# Listening Habits Before Recordings Existed



## The Fife (Jul 2, 2014)

Given our huge cd/lp collections, streaming services, and portable players, we have the ability to listen to a huge variety of music on a regular basis. In contrast, during the periods when a lot of classical music was initially performed, the audience presumably had a lot less access to music. This seems like it would especially be true of music that required many players to perform. 


For those who are knowledgeable about such things, what would the typical music exposure be for an audience member during the time periods most classical music was composed? 

How do you think that different exposure impacted the audiences reception, enjoyment, and appreciation of the music?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

They performed music a lot more often in their homes, but they didn't hear the same orchestral works as often. Composers likely did not expect their pieces to be heard as often. I've heard it argued that soloists were more daring, less concerned with making mistakes that weren't subject to repeat scrutiny.

There's been debate about repeats, that they aren't as necessary in the days of recordings. I think that was Gould's argument for not taking them.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Concerts, radio, 78s, mono LPs. There was always a way to get your fix.

Interesting to note in the mid 1950's, a great many musicians lobbied against stereo LPs, thinking they'd rob the concert halls.:tiphat:


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

As far as I know, in the days before recordings, there were lots of piano transcriptions available of orchestral work, including ones for piano four hands etc., and lots of people could play quite well and would performed these at home.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

It is a subject that's occurred to me many times and my heart bleeds for the masses of yesteryear who didn't have the wonder of technology we have. 

I love my repeat button... Not to mention volume control, who doesn't love that.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

The situation varies enormously according to country. I can only speak of the English practice. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries there were a number of provincial music societies. These would take local (domestic) players of varying quality who would perform in front of their neighbours. In general, players got in free, others paid. In many ways, the music making of the period approximated to the Irish Traditional Music session. We can judge the quality by looking at something like Avison's reductions of Scarlatti for his players. There's a nice little Guardian article on the subject.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

One other huge difference is that today we think there's nothing odd about listening to music that's 200 or 300 years old, or 1,000 years old for that matter. We have our "mostly Mozart" concerts, which in chronological terms would be similar to audiences in Mozart's day enjoying "mostly Josquin"!


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Fugue Meister said:


> It is a subject that's occurred to me many times and my heart bleeds for the masses of yesteryear who didn't have the wonder of technology we have.


Yes, up to a point, but in the past there would have been a lot more 'live' music at a local scale.

1. I visited my Dad (in a residential care home) on Saturday. There is a pub-guitarist who goes once a month to play songs for the residents. He is no Segovia but even when tuning up, there is a palpable excitement for what will come next and the enjoyment of the residents of a real 'live' expeirence is really nice. They simply do not respond to recorded music in anything like the same way
2. In some ways, I have been spoilt by recorded music and I'm reluctant to go to listen to semi-professional or amateur performances in the small town where I live (hangs head in shame!)
3. I remember as a small child listening to my gran playing piano duets with my aunt and I wish that I had had the chance to do that with her

No, I think WE miss out on things as well as the 'masses of yesteryear'


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Of course, live music performance was the norm all the way through to the invention of the radio.
The radio ruled 'til the invention of the phonograph.
Now, we are all spoiled rotten.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

hpowders said:


> Of course, live music performance was the norm all the way through to the invention of the radio.
> The radio ruled 'til the invention of the phonograph.
> Now, we are all spoiled rotten.


Umm ... Mr Edison invented the phonograph in the 1870s. By the 1890's we already had "juke boxes"- or coin operated phonographs. Mr Marconi's wireless apparatus or radio was invented in the 1890s, used (in vain) by RMS Titanic in 1912 and public broadcasting only really began in the 1920's. Singers such as Caruso made great use of the gramophone. His 1904 recording of "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci was the first sound recording to sell a million copies. This is well before the first public radio broadcasts.

