The Pattison Waltz (1889)

Another of Edison's early music recordings; this one from 1889 (recorded 25 February). This is the ever-so-slightly silly "Pattison Waltz" (no text I can make out at all, just lots of la-ing and so on - but she *mIght* be singing words I guess) . The singer is Effie Stewart (a New York soprano of no particular fame) and the pianist is Theo Wangeman, one of Edison's technicians. Frankly, it sounds comical, to put it politely.

Incidentally, Wangemann was the man who turned up in Vienna in December of the same year, and who recorded Brahms performing in the house of his friend, Dr Felinger, there.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• edison
• historic
• recording
• phonograph
• cylinder
• effie
• stewart
• theo
• wangemann
• classical
• piano
• pattison
• waltz

[chrisz78]

I've just noticed that the transfer is one half-tone sharp compared to the sheet music - does she really sing it in D (instead of the original D-flat), or is the cylinder running fast? The announcer certainly sounds more relaxed and natural at the slower speed.

[d60944]

@chrisz78 PS - super find with the sheet music! As to the speed, I have no idea - this is an "official" recording of the cylinder..... do we trust them to get it right?

[wks1978]

If you slow the speed down about 10% I think the tempo of the piece sounds more correct also. Bear in mind their pitch was probably lower than the A=440 of today.

[wks1978]

The link to the sheet music no longer works. Does anyone have it saved?

[d60944]

@chrisz78 That sounds convincing then! Perhaps not Wangemann on the piano then, but someone else. But still most likely to be Wangemann's voice as engineer...

[chrisz78]

@d60944 Also, Wangemann's notebook (really the first extant "recording ledger") survives and has been published, listing all the commercial recordings he made as a technician in the late 1880s and early 1890s. On these, he NEVER is listed as a pianist himself; instead, Messrs. Franklin, Giesemann, and others are regularly listed as accompanists. If it had been so easy to do both jobs, why would Edison have engaged these pianists for Wangemann's recordings?

[chrisz78]

@d60944 Thanks for the update on the whereabouts of Gouraud, so he's out of the question. Still, it was more usual for the technician to stand by the singer's side and "direct" her movements in front of the horn - you will know the anecdote told by Gaisberg about grabbing the shoulders of some diva because she refused to keep the proper distance to the recording horn (closer for soft, low notes, further back for loud, high notes) on her own.

[chrisz78]

@d60944 True, I forgot these! I was thinking of the usual setup for a singer with piano accompaniment: The horn in front of the singer's face, the upright piano behind the singer (preferably lifted onto a podium so that the center of the resonating board was level with the singer's head) and the pianist sitting behind the piano, so he'd have to walk around the piano, climb two or three stairs up the podium and sit down at the piano stool between talking and playing.

[chrisz78]

@d60944 No, we can trust them to use quartz-controlled 120rpm (or whatever the accepted standard speed for this type of media was) without bothering for one moment what "D-major" means. Someone with knowledge of music might have noticed the skips in the first verse as well!! The old machines had freely adjustable rpm, but no device for precisely measuring the actual speed, so the "nominal standards" must be taken with a large grain of salt (+/- 10% or more than a half-tone tolerance).

[d60944]

@chrisz78 in any event, I have been led to understand the cylinder itself states both the pianist and the recording engineer were both Theo Wangemann.... if someone else was there to speak into the recorder, that would be very odd.

[d60944]

@chrisz78 Also, at this time it was normal to have only one technician present. We know the pianist is Wangemann, and we know he was an Edison tecnician.... so the assumption is that it is Wangerman who acted as technician for this recording. This *could* be wrong, but unlikely. Whoever it is, it can't be Gouraud: he was Edison's agent in London from at least 1879 onward, and was not in New York. Edison sent his phograph to Gouraud in London in 1888.