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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2020
The Regordosa-Turull wax cylinder collection, held at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona, is unique among early recording collections. It contains 358 cylinders recorded by the textile industrialist Ruperto Regordosa, mostly at his Barcelona home, featuring prominent Spanish and non-Spanish singers of opera and zarzuela, as well as the composer Isaac Albéniz. This article aims to establish the significance of the collection for the study both of the amateur recording culture that existed alongside commercial phonograph recordings and of performance practices in opera and zarzuela. By examining the broader characteristics of the collection and textual sources from the period, and by closely analysing some of the cylinders, this article explores how Regordosa adopted (and in some cases adapted) certain generic conventions employed in commercial recordings of the time, and what the implications of this are when considering these early recordings as documents of performance practice.
1 Xavier Turull was a Catalan violinist who acquired the collection in the 1960s from the Regordosa family and bequeathed it to the Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona, in 2000.
2 A few of the cylinders are not of music but of, for example, imitations by mimics of public speakers or of animals. Some of the pieces are recorded over two, three or even as many as four cylinders, and the implications of this will be discussed below.
3 For archiving and curation purposes, Christopher Ann Paton distinguishes between commercial and non-commercial recordings, with home recordings being a particular type of the latter. See Paton, , ‘Appraisal of Sound Recordings for Textual Archivists’, Archival Issues, 22 (1997), 117–32Google Scholar. I have opted for the term ‘amateur recordings’ here because none of the categories proposed by Paton captures the sorts of practice discussed in this article: while all of Regordosa’s cylinders (as well as the Block, Mapleson and Pérez collections – see below, notes 4 – 6) are certainly non-commercial, so are a number of other types of recordings (for example, ethnographic recordings) whose study would not be relevant to the questions raised here. The term ‘home recordings’ would also be inaccurate, as Regordosa sometimes recorded at the Fonda de Oriente, an inn in Cordoba. This does not, however, detract from the fact that the use of the home as a space would in many cases be a significant factor in the production of these recordings, as we shall see.
4 The Dawn of Recording: The Julius Block Cylinders, 3 CDs (West Chester, PA: Marston Records, 2008; 53011-2). Block’s whole collection, including spoken-word cylinders, amounts to about 215 recordings.
5 The Mapleson Cylinders, New York Public Library, 6 LPs (New York, 1985).
6 However, unlike Regordosa, Miralles Segarra, Pérez and Aznar all owned significant numbers of commercial recordings on wax cylinder.
7 Descriptions of the items in the collection, as well as digitizations of some of the cylinders, may be accessed at the Museo Etsit; see <http://colteleco.webs.upv.es/index_cat.php?letra=c&sel_c=1&page=5> (accessed 12 November 2018).
8 The Porta cylinders (among other recordings from the Pérez collection) were transferred to CD as Antiguas grabaciones fonográficas aragonesas, 1898–1907: La colección de cilindros para fonógrafo de Leandro Pérez, Coda-Out Edición (Zaragoza: Gobierno de Aragón, 2010; C OUT 3036).
9 For example, an unnamed piece for piccolo and piano: Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, CL/308.
10 A selection of about 50 cylinders is currently available online free of charge at Memòria Digital de Catalunya, Fons de cilindres sonors, <http://mdc.csuc.cat/cdm/landingpage/collection/sonorbc> (accessed 2 October 2018). Most other cylinders can be listened to in digital (.wav) format at the Biblioteca de Catalunya itself free of charge, or acquired for €0.50 through Venda en línia de reproduccions digitals, <https://cofre.bnc.cat/> (accessed 2 October 2018). Issues concerning the digitization of cylinders and how this affects the conclusions we can reach about the collection will be discussed below.
