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NYT: Bismarck's Voice Among Restored Edison Recordings
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Frank Forman
Jan 31, 2012, 9:53:58 PM1/31/12
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Bismarck's Voice Among Restored Edison Recordings
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-restored-edison-recordings.html
By RON COWEN
Tucked away for decades in a cabinet in Thomas Edison's laboratory,
just behind the cot in which the great inventor napped, a trove of wax
cylinder phonograph records has been brought back to life after more
than a century of silence.
The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of
the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Two preserve
the voice of Helmuth von Moltke, a venerable German military
strategist, reciting lines from Shakespeare and from Goethe's "Faust"
into a phonograph horn. (Moltke was 89 when he made the recordings--
the only ones known to survive from someone born as early as 1800.)
Other records found in the collection hold musical treasures--lieder
and rhapsodies performed by German and Hungarian singers and pianists
at the apex of the Romantic era, including what is thought to be the
first recording of a work by Chopin.
Officials at Edison's old laboratory in West Orange, N.J., now the
Thomas Edison National Historical Park, unveiled the newly identified
recordings on Monday.
"This is sensational," said Ulrich Lappenküper, director of the Otto
von Bismarck Foundation in Friedrichsruh, Germany. The Bismarck
cylinder is documented in the foundation's archive, but after searching
for it in the United States and Germany since 2005, Dr. Lappenküper and
his colleagues assumed it had been lost forever.
The unlabeled recordings, all housed in the same wooden box, had been
found in 1957. But their contents remained unknown until last year,
when Jerry Fabris, the curator at the Edison laboratory, used a
playback device called the Archeophone to trace the grooves of 12 of
the 17 cylinders in the box and convert the analog electrical signals
into broadcast WAV files.
He then enlisted two sound historians, Patrick Feaster of Indiana
University and Stephan Puille of the University of Applied Sciences in
Berlin , to help identify the faint recordings.
The lid of the box held an important clue. It had been scratched with
the words "Wangemann. Edison."
The first name refers to Adelbert Theodor Edward Wangemann, who joined
the laboratory in 1888, assigned to transform Edison's newly perfected
wax cylinder phonograph into a marketable device for listening to
music. Wangemann became expert in such strategies as positioning
musicians around the recording horn in a way to maximize sound quality.
In June 1889, Edison sent Wangemann to Europe, initially to ensure that
the phonograph at the Paris World's Fair remained in working order.
After Paris, Wangemann toured his native Germany, recording musical
artists and often visiting the homes of prominent members of society
who were fascinated with the talking machine.
Until now, the only available recording from Wangemann's European trip
has been a well-known and well-worn cylinder of Brahms playing an
excerpt from his first Hungarian Dance. That recording is so damaged
"that many listeners can scarcely discern the sound of a piano, which
has in turn tarnished the reputations of both Wangemann and the Edison
phonograph of the late 1880s," Dr. Feaster said. "These newly unearthed
examples vindicate both."
In October 1889 Wangemann and his wife visited the 74-year-old
Bismarck, then chancellor of the German empire, at his castle in
Friedrichsruh. Bismarck listened to recordings made in Paris and
Berlin, and at his wife's urging, he made his own. He recited snippets
of poetry and songs in English, Latin, French and German. Perhaps
surprisingly, given his involvement in the Franco-Prussian War, he
chose to recite lines from the French national anthem.
"Bismarck was a very, very witty man" and reciting the Marseillaise
"would tickle him," said Jonathan Steinberg, a historian at the
University of Pennsylvania and the author of the new biography
"Bismarck: A Life."
Bismarck ends the recording with some advice, apparently for his son
Herbert, who heard the recording a few weeks later in Budapest, to live
life in moderation. "Bismarck was a gigantic man with gigantic
appetites and a gigantic temper," Dr. Steinberg said. "He never did
anything in moderation, and Herbert was just as immoderate."
Mr. Puille, the sound historian in Berlin, said it was not easy to
identify Bismarck's voice. But after he deciphered a reference to
Friedrichsruh, Bismarck's estate, in the announcement of one of the
cylinders, "I immediately knew that I was on the right track," he
continued in an e-mail message.
"Bismarck's name is not mentioned in the recording, but I had collected
all available information about his cylinder in the contemporary press,
and the content of the cylinder matched perfectly."
He added, "No doubt this find is the culmination of my researcher's
life."
The panoply of musical artists on the cylinders "represented the
prominent musicians of the day," said Jonathan Berger, a musicologist
at Stanford.
