Edison phonograph cylinders (1888): Handel - Israel in Egypt

[dxroadduke]

Amazing! As someone had said earlier, this old recording truly is mindblowing!

[ferociousgumby]

What if you had to go to the bathroom? It'd be worse than in a stadium and I'll bet there were hardly any washrooms for women. If you were in that choir, forget it!

[zamowner1]

Israel in Egypt? lol you wish.

[The1985Channel]

Fascinating. I'm a massive fan of old music, particularly the 1980s, so to actually hear music from the previous '80s is quite mindblowing!

[andronikosb]

Impressive, where are these cylinders kept now?

[mayatatyana1]

Thank you. To hear voices from 120 years ago gives one chills. Maya

[megnoggle]

this recording has such an ethereal vibe. i love it! the graininess reminds me of a fog shrouding a beautiful, long-lost city (like atlantic or el dorado) and this is represented by the faded voices. bellisima!!

[TrappedIn1968]

This 3-part recording ranks with my favorite recordings of all time. Close your eyes and your ears are in audience with Queen Victoria, William Gladstone, and thousands of others, hearing Handel's Masterwork "Isreal in Egypt". Every year on June 29, I play this for the wife and kids as we look at pictures of the Crystal Palace. LIsten to this with headphones on and you can hear the tenors and sopranos exchanging lines, the orchestra, and the organ. It's an incredible trip back in time !

[MRLOL785]

Maybe the first track on the second cylinder was just an unused section with nothing recorded at all. All I can hear is just some grinding and crunching noises.

[Fuzileer]

@frownstrong Who was that?

[FurryElements]

is this a called father of all music

[musgrave68]

the featured photo could be that of the 1926 event 

[musgrave68]

goosebumps!! 122-year-old voices singing handel in unison! haunting...for lack of a better word...

[MUSICALLAN]

Absolutely amazing!! Thank you for posting!!

[Wrecker321]

Who is this hall on the picture?

[jamiebyrne77]

It is amazing and hauting and thank you for posting this, friend

[Fuzileer]

This should be the most viewed video on youtube. Its so important to listen to and... Just is very wonderful.

[storeflack]

I couldn't go past 30 seconds too creepy

[Mozartstavanger]

This is really stunning, thank you so much for posting this!

I just find it interesting that the first sound actually were recorded in 1860 (by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville), that means that technically there could be a recording of Franz Liszt playing his own music...

[m134mr]

the second cylinder is really clearer! just amazing :)

[SugarInHisBlood]

@frownstrong I also think about this being the precise time the Jack the Ripper murders began in the East End.

That foggy world of narrow cobblestone streets full of the world's poorest people with colorful names such as, "Pearly Polly" and "Dark Annie."

You almost wish you could step back to that world through the audio somehow.

[LucreEthylVest]

@SugarInHisBlood

You said it perfectly... I second that.

[lookhear49]

It really touched my heart to hear all those people singing so beautiful. Listening to a concert made 122 years ago! They sound a bit like angels. All of them are now dead many years ago. May all of them rest in peace!

[stang46l]

Albert Einstein was what 9 years old?

[mirasango]

It sounds like angels singing. It's so beautiful.

[alternatehistories]

Yeah, I've heard this cylinder before. Supposedly it's like 2,000 singers recorded from 100 yards/metres distance. Kinda spooky when you realize that every single person performing at this event (also attending) are long DEAD. Kind of like being serenaded by ghosts across time and space. Glad to see this posted here on YT where many others will discover and enjoy it.

[karlsalz]

oh my god

the elephant man was still alive!

[ptownfreddy]

Gorgeous and CREEPY!

[MsSmilyClown]

this is the year of Jack the rippers. It depends when this recorded, the world have never seen him before untill he did murders. The whole world have heard about a unknown person, while this old and soundable masterpiece is badly heard? Teach about music, not mass murders :) amen :)

[GeorgeVreelandHill]

We think that the technology changes of today is amazing, but it pales in comparison to the advances of years ago.

Another thing to remember is that while we get better with things, they started it all.

For instance, the 1860's to the 1960's was quite a time.

Think of all the advances.

Man has been to the moon.

We can't seem to get that far today.

Anyway, thank you for posting this gem.

It is a piece of history.

George Vreeland Hill

[RavenclawEspioXV]

It may not be considered the oldest recording in the world, but this is for sure, bar-none, priceless.

[marcxopoco]

Thanks for posting. Incredible.

[jotenko]

@frownstrong best. comment. ever.

[anavader9019]

This is just amazing. Yeah, the tempo is way toooo slow!!!,

was this originally recorded with this slow cadence?

did it sounded like this when the cylinders were played back then, or has it been degraded?

[d60944]

@anavader9019 This is the tempo of the actual performance. THe pitch of the Crystal Palace organ is known accurately, and these playbacks give the correct pitch (therefore they are at the right tempo)

No doubt the cylinders when fresh would have captured more sound..... but then again this was experimental, and we know that Gouraud had a hard time getting far enough away from the music to get a distortion-free recording at all.