11 To date, only one book-length study of early recording technologies in this part of Europe has been published: Gómez-Montejano, Mariano, El fonógrafo en España: Cilindros españoles (Madrid: Mariano Gómez-Montejano, 2005)Google Scholar. The book contains a wealth of meticulous information about the earliest commercial recordings in Spain made on wax cylinders (c.1896 –1905), but it is the work of a keen collector rather than a fully critical historiographical study. The same can be said about the numerous contributions that appeared between 2002 and 2010 in Girant a 78 rpm, the newsletter of the Associació per a la Salvaguarda del Patrimoni Enregistrat (a Catalonia-based association for the conservation of recordings). A more critical account, though still limited in scope, can be found in Eva Moreda Rodríguez, ‘Prefiguring the Spanish Recording Diva: How Gabinetes fonográficos (Phonography Studios) Changed Listening Practices, 1898–1905’, Listening to Music: People, Practices and Experiences, ed. Helen Barlow and David Rowland (Milton Keynes: Open University, 2017), <https://ledbooks.org/proceedings2017/2017/02/27/prefiguring-the-spanish-recording-diva-how-gabinetes-fonograficos-changed-listening-practices-1898-1905/> (accessed 9 October 2018).
12 The most significant collections of Spanish-produced wax cylinders (most of which are commercial) are held at ERESBIL (Archivo Vasco de la Música) and the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid.
13 The reasons for this appear to be, first and foremost, practical: amateur producers of recordings do not always make copies of their results, so that once the recording is lost, it is lost forever; and there are no catalogues or business records which can alert researchers to the existence of these collections. More generally, amateur recordings might be associated with lack of professionalism or a relaxation in standards.
14 Jones, Steve, ‘The Cassette Underground’, Popular Music and Society, 14/1 (1990), 75–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bryce Merrill, ‘Music to Remember Me By: Technologies of Memory in Home Recording’, Symbolic Interaction, 33 (2010), 456–74; Paul Long, Sarah Baker, Lauren Istvandity and Jez Collins, ‘A Labour of Love: The Affective Archives of Popular Music Culture’, Archives and Records, 38 (2017), 61–79.
15 Philip, Robert, Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900 –1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Further bibliography includes Michael Chanan, Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music (London: Verso, 1995); Patrick Feaster, ‘Framing the Mechanical Voice: Generic Conventions of Early Sound Recording’, Folklore Forum, 32 (2001), 57–102; Philip, Performing Music in the Age of Recording (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, ‘Portamento and Musical Meaning’, Journal of Musicological Research, 25 (2006), 233 – 61; Nicholas Cook, ‘Performance Analysis and Chopin’s Mazurkas’, Musicae scientiae, 11 (2007), 183 –207; Feaster, ‘“The Following Record”: Making Sense of Phonographic Performance, 1877–1908’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 2007); Leech-Wilkinson, ‘Sound and Meaning in Recordings of Schubert’s “Die junge Nonne”’, Musicae scientiae, 11 (2007), 209–36; Rebecca Plack, ‘The Substance of Style: How Singing Creates Sound in Lieder Recordings, 1902–1939’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 2008); Leech-Wilkinson, The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Recorded Musical Performance (London: Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, 2009); Cook, ‘The Ghost in the Machine: Towards a Musicology of Recordings’, Musicae scientiae, 14/2 (2010), 3 –21; Neal Peres da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Cook, Beyond the Score: Music as Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Massimo Zicari, ‘“Ah! non credea mirarti” nelle fonti discografiche di primo Novecento: Adelina Patti e Luisa Tetrazzini’, Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 34/35 (2014/15), 193–222; and Zicari, ‘Expressive Tempo Modifications in Adelina Patti’s Recordings: An Integrated Approach’, Empirical Musicology Review, 12 (2017), 42–56.
