Back
to Chapter 13
14
Illusion
and Reality
Recordings
– from wax cylinders to the most recent
innovations. Early recordings – folk
music, Caruso, Chaliapin, Joachim. 78s,
LPs, tape, stereo. The dominance of
the producer and engineer – the manipulation
of performances. Most music now heard
on recordings.
We
are now so used to our senses being
manipulated that we are no longer aware
that so much of what we see, hear and
taste is not actually the ‘real thing’.
Photographs are ‘doctored’, sometimes
to flatter, or to distort a scene for
political reasons, or to create a vision
of something not possible in nature.
From the beginning film has used illusion
as a major technique for creating excitement
and amazement by cutting and mixing
so that we see events juxtaposed in
a way quite impossible in reality. So
much of what we eat and drink is now
adulterated to induce us to eat and
drink more – even its aroma is increased
to stimulate our desire – to the advantage
of the manufacturers rather than ourselves.
Can we any longer be sure when listening
to music whether what we are hearing
is what the artists actually played
or if their performance has been manipulated
or ‘enhanced’?
In the
last chapter I wrote about a time when
most music was still being played in
the presence of those listening to it.
From about 1900 onwards everything began
to change. First to arrive were gramophone
recordings, though to begin with they
were not yet generally of a quality
to replace the real thing. Then, with
the invention of electric recording
and better play-back equipment, the
quality of what could be listened to
on a wind-up gramophone improved considerably.
In 1927 the BBC (the British Broadcasting
Corporation) was established (though
from 1922 the British Broadcasting Company
had been broadcasting a limited amount
of music). At about the same time, with
the coming of the talkies it became
impossible to tell if the music one
was hearing was actually being played
by the musicians one saw on the screen
or if the music had been recorded by
other musicians and those you saw had
only taken part in what used to be called
‘dummy sessions’ (this work was mainly
undertaken by those musicians who had
become redundant because of the demise
of the silent films).
In the
1890s recordings had already become
available – there is now a digitally
restored wax cylinder recording of Brahms
playing his Hungarian Dance No. 1, made
in 1889. It is only a faint reproduction
of that performance, but it does allow
us to make contact with the great man
across the years. If one had a phonograph
it was as easy to make one’s own recordings
as many years later everyone was able
to do on their cassette recorders. A
good many private recordings from that
time still exist including recordings
of Florence Nightingale, Gladstone,
Bismarck and, much more widely known
since they have now been issued commercially,
the recordings Lionel Mapleson made
clandestinely on wax cylinders at the
New York Metropolitan Opera House in
the first years of the 20th
century. We can hear Nellie Melba, Jean
de Reszke and Emma Calve and other legendary
artists actually singing to an audience
at that time.
Though
the sound quality is not up to present
day standards we can listen and enjoy
these artists un-edited or interfered
with by a record producer or engineer.
No recording, however accurate, coming
out of one or many loudspeakers, however
refined they or the play-back equipment
may be, can reproduce what is heard
in the presence of the artists as they
perform. We are frequently told that
the recording and the equipment it is
played on is so true that ‘it is like
being in the concert hall or opera house’.
This disregards an integral element
of a performance: the actual presence
of the performer. All of us know how
very different it is being with the
person you are conversing with rather
than speaking to that person on the
telephone. But, if we cannot be together,
hearing our friend’s voice on the telephone
is very much better than not hearing
them at all. This is the wonderful benefit
that recordings and broadcasts now provide.
And not only can we listen to those
who are still alive: we can listen to
artists sadly no longer with us.
Thanks
to Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner,
it was possible for Béla Bartók,
Cecil Sharp, Vaughan Williams and many
others to record folk music, sung and
played by those still part of an aural
tradition that was about to die out.
Without recording we would not be able
to listen to Enrico Caruso, Fyodor Shalyapin
(Chaliapin), Adelina Patti, or Joseph
Joachim, Pablo Sarasate, Eugene Ysaye
and many other artists who recorded
during the first decade of the 20th
century. They were all playing and singing
the music of their own time, often having
studied with or been directed by the
composers themselves - Verdi, Puccini,
Leoncavallo, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn
and Brahms.
It is
difficult now, a century later, when
far more music is listened to by radio,
the Internet and recordings, to understand
the extent of the opposition to recordings
from composers, critics and ‘serious
music lovers’ that continued to some
extent until World War II. The belief
that it is only when the performers
and audience are in each others presence
that real communication and artistic
pleasure can take place and that recordings
and broadcasts can never achieve this
was still the view of the eminent critic
Frank Howes in the 1920s.