[anavader9019]

@d60944 Thx 4 answering.

This is a fantastic time capsule.

[EmmetEarwax]

Gouraud never sang , just made speeches !

Also there seem to be blame few records from the 1880's ,let alone earlier !

[jbpolhamus]

@anavader9019 No, the horn was too small to capture much direct sound in the cavernous Crystal Palace, and yes, that is the original tempo. There are many more recent recordings of the Handel Festivals, dating from the 1930's, which are also at unbelieveably slow tempi, but that is because of the utterly ungainly size of the proceedings, and the arena like size of the Palace.

[profpf]

It's a bit easier to hear after around 3'47"...

[stromssa]

This is so amazing to hear; I just listened to a modern recording on YouTube and then compared it to this, and you can definitely hear fragments and suggestions of the music; it's quite moving when you consider how many years old this is. It's like hearing voices from a time capsule (well, that's exactly what it is!): A path leading from 2010 straight back to 1888 and this glorious piece of music.

[superhamzah85]

@frownstrong

Exactly....I say the same things, people who were a contemporary of Mozart and Louis XVI......my mind simply boggles.

[ddsteller]

Garrison Keillor wrote about this recording in his Writer's Almanac today - June 29, 2010 - See the link under today's date on the Writer's Almanac website.

Thank you so much for posting this. The photo really brings it to life!  Amazing stuff.

[triky808]

Wow, this is amazing! I did not know there were two other parts to this performance that were recorded and exist! I can't believe how clear the sound is even though this whole thing was recorded back in 1888 and never imagined I would get the chance to hear this at all!

[pw3djoeisback]

So this is what my great-great grandparents were jamming to lol.

[thatpianoguy2009]

Who's the 93 year old man? Sorry

[fyphfoko]

some of that is really clear

i bet they could eb cleaned up, somehow, and you'd never even know they were made in 1888

quite ghostly

[Herooftimex]

Thank you for the upload!

[PrincessZelda613]

This has a very beautiful, yet eerie, somewhat etheral sound to it. I have been a fan of wax cylinders for nearly a decade (which may be somewhat surprising, as young as I am), so this is something that I am overjoyed to find on YouTube. Alas, I had previously only heard the first of these recordings. Thank you so very much for posting all three of these, the other two I am hearing for the very first time, and I must say, it is quite wonderful to be able to enjoy this experience.

[aeschaf]

Imagine now the awesome power of our technology, and the rate it grows. If our species/planet survives, in 200 years we'll have a vast digital catalog more precisely detailed than any of our current "historical" documents. Current example? The digital archiving of this particular audio recording. In 50 years, The White Album will have this sort of impact. More wars will be fought, religion and science will change, countries will fall, and hopefully we'll reflect wisely on these life lessons.

[PriceRight89]

Who would have thought we'd be connected more than 300 years through the internet. Amazing.

[sfcub69]

This is why I hate it when people talk down about the Internet. Without it, we'd not have the possibility to listen to this piece of recorded (literally) history for free in the privacy of our own homes, to respond and react as we wish.

[jgstargazer]

Like being connected through a time tunnel back to 1888.

[Banzeken]

This is like music from heaven, only that it is on cylinder-format :P

[ladyi7609]

I feel almost exactly the same -- this to me is what the choirs of angels sound like in Heaven as has been rendered in my head since I was a little girl. To consider that a recording this clear of so many talented choral singers performing this moving Handel piece 122 years ago, back when my great-grandparents were still Mexican youths and before a single relative of mine had touched American soil... astounding.

[worldsno1drwhofan]

Being able to listen to this is an incredibly emotional and moving experience. To be able to sit and hear a living snapshot of people 120 years ago is just mindblowing.

[majortom51970]

Exactly my thoughts! Amazing...

[Zeobit]

If you want to compare it with a modern recording you can find a good one under "related videos", take the 4th. one.

For excample 6:29 to 6:52 here is the same there from 4:39 to 4:4:52 :-)

[Zeobit]

4:52 of course ;-)

[Zeobit]

Hmmm obviously the order there changes, I'm talking about the one named "Händel: The Lord shall reign for ever and ever (ISRAEL IN EGYPT)"

[Classicmozayful]

only two years after liszt.

although there is a recording from 1860 (on youtube) of a french inventors daughter singing au claire de la lune. liszt may well have recorded...

if only

if only

if only

[ryanspeed]

Wow! This is truly a window into time!

I'm willing to bet that as fast as technology is progressing, give it another 20 or so more years some cracker jack sound engineer will use this technology and be able to refine this to a point to where we'll hear it even better than this!

[VlogasaurusFlex]

Amazing to think that the people behind those voices did not know electricity.. airplanes.. cars.. television.. radio.. Their world was driven by horse. Jack the Ripper was about to strike that summer in the East End. Queen Victoria had 13 years left on the throne. Native American tribes still roamed free in certain areas of America.

[Karlfalcon]

After some heavy filtering and hard listening it sounds like the first band on Cylinder 2 my be the end of "The Depths Have Covered Them" (...the bottom as a stone) which is an extremely quiet movement and would explain why only the barest of chords are audible.