16 These include Kenneth Chew, Victor, Talking Machines, 1877–1914: Some Aspects of the Early History of the Gramophone (London: HMSO, 1967)Google Scholar; Oliver Read and Walter L. Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph (Indianapolis, IN: H. W. Sams, 1976); Roland Gelatt, Edison’s Fabulous Phonograph 1877–1977 (London: Collier Macmillan, 1977); Daniel Marty, Histoire illustrée du phonographe (Paris: Vilo, 1979); Paul Charbon, La machine parlante (Paris: J.-P. Gyss, 1981); James P. Kraft, Stage to Studio: Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890 –1950 (Baltimore, MD, and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1996); Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1999); William Howland Kennedy, Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890 –1945 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2003); Nathan David Bowers, ‘Creating a Home Culture for the Phonograph: Women and the Rise of Sound Recordings in the United States, 1877–1913’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2007); David Patmore, ‘Selling Sounds: Recording and the Record Business’, The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music, ed. Nicholas Cook, Eric Clarke, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and John Rink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 120 –39; Arved Ashby, Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010); Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010); Adam Krims, ‘The Changing Functions of Music Recordings and Listening Practices’, Recorded Music: Performance, Culture and Technology, ed. Amanda Bayley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 68–85; and João da Silva, ‘Mechanical Instruments and Phonography: The Recording Angel of Historiography’, Radical Musicology, 6 (2012–13), <http://www.radical-musicology.org.uk/2012.htm>.
17 Johnson, Peter, ‘Illusion and Aura of the Classical Audio Recording’, Recorded Music, ed. Bayley, 37–51 (p. 37)Google Scholar.
18 Gauß, Stefan, ‘Listening to the Horn: On the Cultural History of the Phonograph and the Gramophone’, Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe, ed. Morat, Daniel (New York and Oxford: Berghan, 2014), 71–100 (p. 87)Google Scholar.
19 Feaster, Patrick, ‘“Rise and Obey the Command”: Performative Fidelity and the Exercise of Phonographic Power’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 24 (2012), 357–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 358–9).
20 Ashby, Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction, 30, 97.
21 Feaster, ‘Framing the Mechanical Voice’, 59.
22 Margarida Ullate i Estanyol, ‘Albéniz, Flamenco and Other Rarities within the Regordosa-Turull Collection’, paper delivered at the Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger, Lisbon, 17 April 2015, available at <https://www.bnc.cat/content/download/101705/1562648> (accessed August 2019), 15–16.
23 Leech-Wilkinson, The Changing Sound of Music, chapter 3, §§ 21–3.
24 Before that, phonographs were indeed sporadically exhibited and demonstrated in Spain as a scientific curiosity, but very few Spaniards owned a phonograph for private use, and commercially produced recordings were not yet available for sale (no recordings from these demonstrations have survived).
25 For example, in the United Kingdom. See Chew, Talking Machines, 13–16, 26.
26 The most exhaustive published secondary source on the gabinetes remains Gómez-Montejano, El fonógrafo en España. See also Moreda Rodríguez, ‘Prefiguring the Spanish Recording Diva’. Other than that, key primary sources for the study of the period are two publications, both entitled Boletín fonográfico, published independently of each other in 1900–1, one in Madrid, the other in Valencia. (The Madrid Boletín was a supplement, published from 22 February 1901, to the magazine El cardo.) These are available at Hemeroteca Digital, El cardo, <http://hemerotecadigital.bne.es/details.vm?q=id:0028088575&lang=en> (accessed 9 October 2018), and at Biblioteca Valenciana Digital, Boletín fonográfico, <http://bivaldi.gva.es/es/consulta/registro.cmd?id=10000005644> (accessed 9 October 2018) respectively.
27 Moreda Rodríguez, ‘Prefiguring the Spanish Recording Diva’.
28 ‘El fonógrafo y el gramófono’, El cardo, 8 February 1901, 14; ‘Ecos’, Diario oficial de avisos de Madrid, 25 May 1901, 2.
29 Gauß, ‘Listening to the Horn’, 80.
30 ‘Notas varias’, Madrid científico, 203 (1898), 9; A. Marín, ‘La impresión de fonogramas’, Boletín fonográfico (Valencia), 2 (1900), 19–22 Google Scholar; ‘Membranas y bocinas’, Boletín fonográfico (Valencia), 25 (1901), 13–14; Álvaro Ureña, ‘Fonógrafos’ (advertisement), La época, 15 December 1902, 3.
