A Thank You to Thomas Edison

This month sees the launch of our totally re-vamped download site:

TheClassicalShop.net

Perhaps the greatest aim of the new site is to make downloading music as easy and trouble free as possible – thousands of pieces of music available at a few clicks of a keyboard. However, I was reminded of the unease which Britten felt about the whole phenomenon of recorded music, which he thought made access to great music too easy. His point was that, before records, you had to go and hear music live. And that involved saving money to buy a ticket, make travel arrangements, swat up on the work you were going to hear, etc. – in general, dedicate serious time and make a notable effort to the process of listening to music.

Last weekend, I made a ‘serious’ effort to go and hear something (Britten would have been impressed). I went to see a performance of Opera North's Ruddigore in Leeds where, in the interval, we launched (with the stupendous help of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society) our new recording of Ivanhoe.

I can honestly say that it was one of the best operatic evenings of my life – a stunning production, gloriously sung, with marvellous orchestral playing. It was worth braving the British train system at a weekend to hear such a treat. (I’m convinced that ‘engineering’ works didn’t exist when I was young, but one’s memory does play strange tricks as the past grows distant.)

Sullivan was seemingly just as sceptical about recorded music as Britten, and there survives a wonderfully witty speech he made after a dinner party, introducing Thomas Edison’s ‘new’ phonograph, in which he recorded a phonographic letter to Edison – over one hundred and twenty-one years ago It goes as follows:

‘Dear Mr Edison,

If my friend Edmund Yates has been a little incoherent, it is in consequence of the excellent dinner and good wines that he has drunk. Therefore, I think you will excuse him. He has his lucid intervals. For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this evening’s experiments; astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified of the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever. But all the same, I think it is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced, and I congratulate you with all my heart on this wonderful discovery.

Arthur Sullivan’

Of course, not only has plenty of bad music been recorded, but we have had to wait a very long time for much good music to be recorded. Sullivan’s Ivanhoe is a case in point. First performed on 31 January 1891, it launched The Royal English Opera House and was initially a huge success. Its neglect is shocking and the release of a complete professional recording of it scandalously overdue. So, perhaps we need to thank Mr Edison again: his invention, a bit like Sullivan’s music, is not so much under-valued, as taken just a bit too much for granted.