Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 2, No. 10 (1928-07)

July, 1928 The Phonograph Monthly Review 359 Church Music, in some places cursorily, and in other places more in detail, I feel as if my duty would not be entirely done should I not express a plea for the domestic companies to give us less of the trivial and transitory and more of the noble and enduring in Church music. The work of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, the Bach Cantata Club of New York, the Choral Art Society of Phila- delphia, and of such outstanding Choirs as those of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, St. Bartholemew’s Church, and Grace Church in New York, and of the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany in Philadelphia, should certainly be recorded. We should have more records by the Palestrina Choir, and listed in the regular cata- logue. There is a widespread and very real interest in the great choral works of Bach, and a series of fine recordings from them should cer- tainly be commercially profitable for the com- panies. Dr. Horatio Parker who wrote one of the finest oratorios of all time—“Hora Novissima”— and reams and reams of excellent service music and anthems should be heard on records, so should Dr. T. Tertius Noble, Dr. H. Alexander Matthews, T. Frederick H. Candlyn, Joseph W. Clokey, and others now writing excellent Church Music in America. The Brunswick Company has set the pace with its magnificent recordings of the Polyphonic School. May there be more to follow in short order! Finally, I desire to express my gratitude to Mr. George C. Jell of the Columbia Company, and to Mr. E. C. Forman of the Victor Company, for their kindness, courtesy, and cp-operation in fur- nishing materials to be used in the preparation of this article, and to Mr. H. Royer Smith of Philadelphia and his sales force for many kind- nesses. Recording Conductors By ROBERT DONALDSON DARRELL Introduction £ "Y" 0 two are alike!” Recording conduct- I \l ors betray their essential humanity in JL i this respect no less than in that of falli- bility. In embarking upon a detailed and com- parative study of the more important of those musicians who have directed performances of orchestral and operatic works for phonographic recording, I must emphasize the truism of their being men first and artists second. Men, move- over, of even more strongly marked individualities and sensibilities than the average, men whose call- ing implies the possession of extraordinary pow- ers of clairvoyance, expression, and leadership, as well as a strictly technical equipment of bewilder- ing diversity and extent. The strengths and weaknesses of the conductor are reflected by his every performance with such mirror-like exactitude that, subject to a constant process of change within himself, he is powerless to prevent the aural evidence of this process from exhibition in his work. No two of his own per- formances, even of the same composition, can achieve perfect similitude, while if the differences here are almost imperceptible, how obviously apparent are the differences which distinguish his performances from those of every other con- ductor ! But in the concert hall a performance in all its details is as evanescent as last year's snows, or loves; like them, it can be retained at the best only in hasty thumb-nail sketches of personal recollection, which from the moment of percep- tion become diminishingly vivid and undistorted, just as a tone struck on the piano, no matter how cleverly prolonged, fades inevitably from the moment of impact. Even the first impressions, at the moment of their maximum, are none too accurate, for the presence of a large audience, the physical individuality of the conductor, the orchestra members, our next hand neighbors (to say nothing of ourselves, all combine with the atmospheric tension to prevent our getting an exact conception of the performance and, in it, of the conductor's qualities. A broadcast perform- ance eliminates many of the physical factors present in the concert hall, but not that of evanescence. On the wax and clay disks alone can a performance be recorded —permanently transfixed, aurally photographed, with not only the music itself to the tiniest detail imprisoned, but also the conductor’s technical and artistic personality explicit in it. By their records, then, we shall know them. The study of the disks is the exegesis of their every musical virtue and vice. On the records they stand revealed, stripped of every concealing veil which in the concert hall, in broadcasts, pre- vents our making them the object of thorough analysis and comparison. It is a further convenience for our purpose that the conductor's share of the record need not be disentangled from the characteristics which strictly speaking might be ascribed to others. The conductor shoulders the entire responsibility him- self, a responsibility which in the concert hall covers the music played and the men under him who are playing it, and on records is further ex- tended to cover the merits or demerits of the recording process itself. In success he wins un- divided honors; in failure he alone must bear the blame. The name following the words, “Directed by ” on the record label is the