31 Krims, ‘The Changing Functions of Music Recordings’, 69.
32 ‘Nuevo establecimiento’, El correo militar, 19 July 1897, 2; Cilindrique, ‘El arte y el gramófono’, El cardo, 22 December 1900, 14; ‘Industria fonográfica’, El cardo, 22 January 1901, 14; Álvaro Ureña, [untitled], El cardo, 8 March 1901, 15; Cilindrique, ‘Cosas de fonografía’, El cardo, 30 March 1901, 15–16; Cilindrique, ‘De fonografía’, El cardo, 8 September 1901, 14; Cilindrique, ‘Asuntos fonográficos’, El cardo, 8 October 1901, 14; Álvaro Ureña, ‘Fonógrafos’ (advertisement), La época, 15 December 1902, 3.
33 For example, middle-class ideologies of the parlour in the US have been studied in Kennedy, Recorded Music in American Life, and Bowers, ‘Creating a Home Culture for the Phonograph’.
34 Ilustre Colegio de Abogados de Córdoba (Cordoba Bar Association), Almanaque del Diario de Córdoba (Cordoba, 1899), 22. I am also grateful to Margarida Ullate i Estanyol, curator of sound at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, for information on this matter.
35 ‘Hojas sueltas’, Los deportes, 15 April 1899, 142; see also La música ilustrada hispano-americana, 25 April 1899, 10.
36 ‘Notas locales’, La vanguardia, 28 January 1896, 2; 27 July 1902, 2; 6 January 1904, 2; 27 January 1906, 2; and 21 May 1908, 2; ‘Sobre reclamaciones arancelarias’, La vanguardia, 24 November 1897, 2. Perhaps most notably, in 1913, together with other Catalan businessmen, Regordosa campaigned against a state law that reduced working hours for workers; see ‘Los fabricantes de la Montaña’, La vanguardia, 18 October 1913, 4.
37 ‘Notas locales’, La vanguardia, 22 December 1899, 2.
38 ‘Notas locales’, La vanguardia, 3 April 1912, 2.
39 Of the zarzuela and opera singers recorded by Regordosa, only two do not seem to have had a stage career: a Señora Pastor de Hernández, who made six zarzuela recordings for Regordosa, and a Señor Reinlein, who recorded three tenor opera arias and Leoncavallo’s Mattinata. Despite the German name, there was a Reinlein family living in Barcelona at the time. Both individuals reveal themselves as competent singers, indebted to the romanticized interpretations (that is, the use of rubato and portamento) that they would probably have seen on the Barcelona stages.
40 Shambarger, Peter, ‘Cylinder Records: An Overview’, ARSC Journal, 26 (1995), 135–61Google Scholar (p. 135).
41 This is Manuel Fernández Caballero’s concert song La riojanica, premièred in 1906. ‘Jota de la Riojanica por la distinguida tiple Srta. Gurina’, CIL-203–4. Titles and reference numbers follow the catalogue of the Biblioteca de Catalunya.
