A HISTORY OF MUSIC RECORDED
FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES
by
Fred HAMEL, Director, Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, Hanover, GermanyIt is a formidable task to address such a distinguished audience, particu-
larly on so specialized a subject as that of which I am going to treat-
the recording of music of the past. However, I feel encouraged to do
so owing to the importance which great modern composers ascribe to
the history of this art; a good example of this is to be found, not only
in the theoretical writings of Paul Hindemith, but in the many ties
between his musical works and the music of bygone days.
If the relations between the music of former times and gramophone
recording were just as obvious, there would be no need to discuss this
question at a conference on music education. These relations cannot
yet however be said to be very close, for they only began some 20 years
ago. At the beginning of its career, i.e. 50 or so years ago, the record
was not a factor in the history of music, as music made virtually no
use of it.
Today, such a statement seems paradoxical; but man’s age-long
desire-as old as his ambition to invent theperpetam mobile or to convert
base metals into gold-was to reproduce and preserve in permanent
form, not musical sounds, but the spoken word. In 1589, for instance,
the Italian physicist Giambattista Della Porta, who was interested in
the transmission of sound by leaden tubes (a method still in use on
ships), wrote in his book Magia natztralis that it should be possible,
when desired, to store words in leaden tubes which, when later reopen-
ed, would permit those words to be heard again. Nevertheless, another
three centuries were to pass before a true recording, by quite a different
method, was effected. Moreover, the first phonographs were very pri-
mitive, suited to the recording of violent rather than of delicate sounds
-such as, in fact, the thunderous voice of a railway employee announc-
ing the name of a station on the arrival of a train. Thus, the recording
of the spoken word preceded that of musical sounds. In the case of
music, the instruments that lent themselves best to recording were the