[Lord6of9Uk]

its a shame Crystal Palace got burnt to the ground twice!! Cuddington Palace built by Henry VIII was only around for a 100 years and that would have been great to see. i live not too far from there or crystal palace, in Surrey.

[PrettyCritical]

very touching..thank you so much !

[safetychoice]

indeed fascinating. I might just suggest that with modern audio editing software, the scratch can be taken out and the sound greatly improved. Might be interesting.

[deathray393]

you know what, I think I'll take you up on that.

[deathray393]

Wow, that's crazy. It's a morbid thought, but all of those singers are dead. Everyone they knew, are dead.

[Zeobit]

Wow, I'm speachless!

Thanks for uploading this amazing recording, to me, it doesn't fell like just listening to an old piece of music, it's like doing musical archaeology. Just imagine beeing there in the Crystal Palace and getting owerwhelmed by 4000 (!) voices,

this recording is like a time machine, I love it!!!

[xxhomeoapathyxx]

it is so surreal to me that i can actually hear something that happened 130 or so years ago from my computer at home. this is a real piece of history, thank you for posting it.

[carrietide]

FANTASTIC!!!

[StarSupernova]

Wonderful picture. I assume this is from the Crystal Palace? Could you tell me if there are any more?

[d60944]

There may be more, but I am not a photo-specialist. This one is a little after the date of the recording though.

[VinylToVideo]

@StarSupernova The picture is from the 1926 Crystal Palace Handel Festival.

[scoterpool]

The height of Victorian Britain;no motor cars, no electricity in people's homes, no telephones unless you were super rich -this recording shows that whatever changes, great music is still appreciated and those almost phantom like sounds we hear are echoes which will no doubt resound for yet another 120 years and even a further 120 years after that.

[avellanedam]

Thanks for this recording, it's quite unbelievable find a recording of those years, that is available to hear. At the beginning, I thought it was a joke or similar due to the continuous "scratch" of the sound (like electronic music). But when I realized the voices in background I was really amazed of being able to hear it. The production was quite huge! bigger than Mahler's 8th symphony.

[gzoek]

Thank you for posting this, and for the detailed description. It's amazing getting to hear this.

[BSNFabricating]

This is fascinating! The recording may not be in great shape, but this is where it all started...all the improvements since then have been engineering, based on what Edison and others discovered at the beginning.

The fact that they could play back what had been recorded must have been like magic...

[ahuaman2002]

Espectacular! escuchar voces de gente del siglo pasado!!!!

[saintsaens21]

Si, parece increible, creo sonar..

[pianopera]

1888...hmmm, and Liszt died in...1886. But the phonograph was already patented a couple of years earlier.

But what about the *phonautograph*, invented in France in 1857...well, the "Au Clair de la Lune" (1860) sounds even more horrible...

[aewanko300]

Maybe there is a recording by Liszt himself....Lost maybe?

[karlakor]

aewanko300--According to Harold Schoenberg, Liszt did make a few recordings on Edison cylinders. Schoenberg traced to them to a particular museum and asked the curator about them. The curator acknowledged their existence but said that the recordings were lost during World War II. He seemed disinterested in their fate and rather bewildered by Schoenberg's interest in them.

[d60944]

No - I believe you are mistaken. Please check your Schonberg source! Edison came up with the phonograph idea in 1877, but between 1878 and 1888 he did NO work with it whatsoever (he was otehrwise engaged with lightbulbs and radio).. He did not construct his first proper phonograph until 1888, in response to patent issues being compromised (in 1885 by Bell and Tainter). Before then there were no phonograph machines around to record with in Europe. However, Liszt had died in 1886.

[karlakor]

d60944--I don't doubt your facts, but there is no way I can check my source. I heard Schonberg present a lecture on old recordings at the Eastman School of Music in 1978 or 1979, and it was then that he told us about his search for Liszt cylinders. I am clearly mistaken about the cylinders being by Edison, but if my memory serves me, even after all these 30 years, I believe I recall the story correctly. Schonberg earnestly sought those recordings, so he must have believed they existed. Thanks

[pianopera]

That is *very* interesting!

Can you remember some more details about Schonberg's "quest"?

[d60944]

It is interesting, but realy Schonberg cannot have been correct, and I am surprised he perpetrated this. I have checked up Bell and Tainter's dates for their gramophone (which prompted Edison to construct his own), but they also did not create a proper working model until 1887 ('invented' 1885, patented in 1886). All of this was in the US, well away from Liszt in any case. The myth of a Liszt recording was also given another airing by Kenneth Hamilton in his book on the B min Sonata by the way.

[pianopera]

Well, Liszt had some American pupils at the end of his life...but I don't know if there is any documentation about a link between this new invention and certain people who could have brought it to Weimar.

Anyway, you're probably right, it's only a myth...

[volodya2]

What Liszt have think about the Edison's inventions?

[3cplantin]

Thanks for posting this. Incredible to have these moments saved for posterity, even if the quality isn't very good. Like the recording of Brahms, it documents history and brings it all a little closer to us.