Did you mean it the other way round?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Umm ... Mr Edison invented the phonograph in the 1870s. By the 1890's we already had "juke boxes"- or coin operated phonographs. Mr Marconi's wireless apparatus or radio was invented in the 1890s, used (in vain) by RMS Titanic in 1912 and public broadcasting only really began in the 1920's. Singers such as Caruso made great use of the gramophone. His 1904 recording of "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci was the first sound recording to sell a million copies. This is well before the first public radio broadcasts.
> 
> Did you mean it the other way round?


I believe in _playing it_ close to the _vest_.

A bad _habit._


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I suspect that in the past composers, especially, knew other composers' large scale works only from reading through the scores. I'm always a bit saddened to read about some composer whose major symphony or concerto was never performed in his lifetime, that he or she never had the chance to hear the work, and then I can go and immediately access several dozen interpretations of the piece. 

Just think, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert (all great "mass" writers) never heard a performance of the Bach b-minor Mass as the composer wrote it, in full orchestral and choral glory. We may be spoiled, but sometimes being spoiled equates to being awfully lucky.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

SONNET CLV said:


> I suspect that in the past composers, especially, knew other composers' large scale works only from reading through the scores.


The only way for poor old Beethoven in his latter years (and William Boyce .... and Smetana, I think?)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

What recording did, was it provided an alternative new 'aural' memory to oppose the written score, which was the previous way of commodifying and distributing music.

Also, recording greatly removed (or at least degraded the former significance of) the separation of composer from musician; now, the recording was a chronicle of a performance, and performance became more 'definitive', especially now that we have hi-rez sound and DVD clarity. The score was no longer the sole 'gospel' or referential holy text, like musical scripture; now, the recording competes with it, or supplants it, or completely bypasses it.

Also, music used to be more social; now, recordings can be listened to in isolation. This removes much of the 'personal power' that music once had, when only kings could call together large numbers of players, to present spectacle and splendor.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Ironically, recorded music allowed for a resurgence in popular music, providing radios with something to play and creating a new phenomenon which created the isolated listener who actually shares in the larger social experience. The "top forty" and the "hit parade" are shared experiences even when experienced alone.


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Yes, up to a point, but in the past there would have been a lot more 'live' music at a local scale.
> 
> In some ways, I have been spoilt by recorded music and I'm reluctant to go to listen to semi-professional or amateur performances in the small town where I live (hangs head in shame!)


I do believe it was quite prevalent to have a town or company band/orchestra (much like the "boys' band" in _The Music Man_ around the turn of the century up until sound movies and phonograph became popular. There were also many opportunities for professional musicians, from vaudeville to accompanying movies to being the house band at a hotel or dance club.

I subscribe to a delightful blog  TempoSenzaTempo  whose mission is to feature photographs and postcards of musicians of yesteryear. Most are anonymous, but the blog writer does a great deal of research on each photo and writes informative and entertaining information about each one. 
Here's what the writer has to say:
_The 1920s brought many changes to musical culture. The increasing popularity of cinemas brought a demand for more musicians to provide music for silent films. These orchestra players had to be versatile at all kinds of musical styles. The music used for accompanying films was rarely specified, and music directors assembled new scores for each production made up of popular songs and dances as well as excerpts of classical symphony and opera music. 1927 saw the release of The Jazz Singer, the first film with recorded sound. The golden era of the silent film was finished. Within a decade, live performances of theater orchestras would be finished too, and the many musicians who accompanied those movies would have to find new work.

Many would find it in the new medium of Radio. The National Broadcasting Company or NBC started its first regular broadcasting in 1926. Using telephone lines to transmit signals to other stations across the country, it soon became the dominant radio network, divided into the NBC Red and Blue networks. The effect on culture was profound. Until the advent of broadcast radio, music could only be heard either in live performance or on short recorded media like Edison's phonograph records. Finally the great repertoire of classical music could reach all of the public from big city apartment blocks to farmhouses on the prairie. A new audience had first row seats in the concert hall. For free.
_

So besides recordings, the radio would broadcast live performances, sometimes with the orchestra being right in the studio.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Headphone Hermit said:


> The only way for poor old Beethoven in his latter years (and William Boyce .... and Smetana, I think?)


