Background Information

Edison's phonograph
In 1877, Thomas Edison recited the nursery rhyme 'Mary had a little lamb' into his 'phonograph' and history was made. He didn't believe it would work very well as it was a piece of tinfoil wrapped around a cylinder turned by a handle. A needle was fixed inside a diaphragm and you shouted into an attached tube. Vibrations made by the sound bouncing against the diaphragm caused the needle to emboss the tinfoil on the cylinder.

Wax cylinders
The American public was always ready for a novelty and took to the phonograph immediately. Fifty years later recorded music was commonplace, but initially it was very limited because the tinfoil could only be used a couple of times. Re-usable wax cylinders were introduced in the 1880s and these could be sold to the public. When somebody had the idea of using this technology with nickel-in-the-slot machines, the jukebox was born. The jukebox soon became a craze, as the public demanded more and more tunes. The classical music world got involved gradually. They had been put off by the poor sound of, for example, Handel's 'Israel in Egypt' recorded live at the Crystal Palace in 1888. Records only played for two minutes in those days so the music had to be crudely cut in order to make sense. Musicians would spend all day recording 200 copies of the same piece. The next breakthrough would be the mass production of records.

Mass production
Émile Berliner solved the problem by inventing the Gram-O-Phone. This recorded onto a flat master disc and allowed a large number of copies to be made like prints from a photographic negative. His rubber discs were later made from shellac (which was made from crushed Malaysian beetles).

In London, the Gramophone Company was founded which later became EMI. The brand image lasts to this day: 'His Master's Voice', using the painting of Nipper the dog. It was the golden age of opera and the Gramophone Company longed for wider recognition. In 1902, Enrico Caruso, a virtually unknown Italian tenor, had been invited to sing at La Scala in Milan where Fred Gaisberg, the Gramophone Company's European representative, heard him. He recorded Caruso singing ten arias and paid him £100 in a hotel suite in Milan. Caruso's records sold millions worldwide and he became the first superstar. His voice suited the medium and for many it was a gateway into the classical repertoire. Classical music was soon to enter the living room as other classical musicians agreed to be recorded. The arrival of the portable record player meant that music intended for the concert hall or cathedral could be heard in the living room, bar or countryside. The gramophone caused music to lose its original context.

The electric microphone
The next stage was to try and record instrumental groups, which was very difficult in the early 1900s. Brass bands worked well but the low, quiet sound of strings was too subtle to be picked up by the technology of the time. Lots of tricks were tried to amplify the instruments. Strings were often replaced by stronger-sounding brass instruments, which worked quite well; however, the arrangement was not what the composer intended.

The introduction in 1925 of the electric microphone was another breakthrough. It was much more sensitive and could cope with a wider range of frequencies. It had a big impact on popular music as singers no longer had to bellow! One of the most famous popular recording artists of the twentieth century was Frank Sinatra.

The electric microphone also had an effect on the world of classical music world. Now the quieter instruments could be heard as clearly as the loud ones. A wide range of symphonies was recorded and found their way into people's homes. Operas and symphonies had up until now only been heard by a small, educated number of people. The new egalitarian technology had an impact on the consumer, who generally preferred harmonious sounds. But even up until the 1940s, records only played for six minutes. In 1948, Colombia records replaced shellac with vinyl and the LP (Long Player) was born. The vinyl disc could support a microgroove, which allowed the record to play at a slower speed – 33 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) – and therefore could contain more music than the shellac records, which played at 78 RPM.

Stereophonic sound
In the 1950s a huge range of music was put on disc and a new batch of stars was born including the classical singer, Maria Callas. She performed many roles solely in the studio; Callas never performed them in the opera house. Marketing followed in the 1960s with the advent of stereophonic sound. There was a growing demand for new products, so people looked to the old masters, and recordings of pieces by J.S. Bach and Vivaldi were made that were unknown in the 1930s. Mono LPs were replaced by stereo and these gave a greater perspective to the pieces. Listening to records became less and less like sitting in a concert auditorium. Magnetic tapes gave the opportunity to slice up a performance and stick it together again. Nowadays there can be as many as 2000 edits in a two-hour opera, for example.

The definitive performance frozen in time gives a false idea of perfection. Listeners can be disappointed in the concert hall as the sound is not as perfectly balanced as on the recording. Furthermore, there is a pressure on performers to be as good as the recording. The cellist, Julian Lloyd Webber thinks that this is leading to a uniformity of performance and a lack of risk taking.

Folk music of other cultures
As soon as portable recording machines became available in the early 1900s, composers and musicologists travelled to distant lands to record the music from other cultures for the first time. This triggered the imaginations of many twentieth century composers. With these recordings of folk musicians, composers were able to analyse music that had never been notated. Béla Bartók (1881–1945) was one. After making his own recordings in his native Hungary, he incorporated the new sounds into his own compositions. This was liberating, as the folk music was not bound by the rules of rhythm and harmony studied in the music schools. Composers could begin to hear music differently.

African music also had a great effect on western music. David Fanshawe (born 1942), for example, collected a huge range of recordings of tribal music. His 'African Sanctus' mixes the recordings with his new composition.

African music had reached America via the slaves. It had a huge influence on twentieth century music. Some composers such as Ravel (1875–1937), Stravinsky (1882-1971) and Shostakovitch (1906–1975) were influenced by it, but the greatest influence was felt in popular music and jazz.

Sound technology
Black American composers were also influenced by classical composers, and avant-garde classically trained musicians were experimenting with sound technology. The 1950s had a profound effect on pop music. Karlheinz Stockhausen (born 1928) began to include electronic sounds into his compositions. This technique is known as sampling. Digital sampling is born of recordings and music combined. Steve Reich (born 1936) is an American composer who uses recordings of the human voice in his compositions. 'Different Trains', written in 1988, is a blend of speech, tape and live performance. It is a reflection of the Jewish-American experience. He reflects on train journeys he made regularly in the 1930s at the same time as people were travelling by train to the Nazi death camps. As Steve Reich himself says on the programme, 'The folk music of our time is electronic'.

Today, traditional classical music is being absorbed into a wider mainstream dominated by popular music. It is the age of convergence: a meltdown of previously rigidly segregated musical genres.