42 For example, La bohème (Liceu première 10 April 1898, to great acclaim: ‘Racconto, de la ópera Bohème por la distinguida soprano señora De Roma’, CIL-95–6; ‘Vals de Musette, de la òpera La Bohème cantado por la distinguida Srta. Casandro’, CIL-132; ‘Vecchia zimarra, de La Bohème por Perelló de Segurola’, CIL-227; ‘Racconto, Bohème por la Sra. Palermi’, CIL-262–3; ‘Addio a la zimarra, de La Boheme cantado por el distinguido bajo Sr. Rosato, que Dios conserve muchos años’, CIL-279; ‘Raconto, de la ópera Bohème por el distinguido tenor Sr. Iribarne’, CIL-315; ‘Addio senza ranco por la Sra. Palermi’, CIL-375); Die Walküre (25 January 1899: ‘Wagner, Valquíria, gran escena de la daga cantada por el eminente tenor, señor Constantí’, CIL-75; ‘Cant de la primavera, de La valquíria d’en Wagner cantat per l’eminent artista tenor Constantí’, CIL-76–7; ‘Salida de Brunilda, en la ópera Valquiria cantada por la distinguida artista Doña Angelina Homs’, CIL-305); Giordano’s Fedora (April 1899: ‘Canción de la Donna russa en la ópera Fedora por el distinguido barítono Sr. Aristi’, CIL-84); Mascagni’s Iris (29 December 1900: ‘Serenata del Iris de Mascagni ; impresionada en su tono original por el eminente tenor Sr. Iribarne’, CIL-314); Felip Pedrell’s Els Pirineus (4 January 1902: ‘Canzone de la stella, de I Pirinei de Pedrell, por la egreguia [sic] Srta. Grassot’, CIL-320–1); and Tosca (30 March 1902: ‘Romanza del segundo acto de la Tosca de Puccini; cantado por la eminente diva Avelina Carrera’, CIL-117; ‘Fragmento primer acto de la ópera Tosca de Puccini ; cantado por la eminente diva Avelina Carrera’, CIL-118; ‘[Vissi] d’arte por la egregia tiple Srta. Adriana Palermi’, CIL-264–5; ‘Recondita armonia: romanza de Tosca / por el tenor Sr. Iribarne’, CIL-301; ‘E lucevan le stelle: romanza de Tosca / por el tenor Sr. Iribarne’, CIL-308). On the other hand, Alberto Franchetti’s Germania was premièred not at the Liceu, but at the Teatro Novedades, in September 1905 (‘Germania, raconto por el distinguido barítono, Sr. Sammarco’, CIL-233 – 4; ‘Germania di Franchetti, Addio di Worm per Sammarco e Goya’, CIL-235).
43 For example, Apolinar Brull’s La buena sombra (1898: ‘Dúo de La buena sombra’, CIL-363–4); Manuel Fernández Caballero’s Gigantes y cabezudos (premièred in 1898: ‘Romanza de Gigantes y cabezudos’, CIL-215); Luis Arnedo’s La golfemia (1900: ‘Canción del abrigo, en La golfemia’, CIL-102); Federico Chueca’s El bateo (1901: ‘Dúo del Bateo’, CIL-190–1) and La alegría de la huerta (1901: ‘Dúo en La alegría de la huerta’, CIL-365– 6); Amadeo Vives’s Doloretes (1901: ‘Aria de La Doloretes’, CIL-216); Ruperto Chapí’s El puñao de rosas (1902: ‘Dúo del Puñao de rosas’, CIL-196 –7); and Vives’s Lola Montes (1902: ‘Canción de Lola Montes’, CIL-205).
44 Merrill, ‘Music to Remember Me By’, 458–64.
45 This is consonant with other national contexts, for example in France (see Gelatt, Edison’s Fabulous Phonograph, 88, 102). With the possible exception of the US-based Italian engineer Giovanni Bettini (see Read and Welch, From Tinfoil to Stereo, 76), the phenomenon of ‘celebrity records’ did not become widespread until 1903–4 (see Wilson, Alexandra, ‘Galli-Curci Comes to Town’, The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Cowgill, Rachel and Poriss, Hilary (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 328–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 330)).
46 These include Lina Cassandro, Concha Dahlander, Juan Delor and Amalia de Roma.
47 Other singers who recorded both for Regordosa and for the gabinetes include the zarzuela tiple (soprano) Marina Gurina and the operatic singers Andrés Perelló de Segurola (bass) and Josefina Huguet (soprano), the last recording for as many as four gabinetes. The zarzuela singers Fidel Alba, Pepita Alcácer, Marina Gurina and Paco Martínez all recorded for the Compagnie Française du Gramophone during the multinational’s visits to Barcelona between 1899 and 1902, before it opened a branch in the city, as did Huguet and Perelló de Segurola. See Kelly, Alan, The Gramophone Company Limited: The Spanish Catalogue, Including Portuguese Recordings (London: Alan Kelly, 2006)Google Scholar, unpaginated.