Yes, Smetana was profoundly deaf in his later years, more so than Beethoven. All of his best-known works were written in this period, amazingly enough.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Artur Schnabel said that he didn't like to record, because he dreaded the thought of someone being exposed to the genius of Beethoven while dressed in a bathrobe eating a ham sandwich.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Yes, Smetana was profoundly deaf in his later years, more so than Beethoven. All of his best-known works were written in this period, amazingly enough.


The two String Quartets are especially worth checking out for anyone interested in "hearing" more about the composer's deafness. Number One in E minor, titled "From My Life" is autobiographical, of course, and features a famous moment in the last movement where a high pitched E intrudes on the goings on. Apparently Smetana often heard this piercing sound, due to his condition of Aural Tinnitus. Not a pleasant thing. He eventually went completely deaf, around the time of finishing this Quartet and wrote a second Quartet which, if anything, records a decent into madness. Fascinating stuff, to be sure. And fine quartets, too.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

bigshot said:


> Artur Schnabel said that he didn't like to record, because he dreaded the thought of someone being exposed to the genius of Beethoven while dressed in a bathrobe eating a ham sandwich.


Would a Philly cheese steak prove preferable?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Recording changed music in a profound way, especially popular and folk musics. Before, the written score insured that music would be transmitted in an unchanged way, as a 'definitive' form. Folk, popular, and 'ear' music did not have this advantage; as it passed from player to player, it changed and morphed, just like that whispering game we've all played.

With the advent of recording, now music had an 'ear' memory which was not biological, but was objective and unchanging, just like a written score, perhaps even better.

Jazz musicians can now learn solos note-for-note, and popular forms of music are now acquiring a stable, unchanging history and tradition, which was formerly the exclusive domain of art music.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Superb post @millionrainbows. :cheers:

There are a variety of reactions in folk circles - the simple one is to spot the folk group that a singer is copying; the advanced one is to spot the original that the folk group is copying. For example, you may spot that somebody is copying Steel Eye Span \ Martin Carthy's version of False Night on the Road, or you may note that Steel Eye Span are copying (fairly literally) a version discovered by Alan Lomax in the early fifties.

There is also the reaction that folk is becoming "stale" because it has lost its connection to the "living tradition". Equally, you can find somebody like Martin Carthy "completing" Famous Flower of Serving Men and not be able to spot the join (without looking at the sources) in the best Walter Scott \ Robert Burns tradition.

I'm sure jazz circles play the same sort of games.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Superb post @millionrainbows. :cheers:
> 
> There are a variety of reactions in folk circles - the simple one is to spot the folk group that a singer is copying; the advanced one is to spot the original that the folk group is copying. For example, you may spot that somebody is copying Steel Eye Span \ Martin Carthy's version of False Night on the Road, or you may note that Steel Eye Span are copying (fairly literally) a version discovered by Alan Lomax in the early fifties.
> 
> ...


Of course you would understand this, Taggart, as the British are a more 'ear' oriented culture with a rich folk tradition; you can hear it when they speak, and write. Americans seem to be exclusively visual, and detached. Too literal, too uniform, continuous, and connected.

I'm really making some breakthroughs in my thinking & listening, after reading the British authors Chris Cutler_ (File Under Popular)_ and Simon Frith_ (Absolute Music)._ These are definitely 'ear' guys.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

As Bob Dylan makes clear, the line between what is folk music and what is not (aka "rock" or "pop" music) can be tenuous. Dylan may have started as a folkster, but he ends up being something else. His recorded music cannot be confused (except maybe in the very early days) with his predecessors and models -- most notably Woody Guthrie. Remember, Dylan was heavily criticized for "going electric", but his most familiar material sounds more "rock" than "folk" to my ears. And Dylan is a product of recording, which "stabilized" his own product but allows it to be shared by many others who, for whatever reasons, can reiterate it back often in a "changed" manner. Sometimes the changes that occur do occur for musicianship reasons -- either the original is too complex for the new performer, or the original is too simple and a new virtuoso-type wants to take it for a spin. Sometimes the instruments themselves change and that promotes a new timbre to an old sound. (The "electric" phase stuff, as an example.) But a good tune always seems to cry out for development, which is why the great tunes have so many cover versions. Do we really want to settle for a single version of a great song?

