Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 4, No. 10 (1930-07)

July, 1930 338 The Phonograph Monthly Review gramophone at his remote residence, to which he r, “*’ retired.’ This return of the pianist- via the J ^gramophone was hailed as epoch-making. The ' ' filifi was thought valuable enough td be re-shown f at the largest film' club, the- Tribune Libre, where ' J it was projected to the accompaniment of Oolum- bia "records amplified.' Englarid" too, it appears, : nfe 7is considering the gramophone 'accompaniment ^‘" ' f or ' the motion picture. Special records were T'" supplied to accompany a 16 m-rri film made by two Cambridge' University students, Basil Wright and Michael Bonavia. ‘ Although popular taste in England has not yet y : entirely accepted the talking picture (which is “ another thing than the sound film), the music Ctitic of the London Times has made a statement “which Contains the germ for a new compound form. He sees the possibility of a compound ‘■" . where'the films will be the accompaniment to the music. It is interesting that simultaneously with This assertion has cpme to me a letter from Fran- cis Bruguiere, the gifted American photographic artist living in London, containing ah identical thought. Only, the Times music critic flound- ered somewhat wdien he compared this film ac- companiment to the printed program note. Brn- guiere has in mind an interwoven pattern of the ‘ two. This may enter into the considerations which the great Russian directors, Eisenstein, Pudovkin arid Alexandroff, have published upon the contrapuntal basis of the Sound film. " In the leading French magazine, the Nouvelle /'Revue Francaise, Paul Deharme writes upon a o-' •'•‘propdsition for a Radiophoriic Art. It is a stim- ulating essay, with abundant offerings for thought and practice. He wants to find, as he says,. . ..in this new domain, and for a new ‘ public, means for a new expression.” He does not want the literal and banal melodrama of noises which/have passed for radio drama, such as the T,209 plays submitted in the German cori- *’ test of 1927. Deharme believes that the coritem- **■/' poultry ; intelligence, is in need pf ‘‘imagination, ::iv "of lyric transformation, such as is not offered by / the classic forms, nor even by the new art-forms, ,M ,;and which the radio may satisfy.” / Among these prime necessities he places “tb,e taste for the unreal,” as is evinced in the willing- ness of the popular mind to believe in a succes- sion of images lacking color projected upon a screen lacking relief, and in such a contradiction of ordinary logic as the animated cartoon of Max Fleischer, where real personages participate with designs. lie believes the radio can create its an- // alpgy to, these visions, by putting in place of a . jt , . spectator of images an auditor of images. The analogy is further enhanced by this fact; just as the . space between the movie spectator and the screen js neutralized, so - the reality between .the source, radio cabinet, and the listener is ren- dered neutral. This, neutrality in both instances .suppresses tlie distractions and favors the state / :/ oL receptivity:'/fte indicates that this neutrality ip' the field of sound.is not altogether new; the / ' orchestra at Bayreuth (n Germany is invisible. , And has not, our own American conductor, Leo- pold Stokowski, suggested such practice in Am- erica? In England critical opinion has occasionally indicated pertinent radio employments. In an- ticipation of Deharme’s concept of unreality, one Londori critic, commenting on a radio production of Maeterlinck’s “The Bluebird,” spoke of the successful presentation of the unreal nature of that work through the microphone. Another English writer, in the Radio Times of London, said that the music of the 17th and 18th century clavecin is particularly suited to the microphone, because that instrument conveys especially well the immaterial character of that instrument, re- taining the elfin charm of the works of Rameau, Scarlatti and Couperin. Professor Sabaneev makes these prophecies con- cerning the further mechanization in the musical art: the increasing differentiation between the active creator and the passive listener. “In the primitive stages the ‘types’ of musician—the lis- teners, the performer, and the ‘composer’—are blended . . . The listener is already able to dis- pense with the actual performer.” He foresees the abolition of printed music, as hinted at In the disc. He anticipates, at least in aim, “the crea- tion of an instrument in which the artistic will would exercise control over the properties of every note, but the realisation of the note would toe entrusted to mechanism.” Probabilities are the disappearance of the orchestra, and the com- position of music direct to the mechanism, The extension of the musical scale is hand in hand with the mechanisation of music and the inven- tion of new instruments for this mechanized mu- sic. EUROPEAN RELEASES The complete recording of Verdi’s Requiem Mass,has not been mentioned previously in these columns, although the work has been out long enough to have already been import- ed into this country. Carlo Saba j no is the conductor; Pinza, Giudice, banelli, and Menghi-Cattaneo are the soloists; the recording is in ten discs, made by the Italian H. M. V. Madrigals The rapidly growing series of recorded sixteenth century songs and madrigals, sung by the St. George’s Singers for the English Columbia company, is now issued in album form—six discs. The composers are Gibbons, Bateson, Mun- dy, Morley, East, Weelks, Wilbeye, Byrd, Vautor, and Ward —the golden names of the golden age of British music. Pagliacci The latest addition to the complete opera library is Pag- liacci, done under the indefatigable Saba j no’s direction for H. M. V. The soloists are Saraceni, Valente, Granforte, Palai, and Basi; and the work takes nine twelve-inch discs! This is 1 the first recorded Italian version, the earlier one from English Coliimbia having been done in English. British Orchestrals From H. M. V. comCs the Scherzo from Bruckner’s fourtn symphony (“Romantic”) played by Krauss and the Vienna Philharmonic, Beethoven’s third piano concerto with Ham- bdurg in the solo role and the orchestra conducted Dy- Sahgent, the Magic Fire Music in a re-recording by' Coates, the Flying Dutchman overture cbnducted by Schmalstich, and two Elgar morceaux—Salut d’Amour and Carisima—conducted by the composer. English Columbia lists Johann Strauss’ Roses from the South waltz conducted by Bruno Walter and on the last side of Gaubert’s Scheherazade, the adagietto from L’Arlesienne suite conducted by Mengelberg. The Parlophone orches-