# If you are a fan of early recordings you should enjoy this article on a recently discovered early pioneer in opera recordings.



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

This man's recordings spent years under a recliner — they've now found a new home


More than a century ago, a Met librarian made some of the first live music recordings. Now, (with an assist from NPR) 16 of the Mapleson Cylinders are joining the New York Public Library collection.




www.knkx.org




A friend posted this to my Facebook page for me.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm having some difficulty understanding what's been discovered here. To my knowledge the Mapleson cylinders have never been lost or forgotten.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I'm having some difficulty understanding what's been discovered here. To my knowledge the Mapleson cylinders have never been lost or forgotten.


You are likely correct. I don't know anything about this stuff.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> You are likely correct. I don't know anything about this stuff.


The article doesn't help. I often wonder what people learn in journalism courses, if such exist. Journalists nowadays think they're storytellers and imagine that their narrative skills will keep us entranced until they get around to telling us what their point is, if they have one.


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## ewilkros (8 mo ago)

The article is kind of poor, but it you follow the imbedded links it gets better.

From the link:
" NPR's story in April last year focused on how the machine worked, saying that it could digitize even broken cylinders with more clarity"









Mystery recordings will now be heard for the first time in about 100 years


The New York Public Library recently received a machine that will read cracked and scratched wax cylinders — which include some of the earliest recorded audio.




www.npr.org





-- it doesn't, it just says "Enter the Endpoint Cylinder and Dictabelt Machine, invented by Californian Nicholas Bergh, which recently was acquired by the library. Thanks to the combination of its laser and needle, it can digitize even broken or cracked wax cylinders ", with a photo of the recording device in question. It also dangles another batch of hobbyist-recorded old cylinders that the NYPL has, apparently with no notion of what's on them--presumably it could be Aunt Mildred declaiming "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" or Uncle Ferd singing "You are the honey-, honeysuckle, I am the bee" (that's what usually turns up): " [A NYPL librarian is] particularly curious about a box of unlabeled cylinders she found on a storage shelf in 2016. All she knows about them is what was on the inside of the box: Gift of Mary Dana to the New York Public Library in 1935."

Another link, which includes Col. Mapleson's cute drawings of his cat, among other things:









Home at Last: Mapleson’s Diaries and Remaining Wax Cylinders | The New York Public Library


Jessica Wood describes the Library for the Performing Arts' new acquistion of Mapleson wax cylinders and diaries.




www.nypl.org





"Notable among this “new” batch of cylinders [i.e., the 16 damaged or broken cylinders from the Mapleson family] are two excerpts from Verdi’s _Aida_, including an aria featuring Louise Homer, Emilio de Marchi, and Joanna Gadski, an excerpt from the Valse and cadenza from Gounod’s _Romeo et Juliette_ featuring Nellie Melba, and the “B” section from the “Habanera” of Bizet’s _Carmen_, featuring Emma Calvé. Mapleson was notorious for reusing cylinders by shaving off layers of grooves containing Met singers, and then re-recording on the same cylinder with sounds of his children. (This is why some of Mapleson’s cylinders are precariously thin). One such cylinder arrived with this donation, containing a recording of his children wishing “merry Christmas.”

The Gadski Aida trio may in fact be new; haven't checked the rest.

Takeaway is that the NYPL [having gotten burned on its last issue (1985) of the Maplesons (I believe they still have a pile of unsold LP sets)] is undertaking a new transfer, involving digital technology, possibly involving slow-speed graphic mapping if I were to guess. If anything on this planet is in dire need of *careful* digital noise reduction, it's the Maplesons.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

The Times had an article as well.

I got into hot water on another forum, by titling my thread on this: "Another example of analogue recordings succumbing to digitization." I suppose I needed a 😁.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

I saw the _Times_ article. I remember reading that the digitization process involves a laser, I'm guessing some sort of confocal microscope/optical profilometer. Then the computer can "read" it and turn it into an audio signal. This means that one doesn't need to damage the fragile wax. Also, there are some broken cylinders, which the computer could also "read" and reconstitute; since they are broken, they haven't been played, so they might sound better than some of the intact cylinders. Along with the recordings (live from the Met, not made in a recording studio!), there are some diligently filled diaries showing the workings of the Met at that time. The digitization would mean they can be accessed by anyone with a New York public library card, I think. The article I read mentioned some of these recordings had been stored in a residence for decades; they will now become the property of the library, even after digitization. So they were maybe not strictly "lost" but still unavailable to the public and to researchers. (Though the _Times_ article mentions they had been transferred to magnetic tape and LP in the 1980s.) Let's hope the archivists and researchers can put this resource to good use. Glad they are now being managed by professionals.


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