It proves a provocative topic to explore reasons why certain music can change so, and certain other music cannot. Maybe a lot has to do with resistances from the involved parties. Some of us classical folks might not think of tampering with Bach, yet jazz pianist Jacques Loussier does just that, and brilliantly. Is Mozart's music sacred and beyond tampering? The rock band Sky (which once featured classical guitarist John Williams on the roster) didn't think so. And so many people know the themes of great classics not from the concert hall or high-brow recordings, but from bowdlerizations culled from television commercials, cartoons, and shopping mall soundtracks.

It makes us wonder if we should ever solely cherish the original account, and if so, where do we draw the line? Jazz artists are notorious for their personal versions of tunes, and we celebrate that. Yet we frown when someone tampers with Beethoven. Why? Can't alternate takes be legitimate in all music?
.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I've just been rereading Alec Ross's Listen to This and his chapter on Dylan makes similar sorts of points. He notes that Dylan will rework old material, changing the tune of altering the words to suit what he wants to do, often to the disquiet of fans who want the "canonical version" as they know it from a particular album.

The relation between rock, folk and country is complex. Guthrie sang alongside Leadbelly whose songs became part of the British skiffle craze in the 1950's and then blended into rock. The Quarrymen were originally a skiffle group before they became the Beatles. Dylan's first LP includes thing like Man of Constant Sorrow, Gospel Plow and House of the Rising Sun which was a chart hit for the Animals, a British blues band in the 1960s; oh and there's the inevitable Pretty Peggy Oh which everybody had a stab at. It's on the first Simon and Garfunkel LP as well. The country roots of Dylan's folk lead naturally into the country rock of Nashville Skyline and beyond. Springsteen to take another also blurs the boundaries between folk, country and rock.

There is a long and honoured tradition of alternative takes in Classical Music - the transcription. But as music developed, composers began demanding more control of the music and writing out cadenzas rather than just indicating them.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

SONNET CLV said:


> As Bob Dylan makes clear, the line between what is folk music and what is not (aka "rock" or "pop" music) can be tenuous. Dylan may have started as a folkster, but he ends up being something else. His recorded music cannot be confused (except maybe in the very early days) with his predecessors and models -- most notably Woody Guthrie. Remember, Dylan was heavily criticized for "going electric", but his most familiar material sounds more "rock" than "folk" to my ears.


I think Dylan's reasons for 'going electric' were essentially artistic, especially if you look at the direction the content of the songs was headed. *Tambourine Man* was where he really departed, and this was still an acoustic song; so the real departure was not 'electric vs. acoustic,' but the intent and ideology behind the songs.

Dylan was headed for introspective, poetic territory with *Tambourine Man.* He wanted to leave the folk scene and the ideology it represented, not so much because he disagreed with it, but because he didn't want to be a spokesman or representative of an ideological movement, as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were, and wanted him to be.

Dylan didn't want to be confined to topical folk themes. He saw 'Americana' music (country, blues, rock) as a freer, more flexible way of making music. And, maybe there was a little bit of ego involved.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

SONNET CLV said:


> It proves a provocative topic to explore reasons why certain music can change so, and certain other music cannot. Maybe a lot has to do with resistances from the involved parties. Some of us classical folks might not think of tampering with Bach, yet jazz pianist Jacques Loussier does just that, and brilliantly. Is Mozart's music sacred and beyond tampering? The rock band Sky (which once featured classical guitarist John Williams on the roster) didn't think so. And so many people know the themes of great classics not from the concert hall or high-brow recordings, but from bowdlerizations culled from television commercials, cartoons, and shopping mall soundtracks.
> 
> It makes us wonder if we should ever solely cherish the original account, and if so, where do we draw the line? Jazz artists are notorious for their personal versions of tunes, and we celebrate that. Yet we frown when someone tampers with Beethoven. Why? Can't alternate takes be legitimate in all music?