But
this was not the main objection that
those imbued with the tradition that
had developed during the 19th century
when composers and their audiences,
especially in Germany and those countries
most influenced by its culture, put
their art on a pedestal of idealism.
Composers were then addressing a small,
leisured, educated middle and upper-middle
class European audience and it was this
tradition that it was felt would be
destroyed by radio and recordings making
music too easily available. They had
forgotten that the truly classical composers
such as Mozart had no problem in composing
serenades, dances and marches as well
as symphonies and masses; nor had Schubert
and many others.
I think
they would be surprised to find that
in 2006, a generation that were down-loading
pop music from the Internet, those they
might well have thought of as shallow,
apathetic listeners, the opposite of
the ‘serious music lover’, were still
flocking to concerts given by the group
Arctic Monkeys, though this group’s
success – they had the fastest-selling
debut album ever – was to a large extent
the result of it being first available
by downloading from the Internet
From
1900 until 1923 all recordings were
made acoustically. This involved the
artists playing into a large horn whereby
the sounds they made were recorded straight
onto a wax disc. This worked very well
for singers and fairly well for instrumental
soloists but was far less good when
it came to recording orchestras. The
first problem when recording an orchestra
was that only a limited number of players
could get near enough to the recording
‘horn’ to make any impression. The acoustic
method was unable to capture very high
or low notes and made little difference
between loud and soft sounds. In fact
often in the early days woodwind and
brass instruments had to be used to
replace the strings. The double basses
in particular were so unsatisfactory
that they were frequently replaced by
a tuba. Each side of a record only played
for about four to four and a half minutes.
For longer compositions suitable breaks
had to be found to allow the record
to be turned over so that the music
could continue.
Recording
standards gradually improved until in
1923, following the use of microphones
in broadcasting, microphones began to
be used in the recording industry. After
1925 it became the accepted method.
This was a great improvement and enabled
the successful recording of orchestral
and choral works, though each side of
a gramophone record still remained about
four minutes. When making recordings,
whether acoustically or electronically,
each four-minute ‘take’ was a ‘one-off’.
There was no editing possible as the
wax still used for recording would be
destroyed in the process. If there was
any fault the whole side had to be recorded
again. In fact, playing for every ‘take’
was just like playing at a concert,
with the added strain that you were
aware that if you made a mistake of
any kind you would ruin whatever had
been played up to that point and that
it would all have to be done again.
In 1945,
when I was in the LPO and first took
part in some recording sessions with
Sir Thomas Beecham, we recorded the
Royal Hunt and Storm from The
Trojans by Berlioz. Sir Thomas and
the orchestra tried to recapture the
sound of the performance we would give
at a concert when an audience was present.
Whether it was a distinguished conductor
such as Beecham, Bruno Walter, de Sabata,
Munch or any other conductor, they would
make all the decisions regarding balance
and the overall style of the recording
by going into the recording suite to
listen to each test recording. Their
intention was to hear on the recording
a reproduction of the performance they
were obtaining in the studio. If they
thought the balance they heard in the
recording suite did not accurately reproduce
what they heard in the studio they would
have the position of the microphones
(at that time there would be only a
few) adjusted until they achieved the
balance they required.. This is how
we recorded Petrushka with Ansermet,
about which I wrote in Chapter 10.
For
many years there had been experiments
in an attempt to use tape in place of
wax so that more than four minutes music
could be recorded in a single ‘take’.
In 1936 when the London Philharmonic
Orchestra was on tour in Germany they
did a concert in Ludwigshafen. Unknown
to the orchestra, BASF recorded the
concert as an experiment in the use
of tape. It was not known to more than
a very few people until many years later,
when in 1979 Shirley, Lady Beecham agreed
that two of the items from that concert
could be issued, Mozart’s Symphony 39
and the Suite from Le Coq D’Or
by Rimsky- Korsakov.
Though
EMI were using tape to record the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra from 1948 their
records were still being sold in the
78rpm format with four minutes music
on each side. Fifine at the Fair,
by Granville Bantock, which the RPO
recorded with Beecham on tape in 1949,
was first issued in the old 78rpm format
and only became available on LP a few
years later. In Fifine there
is a very long and demanding cadenza
for the clarinet, which my colleague
Jack Brymer played brilliantly. For
some reason it was decided to re-record
this section at a separate session without
the rest of the orchestra present and
then edit it in. Listening to the finished
recording I cannot tell whether what
I am hearing is the occasion Jack played
this demanding cadenza when I was sitting
next to him, or when he recorded it
on his own.