"The fact that their musical lineage and circle of friends included the
great composers of the 19th century makes their recordings valuable
documents of performance practices and musical sensibilities of the
time," he added.
The Wangemann cylinders are just the latest in an explosion of
discoveries in early recorded sound over the last five years, said Tim
Brooks, a sound historian in Greenwich, Conn. In 2008, Dr. Feaster and
his colleagues at FirstSounds.org succeeded in playing a version of the
French lullaby "Au Clair de la Lune," deciphered from a tracing in
soot-coated paper dating from 1860--the earliest sound ever
recovered. A trove of cylinders recorded in Russia in the 1890s was
also recently uncovered.
The ability to digitize old recordings and the use of new imaging
techniques to map the grooves of damaged cylinder records without
touching them has contributed to the onslaught, Mr. Brooks said,
adding, "You can actually hear history as well as read about it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-restored-edison-recordings.html
By RON COWEN
Tucked away for decades in a cabinet in Thomas Edison's laboratory,
just behind the cot in which the great inventor napped, a trove of wax
cylinder phonograph records has been brought back to life after more
than a century of silence.
The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of
the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Two preserve
the voice of Helmuth von Moltke, a venerable German military
strategist, reciting lines from Shakespeare and from Goethe's "Faust"
into a phonograph horn. (Moltke was 89 when he made the recordings--
the only ones known to survive from someone born as early as 1800.)
Other records found in the collection hold musical treasures--lieder
and rhapsodies performed by German and Hungarian singers and pianists
at the apex of the Romantic era, including what is thought to be the
first recording of a work by Chopin.
Officials at Edison's old laboratory in West Orange, N.J., now the
Thomas Edison National Historical Park, unveiled the newly identified
recordings on Monday.
"This is sensational," said Ulrich Lappenküper, director of the Otto
von Bismarck Foundation in Friedrichsruh, Germany. The Bismarck
cylinder is documented in the foundation's archive, but after searching
for it in the United States and Germany since 2005, Dr. Lappenküper and
his colleagues assumed it had been lost forever.
The unlabeled recordings, all housed in the same wooden box, had been
found in 1957. But their contents remained unknown until last year,
when Jerry Fabris, the curator at the Edison laboratory, used a
playback device called the Archeophone to trace the grooves of 12 of
the 17 cylinders in the box and convert the analog electrical signals
into broadcast WAV files.
He then enlisted two sound historians, Patrick Feaster of Indiana
University and Stephan Puille of the University of Applied Sciences in
Berlin , to help identify the faint recordings.
The lid of the box held an important clue. It had been scratched with
the words "Wangemann. Edison."
The first name refers to Adelbert Theodor Edward Wangemann, who joined
the laboratory in 1888, assigned to transform Edison's newly perfected
wax cylinder phonograph into a marketable device for listening to
music. Wangemann became expert in such strategies as positioning
musicians around the recording horn in a way to maximize sound quality.
In June 1889, Edison sent Wangemann to Europe, initially to ensure that
the phonograph at the Paris World's Fair remained in working order.
After Paris, Wangemann toured his native Germany, recording musical
artists and often visiting the homes of prominent members of society
who were fascinated with the talking machine.
Until now, the only available recording from Wangemann's European trip
has been a well-known and well-worn cylinder of Brahms playing an
excerpt from his first Hungarian Dance. That recording is so damaged
"that many listeners can scarcely discern the sound of a piano, which
has in turn tarnished the reputations of both Wangemann and the Edison
phonograph of the late 1880s," Dr. Feaster said. "These newly unearthed
examples vindicate both."
In October 1889 Wangemann and his wife visited the 74-year-old
Bismarck, then chancellor of the German empire, at his castle in
Friedrichsruh. Bismarck listened to recordings made in Paris and
Berlin, and at his wife's urging, he made his own. He recited snippets
of poetry and songs in English, Latin, French and German. Perhaps
surprisingly, given his involvement in the Franco-Prussian War, he
chose to recite lines from the French national anthem.
"Bismarck was a very, very witty man" and reciting the Marseillaise
"would tickle him," said Jonathan Steinberg, a historian at the
University of Pennsylvania and the author of the new biography
"Bismarck: A Life."
Bismarck ends the recording with some advice, apparently for his son
Herbert, who heard the recording a few weeks later in Budapest, to live
life in moderation. "Bismarck was a gigantic man with gigantic
appetites and a gigantic temper," Dr. Steinberg said. "He never did
anything in moderation, and Herbert was just as immoderate."
