Archives for March 21, 2017

From 2007:

In 1908 Percy Grainger persuaded the Gramophone Company to record Joseph Taylor in the studio. It was the first time that the voice of a “Genuine Peasant Folksinger” (as the label described Taylor in its promotional material) had ever been commercially recorded for posterity. Taylor didn’t much care for the process, claiming that singing into an acoustical horn was “lahk singin’ with a muzzle on,” but that didn’t stop him from doing his best. He cut a dozen songs, of which nine were released….

Read the whole thing here.

“I believe that a production should be based on feeling—again, on the idea of communion. I mean a communion among the artist, the actors, the audience, and the wider world. After all, when you listen to great music—let’s say a piece by Mozart—it’s a direct conversation that you’re having with him. Mozart is sitting there in a chair, you’re sitting next to him, and you proceed to have a talk—in a musical language that is pleasant and even moving. And I believe that the less Mozart or any artist talks about himself, the more, finally, he gives of himself in communal terms.”

Jean Renoir, interviewed by Gideon Bachmann (Contact, June 1960)