In the
previous chapter, in the section Music
for Dancing, I referred to the effect
that the first ragtime recordings had
on dancers from around 1912. Recordings
of many forms of popular music had been
made since the beginning of the century,
many more than of ‘serious’ music. Light
music, often played by brass bands or
military bands, music hall songs, and,
in America in particular, banjo solos
with early examples of ragtime were
all very popular. Soon military bands
playing arrangements of ragtime were
being recorded. From 1917 onwards more
and more recordings of jazz became available
and from the 1920s were selling in very
large numbers. When recording jazz,
the time limitation of only being able
to record for four minutes imposed by
the 78rpm format does not seem to have
been a problem. Nor, when recording
Jazz and Dance bands, largely made up
of wind instruments, were there the
dynamic problems that arose when recording
orchestral music, with dynamics ranging
from a mere whisper to the loudest fortissimo.
When
in the 1930s I first
started to listen to music what I most
enjoyed were the dance bands broadcast
by the BBC, such as Henry Hall and
Jack
Payne, and the broadcasts from Radio
Luxembourg that we used to listen to
at breakfast time. While I was at school,
though I had started learning the clarinet
and had begun listening to orchestral
and chamber music, it was the recordings
of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis
Armstrong, and especially the two wonderful
clarinettists Benny Goodman and Artie
Shaw that excited me most. It was these
recordings and the recordings made by
Fritz Kreisler, playing his own compositions,
Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
and the London Philharmonic conducted
by Beecham, and finally the experience
of hearing Menuhin playing the Elgar
Violin Concerto, that convinced me that
I had to try to become a musician. Now,
60 years later, I am still inspired
by these marvellous performances captured
on record.
In Britain,
from about 1918, when 78rpm started
to become the standard format, until
1950, whether recorded acoustically
or electrically, on wax or tape, all
commercial records were issued on 78s.
Once recording on tape became possible
the record industry abandoned 78s and
we were into the era of 33 and 45 rpm
records. This changed everything for
everyone who had been involved in making
recordings, especially those of us in
the symphony orchestras. The whole way
we approached the performance of music
in the recording studio changed. No
longer did we make short, one-off four
minute performances, with all the nervous
tension that involved. No performer,
whether a conductor, solo artist or
orchestral musician any longer had the
freedom to be spontaneous in the same
way as at a concert. Now we were making
a ‘take’, then listening to the playback,
doing short sections to edit anything
the producer thought should be done
again, not usually in regard to the
interpretation of the music, but because
he didn’t like the balance or the tuning,
the ensemble or some other technical
fault he had noticed. As a result performers
also became increasingly concerned about
these aspects of their performance.
When
making the edits it was essential that
everyone played as nearly as possible
as they had done before (without the
faults), but now no longer in the one-off
performance style that had been possible
previously. We became increasingly ‘note-getters’,
and more self-conscious. After a while
I felt that perhaps if we each came
in and played some scales and arpeggios
the producer could put a record together
without us (some years later ‘sampling’
was used to create some records in just
this way). One also lost the sense of
being in charge of one’s own performance
because one had no idea which bits the
producer had chosen to use in the compilation
of everything that had been recorded
and then included on the final record.
In fact, no one, conductor, soloist
or anyone taking part could be absolutely
certain how the final performance had
been achieved. Only the producer and
the engineers could be certain. Performers
were no longer in control of the finished
product.
Indeed
the producer now took on a responsibility
and a role that previously had been
enjoyed by conductors and soloists.
In Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’’s compilation
of the writings of Walter Legge and
conversations with him On and Off
the Record she quotes him as writing
I was the first of what are called
‘Producers’ of records. Before I established
myself and my ideas, the attitude of
recording managers of all companies
was ‘we are here in the studio to record
as well as we can on wax what the artists
habitually do in the opera house or
on the concert platform’. My predecessor,
Fred Gaisberg, told me, ‘We are out
to make sound photographs of as many
sides as we can get during each session’.
My ideas were different. It was my aim
to make records that would set the standards
by which public performances and the
artist of the future would be judged
– to leave behind a large series of
examples of the best performances of
my epoch. In fact he wanted to assume
responsibility for every aspect of the
recording.
