To start the new week – the first of the new year – I invite you to join me as I marvel at the passage of time by way of these antique recordings.
Some I’d heard before. For instance, here’s Brahms speaking and playing (1889), first from the original cylinder, then from a 78 transfer:
This recording of Joseph Joachim playing a Brahms Hungarian Dance (1903) was made when the legendary violinist was in his ‘70s:
Here’s Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato (and the only one to record, albeit past his prime), singing the “Crucifixus” from Rossini’s “Petite messe solonnelle” (1902):
Grieg plays “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen” (1903):
The earliest complete recording of music known to exist? Sir Arthur Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord” (1888):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0SXIANTLM
Most fascinating of all is this recording of the human voice – allegedly the first – captured in smoke from an oil lamp (1860)! Listen as what sounds like a ghostly mosquito transmogrifies into a soprano in song:
Eerie.
More about the phonautograph, the remarkable invention that documented the sound waves, here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph
As always, Will said it best:
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
Or if you want to get all Biblical, “Our days on earth are as a shadow.”