Mr. Puille, the sound historian in Berlin, said it was not easy to
identify Bismarck's voice. But after he deciphered a reference to
Friedrichsruh, Bismarck's estate, in the announcement of one of the
cylinders, "I immediately knew that I was on the right track," he
continued in an e-mail message.
"Bismarck's name is not mentioned in the recording, but I had collected
all available information about his cylinder in the contemporary press,
and the content of the cylinder matched perfectly."
He added, "No doubt this find is the culmination of my researcher's
life."
The panoply of musical artists on the cylinders "represented the
prominent musicians of the day," said Jonathan Berger, a musicologist
at Stanford.
"The fact that their musical lineage and circle of friends included the
great composers of the 19th century makes their recordings valuable
documents of performance practices and musical sensibilities of the
time," he added.
The Wangemann cylinders are just the latest in an explosion of
discoveries in early recorded sound over the last five years, said Tim
Brooks, a sound historian in Greenwich, Conn. In 2008, Dr. Feaster and
his colleagues at FirstSounds.org succeeded in playing a version of the
French lullaby "Au Clair de la Lune," deciphered from a tracing in
soot-coated paper dating from 1860--the earliest sound ever
recovered. A trove of cylinders recorded in Russia in the 1890s was
also recently uncovered.
The ability to digitize old recordings and the use of new imaging
techniques to map the grooves of damaged cylinder records without
touching them has contributed to the onslaught, Mr. Brooks said,
adding, "You can actually hear history as well as read about it."
Peter T. Daniels
Jan 31, 2012, 10:52:41 PM1/31/12
to
On Jan 31, 9:53 pm, Frank Forman <chec...@panix.com> wrote:
> Bismarck's Voice Among Restored Edison Recordingshttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-resto...
> Bismarck's Voice Among Restored Edison Recordingshttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-resto...
>
> By RON COWEN
>
> Tucked away for decades in a cabinet in Thomas Edison's laboratory,
> just behind the cot in which the great inventor napped, a trove of wax
> cylinder phonograph records has been brought back to life after more
> than a century of silence.
>
> The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of
> the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Two preserve
> the voice of Helmuth von Moltke, a venerable German military
> strategist,
...
> By RON COWEN
>
> Tucked away for decades in a cabinet in Thomas Edison's laboratory,
> just behind the cot in which the great inventor napped, a trove of wax
> cylinder phonograph records has been brought back to life after more
> than a century of silence.
>
> The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of
> the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Two preserve
> the voice of Helmuth von Moltke, a venerable German military
> strategist,
> The panoply of musical artists on the cylinders "represented the
> prominent musicians of the day," said Jonathan Berger, a musicologist
> at Stanford.
It would have been too much trouble to mention who any of them were?
> prominent musicians of the day," said Jonathan Berger, a musicologist
> at Stanford.
Oscar
Jan 31, 2012, 11:46:23 PM1/31/12
to
On Jan 31, 6:53 pm, Frank Forman wrote:
>
> Bismarck's Voice Among Restored Edison Recordings
Soon as the hermanator wakes up and takes a whiz, he's gonna log on
>
> Bismarck's Voice Among Restored Edison Recordings
and get all huffy at you for starting this duplicate discussion on a
topic first initiated five threads down. Look for pithy sarcasm and
faux indignation, with a predictably lame 'American' insult of some
kind as the cherry on top. Set your watches, it's coming.
John Wiser
Feb 1, 2012, 12:28:02 AM2/1/12
to
"Oscar" <oscaredwar...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:86c58cf7-8ebe-4a70...@i18g2000yqf.googlegroups.com...
Yes, OK, but why should it even be worth mentioning? One of your more
entertaining
problems, Ozzie, is an apparent inability to distinguish what is trivial
from what is not.
JDW
news:86c58cf7-8ebe-4a70...@i18g2000yqf.googlegroups.com...
entertaining
problems, Ozzie, is an apparent inability to distinguish what is trivial
from what is not.
JDW
Oscar
Feb 1, 2012, 1:15:23 AM2/1/12
to
On Jan 31, 9:28 pm, John Wiser wrote:
>
> Yes, OK, but why should it even be worth mentioning? One of your more
> entertaining
> problems, Ozzie, is an apparent inability to distinguish what is trivial
> from what is not.
You little stinker.
>
> Yes, OK, but why should it even be worth mentioning? One of your more
> entertaining
> problems, Ozzie, is an apparent inability to distinguish what is trivial
> from what is not.
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