48 These include Avelina Carrera, Edoardo Garbin, Mario Sammarco and José Torres de Luna. See The Fonotipia Catalogue Based on the Fonotipia Ledgers, 1904 –1939, compiled by H. Frank Andrews, CD-ROM (East Barnet: Symposium Records, 2002), ref. 017:681.85(4). Fonotipia was one of the most successful recording companies in Europe before the First World War, specializing in opera and widely regarded today as a key source for the study of operatic singing in the early twentieth century. See di Fonotipia, Societá Italiana, Societá Italiana di Fonotipia (Milano) (record catalogue) (Milan: Fonotipia, 1907)Google Scholar.
49 Simon Trezise, ‘The Recorded Document: Interpretation and Discography’, The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music, ed. Cook et al., 186 –209; Katz, Capturing Sound, 45.
50 ‘Canción del toreador en la ópera Carmen. Por el distinguido barítono sr. Aristi’, CIL-85; ‘Plegaria de Fretschutz [sic], cantada por la eminente diva Avelina Carrera’, CIL-120–1; ‘Aria segundo acto Favorita, cantada por el barítono Sr. Don Juan Delors [sic]’, CIL-44; ‘Romanza de Antonia, de los Cuentos de Hoffmann, por la sra. Palermi’, CIL-258.
51 Peres da Costa, Off the Record, 17; Inja Stanović, Early Recordings Overview, <https://injastanovic.com/early-recordings-overview/> (accessed 25 March 2019).
52 ‘Canción de la Donna russa en la ópera Fedora. Por el distinguido barítono sr. Aristi’, CIL-84; ‘Flora: habanera dedicada a la eminente diva Avelina Carrera, cantada por ella misma’, CIL-124; ‘Andante primer acto de I Puritani, cantado por el distinguido barítono don Juan Delor’, CIL-36.
53 Género chico was zarzuela’s most popular subgenre around 1900, consisting of one-hour plays typically on a light or comic subject, with music often inspired by traditional songs rather than bel canto. Although typically associated with Madrid, género chico was also very popular in Barcelona, and Regordosa might well have been a regular of the theatres along the Paral·lel avenue, as was a significant part of the Barcelona bourgeoisie.
54 ‘Variaciones sobre un tema de La Traviata, por el sr. Nori’, CIL-59.
55 ‘Espectáculos’, La vanguardia, 4 May 1903, 4.
56 ‘Espectáculos’, La esquella de la torratxa, 5 July 1901, 4.
57 The aria was simply a contrafactum of La bohème’s ‘Vecchia zimarra’, with La golfemia being a parody of Puccini’s opera. Parodies (of operas, zarzuela grande and other género chico works) were very common in género chico.
58 For examples of synergies between domestic music-making and early recording technologies in the US context, see Bowers, ‘Creating a Home Culture for the Phonograph’, iv; Taylor, Timothy D., ‘The Commodification of Music at the Dawn of the Era of “Mechanical Music”’, Ethnomusicology, 51 (2007), 281–305 Google Scholar (p. 281); and Mark Katz, ‘The Amateur in the Age of Mechanical Music’, The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, ed. Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 459–78 (p. 460).
59 ‘Sr. Regordosa acepte este Racconto de Cavalleria, que me esmeraré en cantarlo lo mejor posible’, CIL-300.
60 ‘Racconto di Santuzza en la Cavalleria, por la distinguida artista Sra. Gurina’, CIL-207.
61 ‘Romanza de La Trapera, por la distinguida artista Srta. Gurina’, CIL-202; ‘Romanzas de Gigantes y cabezudos, por Marina Gurina’, CIL-215.
62 ‘Aria de la Doloretes, por la distinguida artista Srta. Gurina’, CIL-216.
