# Recording sound



## Aurelian (Sep 9, 2011)

In 1857 Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph, a device that could record sound, but not play it back.

In 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, but a better device was not made until the late 1880s.

Does anybody know how the composers of the 1890s reacted to this technology?

I wonder if the composers before sound recording ever thought of that idea. Photography had been around decades before sound recording. There are photographs of Chopin and Schumann. Did they (or other contemporaries) ever think "We can record pictures, why not sound also?"


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

At least Brahms used the technology.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

I recall that Tchaikovsky thought that music recording would revolutionize music learning.

Anton Rubinstein, who took many risks in his piano playing, refused to play for record, because he realized that people forgave him missing or omitting notes only because of the excitement of his surprising, improvisational style. If they listened to his playing multiple times, the surprises would be gone, and only mistakes would remain.

In this recording he is asked to play, but at the end he can be heard refusing.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

In 1888 a recording of Arthur Sullivan's song 'The Lost Chord' was etched onto a phonograph cylinder. Sullivan was astounded at this new technology, but had his reservations too.

At the time he said: "I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever." 

Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter to businessman Julius Block on Oct. 26, 1889, “The phonograph is certainly the most surprising, the most beautiful and the most interesting among all inventions that circumscribe the 19th century. Honor to the great inventor Edison!”

John Philip Sousa disliked recordings, mostly because he was not being paid for the widespread use of his music even though it was copyrighted.


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