Later the massed bands visited Italy performing in Rome and Milan; during the tour, each musician was presented with a silver cigarette case by Queen Elenor. In May 1918, at the request of the American Embassy, the Band played at the Memorial Service in Paris, and in July 1919 it took part in the great Victory March in Paris, where it had the honour of playing the Colours of the British Army through the Arc de Triomphe.
'Bandmaster Harris was commissioned as Lieutenant on 1 March 1919, and went on to become senior Director of Music, Brigade of Guards, finally retiring in the rank of major at the end of 1937. At his final appearance at the Albert Hall for the Festival of Remembrance, he was able to tell the audience that he would be sitting with them the following year as an old comrade having completed fifty years service.'
Pearl issued a CD of the band under Harris but mainly of short pieces – The performance oin this World record is good efficient stuff.
Two films on the Pathe site show the band in 1926 and 1929 Two short films of Pemberton Billing can also be found on Pathe too.
Much, if not all, of my information comes from World Records Vocalion "W", Fetherflex and Penny Phono recordings: a listing by Frank Andrews; Arthur Badrock; Edward Samuel Walker, 1992