Difference between revisions of "Chicago Gramophone Society 50016-P, 50017-P"

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This page presents a discography of the Chicago Gramophone Society's first issue.

It is part of the site Classical 'Society' Records by Nick Morgan.

For dates of creation and latest update, please see 'Page information' in left sidebar.

Contents

This issue consisted of two double-sided discs containing the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for solo piano, by César Franck.

The work is divided into three sections, played continuously:

• Prelude. Moderato
• Chorale. Poco più lento
• Untitled (Fugue). Poco allegro

Side-breaks therefore cut across sections (see below).

Origination

System

Western Electric, under licence to Columbia Phonograph Co., as denoted by the logo Ⓦ preceding matrix numbers. This symbol cannot be searched for in MediaWiki, and so is not used in the above table.

Cuts

Recorded complete and uncut.

Availability

Issued late May or June 1927, in a limited edition of 200 copies, with leaflet (author unknown).
Price US $ 5.00 per set.
Deleted by January 1928, when sole documented pressing reported to be 'long [...] sold out'.^[1]

Sources

• Audition and inspection of original discs, formerly in author's collection (now donated to British Library, London, UK)
• Columbia matrix cards, Sony Music, New York^[2]

(The exact recording location is not certain. In 1917, Columbia 'Personal' Records were made in the Company's Master Manufacturing Department, at 102 West 38th Street, New York City; it is not known if this studio was still in use in 1927.)

• 'Special' (notice), The Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.1 No.5, February 1927, p.224
• 'The First Recording by an American Phonograph Society', The [Music Lovers'] Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.1 No.10, July 1927, p.442; unsigned review, probably written by Robert D. Darrell (1903-88)^[3]
• 'Pingos de cera...', in 'Discos e machinas falantes', O Paiz, Sunday 31 July 1927, p.14
• Abbott, Lawrence Jacob 'Rolls and Discs', The Outlook, Vol.146 No.14, 3 August 1927, pp.456-57

Notes

Commissioned and underwritten by Vories Fisher and Robert Pollak of the Chicago Gramophone Society.

This issue presented the first commercial recording of all this work. The next five to be issued were all recorded by pianists of the Franco-Belgian tradition:

• Blanche Selva, recorded 5 & 7 January 1929, issued on Columbia (France) LFX 168-70, (Italy) GQX 10750-52
• Alfred Cortot, recorded March 1929, issued on H.M.V. DB 1299-1300, Victor 7331-32
• Marcel Maas, recorded 6 July 1931, issued on Columbia (France) LFX 194-96
• Yvonne Lévy, recorded c.1931-32(?), issued on Tri-Ergon 1302-03
• Cécile Boutet de Monvel, recorded 21 April 1937, issued on Gramophone (France) L 1043-45

This issue preserves the only known recording by Marion Roberts, who died twelve days later in France. A full account of the circumstances of her death can be read on the Sound and vision blog of the British Library, London, UK.

Copies known

• British Library, London, UK
• Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, New York Public Library, New York City, USA
• Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings, Yale University, Newhaven, CT, USA^[4]

No copy known of accompanying leaflet

Other issues

No other issue known.

Transfers

Sound and vision blog, British Library, London, UK.

References

1. ↑ [Fisher,] Vories 'Recorded Remnants', Music Lovers' Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.2 No.4, January 1928, pp.134-36
2. ↑ Provided by kind courtesy of Michael H. Gray (personal communication, 18 September 2015)
3. ↑ Darrell, R.D. 'O Pioneer (A Half Century Later)', ARSC Journal, Vol.19 No.1, 1987, pp.4-10
4. ↑ I am grateful to Andrew Jones of Yale University for kindly forwarding details of these discs from the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings, as well as scans of labels, before I acquired my own copies (personal communication, 10 December 2015)