The
producer and engineers became more and
more in control of the performance that
music lovers could purchase. Equally
important, music lovers themselves were
now in charge of when and where they
wished to listen to their chosen music.
It was no longer necessary to make the
commitment of being where, when and
at what time the artists were performing;
they also had the power to change the
dynamic, making the loudest fortissimo
as soft as a whisper and the quietest
murmur loud enough to bring the house
down.
Later,
with the arrival of the inexpensive
tape player and then the tape recorder,
the listener’s control was extended.
Having selected the music they wanted
to record, either off-air or from a
commercial recording, it became easy
to cut out any sections found tedious
or less enjoyable, just by fast forwarding
or editing out. On the other hand, if
a particularly lovely few bars found
favour they could be replayed as often
as was desired. With the tape recorder
it became possible for anyone to compile
their own selection of music by re-recording
just those passages they wished to hear.
The commercial broadcasting and recording
companies then decided to save each
listener from having to do this themselves
by producing compilations that did it
far better than any individual could.
Now, over 50 years after the introduction
of tape, everyone can make their own
CDs and DVDs of music of their choice
from any source – radio, TV, the Internet,
commercial CDs or any other format.
However,
all that still lay in the future. To
return to the 1950s, the era of Walter
Legge at EMI and John Culshaw at Decca,
when the ability to edit soon led to
this facility being used to remedy the
shortcomings in a performer’s ability
or flaws in a performance. The recording
was no longer a memento of a concert.
It had established an independent life
of its own. When I was first involved
in playing for recording, from 1944,
we tried to recreate in the studio as
nearly as possible what took place at
a concert performance. As record sales
increased it was not long before the
concert performance began to try to
recreate what could be heard on recordings.
A far more powerful tyrant than any
conductor had now arisen – the record
producer and his accomplices the engineers.
In 1952,
only a couple of years after the introduction
of recording on tape, Kirsten Flagstad
was taking part in a recording of Tristan
und Isolde by Richard Wagner, with
the Philharmonia conducted by Wilhelm
Furtwangler. The ageing Flagstad was
having difficulty with a couple of top
Cs. It was agreed, with Flagstad’s consent,
that Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, then a young
woman, should sing these two high notes
and that they be edited into the master
tape. Later, knowledge of this device
leaked out. Naturally Flagstad was furious,
and though the recording was very successful
she refused to record again for that
company.
There
have been a good many occasions when
for various reasons similar editing
devices have been used. I have taken
part in a number of recordings where
a singer or instrumentalist has been
‘helped out’ with the use of editing.
When the great Russian ballerina Galina
Ulanova was dancing in Giselle at the
Royal Opera House with the Bolshoi Company
the performance was filmed. At one place
in the film the camera moves in to a
close up of Ulanova and as it does it
was felt that the clarinet solo at that
point, as played in the orchestra pit,
sounded too distant. There was no fault
in the way the ROH orchestra clarinettist
had played, but it was decided to re-record
about eight or twelve bars in the studio.
I went into the studio with a few string
players and played the solo. It was
then edited onto the sound track and
a patina of sound, similar to that on
the rest of the performance was added
to disguise the clinical studio sound.
This was not the only time I took part
in additions of this kind.
Recordings
of public performances of concerts and
opera have routinely been the product
of what was decided were the ‘best’
parts of the several performances by
the same artists, and on occasion short
sections have been added later in the
studio when it has not been possible
to find a patch from any of the ‘live’
performances. While the performance
is being recorded ‘on-site’, during
the concert, the producer is able to
manipulate the microphones so as to
achieve the instrumental balance he
thinks best. What those listening at
home on their record players will hear
may be different to what the audience
at the concert heard.
There
have been occasions when snippets from
another recording of the same work,
recorded by other artists, have been
inserted in an effort to achieve the
‘perfect’ recording. A known occasion
was when this was done to a recording
Sergiu Celibidache had made. It was
only after the recording had been issued
that his keen ear detected something
not quite as he had heard it at the
time he had made the recording. There
have been other occasions, known only
to a few insiders.
With
the coming of the long playing record
music lovers at last had the great advantage
of being able to listen to a whole concerto
or symphony without having to get up
every four minutes to turn the record
over or put another one on. I have quite
recently tried to listen to some old
78s that I have of Casals playing the
Bach unaccompanied cello sonatas. I
found it impossible to tolerate the
constant interruptions to the music
and having to change the record so often.
It was difficult to understand how we
had found this perfectly acceptable
years ago.