"Classical" music which is scored and written down was not designed to be altered, and to see this we must compare the 'ear' traditions of folk and popular music. Those were inherently changeable, because recording didn't exist, and the only memory in most cases was biological. So folk music is essentially aural, a form of speech, as opposed to the written score, which is of the eye, and is visual.

Now that recording exists, folk, jazz, and popular music is beginning to have a history which is more fixed, similar to scored music. This may not be good for that genre, but it will probably be balanced out with 'ear' procedures. Jazz is improvisatory, so to play it note for note, either from score or recording, would be ridiculous and sterile. "Lead sheets" are just rough outlines, used only for reference of the structure of the song.

Classical music is not improvisatory, by its very nature, so the fact that it does not change or deviate greatly should be a given that is accepted as one of its positive attributes; to compare it to folk or jazz, and wonder why it does not change ignores its very nature.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Taggart said:


> I've just been rereading Alec Ross's Listen to This and his chapter on Dylan makes similar sorts of points. He notes that Dylan will rework old material, changing the tune of altering the words to suit what he wants to do, often to the disquiet of fans who want the "canonical version" as they know it from a particular album.
> 
> The relation between rock, folk and country is complex. Guthrie sang alongside Leadbelly whose songs became part of the British skiffle craze in the 1950's and then blended into rock. The Quarrymen were originally a skiffle group before they became the Beatles. Dylan's first LP includes thing like Man of Constant Sorrow, Gospel Plow and House of the Rising Sun which was a chart hit for the Animals, a British blues band in the 1960s; oh and there's the inevitable Pretty Peggy Oh which everybody had a stab at. It's on the first Simon and Garfunkel LP as well. The country roots of Dylan's folk lead naturally into the country rock of Nashville Skyline and beyond. Springsteen to take another also blurs the boundaries between folk, country and rock.
> 
> There is a long and honoured tradition of alternative takes in Classical Music - the transcription. But as music developed, composers began demanding more control of the music and writing out cadenzas rather than just indicating them.


I see rock music as having some distinct influences, which stayed somewhat separate even as rock progressed.

1.) The "folk" and country influence is there. Country and folk are simple diatonic-based forms. This has roots in Irish and British folk forms. These are distinct from the more minor, pentatonic blues scale and forms.

Examples of this type of rock are many of the Beatles songs (Norwegian Wood, Blackbird, I Want To Hold Your Hand).

2.) A black blues influence is there, which gave rise to 'heavy' rock which used the pentatonic scale of blues music, and rhythms of blues and jazz, which are based on division of the main pulse (4 beats) into 3 parts (da-da-da, da-da-da), which Western notation must write as 6/8 or 12/8, in spite of the fact that the bass is 1-2-3-4. We don't have 'third' notes, and must dot a regular note to give a 3 value.

Examples are The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Cream, Deep Purple, and this evolved into heavier rock, and finally metal. This kind of heavy rock is characterized by the pentatonic scale, and root movement is often based on outlining this scale, and chords using fifths with no thirds.

3.) There is a tin-pan alley influence, which is diatonic, and based on classical forms and harmonic changes. This tin-pan alley influence also worked its way into jazz, transforming it from a bluesier, more African music, into a more assimilated Western music, exemplified by Bill Evans' Debussy-influenced jazz piano, Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," and all the tin-pan alley songs used as jazz improvisation vehicles (What Is This Thing Called Love, Laura, Stella By Starlight, etc.)

Rock examples would be The Beach Boys (influenced by The Mills Brothers, The Four Freshmen, and other vocal music), The Beatles, pop music (The Monkees, etc.)

Dylan is most influenced by folk (in the form of country) and black blues.

Note when certain artists try to step out of their boundaries, as when The Stones tried to downplay their blues influence, and came out with "Their Satanic Majesties Request" and various 'pop' songs spread throughout their catalog (Sweet Lady Jane, Ruby Tuesday, etc)


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