As time
went by increasingly sophisticated techniques
were employed. Multi-tracking allowed
the use of separate microphones for
each section of the orchestra and even
for each instrument. One might have
played one’s part forte and yet
find on playback, because another part
of the score has been made more audible,
one might as well have not played at
all. Multi-tracking enabled us to record
an opera at a time when because of other
engagements one of the singers was not
available. We would complete the recording
with that part missing. At a later date
the missing artist would record the
part on their own and it would be edited
in. On occasion this might even be done
in another country.
Performances
could now be enhanced by the use of
echo chambers and added ambience. As
the engineers and producers gained more
and more control acoustic screens were
placed between sections of the orchestra
thereby enabling the balance between
them to be ‘managed’, not in the studio
but in the control room. With smaller
groups of musicians, especially when
providing backing to pop groups and
individual artists, the musicians would
often be so separated that they were
unable to hear each other except by
using headphones.
The
next development was the introduction
of stereo recordings in 1958. We had
been recording in stereo from 1954 though
the recordings had still been issued
in mono. Later they were re-issued in
stereo. In fact Alan Blumlein, a remarkable
British inventor, also responsible for
developing radar, had already demonstrated
the possibilities of stereo many years
previously. In 1935, as a test, Sir
Thomas Beecham was recorded in stereo
rehearsing Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony.
It was not until years later with the
advent of tape recording that the use
of stereo became practical.
The
coming of stereo was good news for musicians
as it meant the repertoire had to be
recorded again in this new format creating
a great deal more employment. After
a time quadraphonic and then ‘all-round’
sound was introduced. The record companies
and the manufacturers of play-back equipment
have constantly made attempts to convince
us that listening in the comfort of
our own home to recordings can be ‘as
if you are in the concert hall’. These
devices and the Compact Disc, which
arrived in the 1990s, are really only
the sonic equivalents of The Emperor’s
New Clothes. A visit to any concert
hall immediately makes it clear that
however improved the sound coming out
of one or many loudspeakers may be,
it can never be ‘the real thing’.
However,
this is how most music is now heard.
A very large number of music lovers
do not live near enough to a concert
hall and for a great many more the cost
for a husband and wife to attend a public
performance is too costly. A survey,
in which I was involved some years ago,
showed that even those fortunate enough
to be able to afford frequent visits
to the Royal Opera House were still
listening to far more music on recordings
and broadcasts than in the opera house
or concert hall.
From
1930 onwards the broadcasting of music
by the BBC – not just symphony orchestras,
but opera, chamber music, solo instrumental
and vocal music and a great deal of
so-called light music – brought music
into the lives of far more people than
ever before. The broadcasts by the BBC’s
own orchestras as well as relays from
public concerts, opera performances
and studio broadcasts by the London
and Regional Orchestras, the LPO, LSO,
the Hallé and other orchestras
and groups from around the country had
created a large audience for this music.
Commercial recordings made by artists
and orchestras from all over the world
were also broadcast. I believe it was
this new audience, created by broadcasting,
that during and after WW2 filled so
many concert halls to capacity.
My family
only had a handful of records which
we played very occasionally – we still
had to re-wind the gramophone after
each record was played. Listening to
the radio, the ‘wireless’ as we called
it then, to the studio broadcasts from
the BBC and the commercial records they
and Radio Luxembourg broadcast was how
I heard most music when I was still
at school and music college.
It was
not only in the commercial recording
studios that it became necessary for
musicians to adapt to new technologies.
From 1927, when my father broadcast
regularly in the famous BBC Military
Band, now completely forgotten, and
for all the years he was in the BBC
Symphony Orchestra, taking part in studio
performances that were to be broadcast
was similar to playing at a performance
in a concert hall, what is now usually
called a ‘live’ performance. When in
1943 I began playing for broadcast performances,
whether in the BBC studios at Maida
Vale, or when public concerts I was
taking part in were transmitted as relays,
nothing had changed. Whenever and whatever
you played, when the red light was on
in the studio, was broadcast, faults
and all. It was impossible to stop,
replay, or edit anything.
There
was one occasion when the BBC were attempting
to broadcast a simulation of a Victorian
soirée, with a tenor singing
some ballads and a small section of
the BBC Symphony Orchestra impersonating
a Salon Orchestra accompanying him.
At the rehearsal the orchestra was asked
by the producer to applaud discreetly
after each item. Unfortunately, my father,
though an outstanding player and a charming
and amusing man, was not always as attentive
as might be desired. He had not heard
this request from the producer during
the rehearsal so that when he heard
the applause at the broadcast he responded,
without thinking, by making one of those
exceedingly loud ‘wolf-whistles’ made
by putting two fingers in one’s mouth
and blowing very hard. Being a ‘live’
broadcast it just went out over the
air, no doubt giving a number of middle
class music lovers something of a surprise.
It was still possible in the 1930s,
when very good players were much thinner
on the ground than they are now, for
him to get away with it. A musician
today would not risk anything like that.
There are far too many very good players
waiting to take his or her place.
On another
broadcast, a piece was being played
that starts with the main tune played
by an unaccompanied clarinet. This piece
had been written for the A clarinet.
Unfortunately the clarinettist on this
occasion played it on his Bb clarinet.
When the rest of the orchestra came
in it was quite impossible to continue.
The conductor had to stop the orchestra,
the embarrassed clarinettist had to
quickly change to his A clarinet and
start again. Ever since it became possible
to record everything before it is broadcast,
musicians and listeners have been spared
these catastrophes.
Until
the ability to record on tape arrived,
relays of public concerts had to be
broadcast as they occurred. There were
no deferred relays nor was it possible
to replay broadcasts weeks, months or
even, as frequently occurs now, years
later. In the case of performances that
are thought to have been particularly
fine or of historical interest, the
BBC can, and now does, issue them as
recordings on CD.
We had
been recording on tape since 1948, though
we, the musicians in the recording studio
were not aware of this until the recordings
made at that time were re-issued on
Long-play, 33rpm records after 1950.
However, we were not the first. In 1947
in America, Bing Crosby had already
started to record his popular programmes
on tape.
Since
the 1950s the BBC has routinely pre-recorded
broadcasts of music so that for many
years it has only been occasionally
that studio broadcasts of music have
not been pre-recorded. To begin with
it was agreed that each piece would
be played without a break and, if possible,
the whole programme would be recorded
in this way, unless there was a technical
failure in the recording equipment or
events such as I have written about
above were to occur. Then, wanting to
broadcast the best performance, items
were more and more being recorded again
and again until the producer felt he
had a performance that satisfied him.
By about 1958 playing for broadcasting
had become increasingly like doing a
commercial recording session. The major
drawback, as far as musicians were concerned,
was that the fee for a broadcast was
considerably less than for a recording
session. The musicians involved in broadcasting
became increasingly unhappy and insisted
that the Musicians’ Union inform the
BBC that a larger fee was required.
After protracted negotiations it was
agreed that there should be what were
called ‘rehearse/record sessions with
an increased fee.
The
next request from the BBC was that they
should be allowed to put together a
few items from a number of programmes,
recorded for broadcasting by several
different bands and orchestras, and
thereby create a single composite much
more varied programme. Items recorded
by the BBC Concert Orchestra might be
interspersed with items recorded by
some of the many small orchestras then
broadcasting regularly: Sid Bowman and
the Promenade Players, Philip Green
and his Concert Orchestra, Monia Liter
and the 20th Century Serenaders,
The Studio Players, Troise and his Continental
Orchestra, The Bob Farnon Orchestra,
Louis Voss and the Kursall Orchestra.
Three or four of these groups would
be selected, or one of the many other
groups broadcasting at that time, and
they would be made up into a half-hour
programme. Each of these groups would
have recorded a half-hour programme
so that the BBC would be able to mix
and match them into a great many programmes.
Programmes
that had previously been recorded by
individual groups were now being made
into something much more like the programmes
of commercial recordings that had become
popular. It was natural that the BBC
should then want to include commercial
recordings in with all the orchestras
the BBC had recorded themselves. Unfortunately,
the commercial recording had been recorded
with superior equipment and only 15
or 20 minutes music will have been recorded
in a three hour session, whilst the
BBC will have recorded double that amount
of music in the same length of time.
The difference in quality showed rather
too clearly and it was not too long
before the pattern of broadcast music
changed. Strange as it may seem now,
listeners had in the past made a point
of listening to their chosen light orchestras.
Now all these groups had become much
more anonymous. What had been, even
though only at a distance, an audience
listening to an identifiable group of
performers had turned into muzak.
Now
the majority of music of every kind
is heard either on recordings, broadcasts,
the Internet or some other format. In
whatever format illusion often replaces
reality.
Chapter
15
Index
page