63 Peres da Costa, Off the Record, 14.
64 A conspicuous issue here is how to determine the speed at which the cylinder would have been recorded, and hence determine the speed that should be used in the transfer: indeed, even though commercial standards in this respect existed (in Spain and elsewhere), they were not always consistently used, and there is certainly no evidence that amateur recordists stuck to them. For further discussion of cylinder speed, see Leech-Wilkinson, The Changing Sound of Music, chapter 2, §§ 22–3, and Poole, Adrian, ‘Determining Playback Speeds of Early Ethnographic Wax Cylinder Recordings: Technical and Methodological Issues’, Ethnomusicology Forum, 24 (2015), 73 –101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 74 –5). Changes in speed would influence timbre and pitch; one method of determining whether the right speed has been used in a transfer is to compare the pitch of the transfer with the pitch at which the original was made. In the case of the Regordosa collection, most cylinders are in the same key or within a tone (ascending or descending) of the original key as printed. This is not conclusive proof, since the piece might not have originally been recorded in the printed key (singers often transposed pieces to suit their range) and/or temperature changes might have altered the original pitch of the cylinder. It may be ventured that most of the collection’s transfer speeds are roughly correct, but it is still risky to draw broader conclusions about timbre on the basis of the available transfers.
65 Rodicio, Emilio Casares, ‘Voz’, Diccionario de la zarzuela: España e Hispanoamérica, ed. Rodicio, Casares, 2 vols., 2nd edn (Madrid: Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales, 2006)Google Scholar, ii, 941–4 (p. 941).
66 ‘Noticias de teatros’, La vanguardia, 10 September 1895; ‘Crónica’, La libertad, 20 July 1897, 2; ‘Teatros’, El pueblo, 15 August 1904, 3.
67 ‘Salida de Lohengrin, cantada por el distinguido tenor, señor Constantí ’, CIL-67; ‘Despedida del cisne, de la ópera Lohengrin, cantado por el eminente tenor, señor Constantí ’, CIL-68; ‘Wagner, Valquíria, gran escena de la daga, cantada por el eminente tenor, señor Constantí ’, CIL-75; ‘Cant de la primavera, de La valquíria d’en Wagner, cantat per l-eminent artista tenor Constantí ’, CIL-76–7. All these recordings were in Italian, as was normal at the Liceu in those days. His recordings for Regordosa also include verismo and French grand opera – in which he sounded more at ease than in Wagner.
68 ‘Dúo de Lohengrin’, Biblioteca Nacional de España, CL/87; ‘Valkiria: Canto Primavera, por el tenor Constantí ’, held at ERESBIL (Fondo Familia Ybarra; no reference number).
69 Both the collection of the Ybarra family (based in Bilbao), now at ERESBIL, and that of Pedro Aznar (based in Barbastro), now at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, contain sizeable numbers of flamenco cylinders.
70 Antoni Torrent i Marquès suggests that Spanish was the language predominantly used in Barcelona record shops until well into the twentieth century. Torrent i Marquès, ‘Efectes secundaris dels discs a 78 rpm’, Girant a 78 rpm, 2 (2004), 5–12 (p. 6).
71 Leech-Wilkinson, The Changing Sound of Music, chapter 2, § 25.
72 Trezise, ‘The Recorded Document’, 189; Peres da Costa, Off the Record, 17.
73 ‘Improvisación al piano’, CIL-167–9.
74 ‘Vals en do menor’, CIL-173; ‘Serenata de les impressions d’Espanya’, CIL-174.
75 ‘Edvard Grieg, danza número 2’, CIL-154.
76 ‘Variaciones sobre un tema de la Traviata’, CIL-59; ‘Variaciones sobre un tema del Rigoletto’, CIL-62.
77 i Marquès, Antoni Torrent, ‘Una recerca interessant (1º part)’, Girant a 78 rpm, 8 (2005), 9–11 Google Scholar; Torrent i Marquès, ‘Els primers enregistraments a casa nostra’, Girant a 78 rpm, 11 (2008), 6 –13; Torrent i Marquès, ‘Sardanes a 78 rpm: Enregistraments durant els anys 1906 –1907’, Girant a 78 rpm, 15 (2009), 13–17.
78 Feaster, ‘Framing the Mechanical Voice’, 57.
79 Feaster, ‘“The Following Record”’, iv.
80 Plack, ‘The Substance of Style’, 15–19, 44, 70; Leech-Wilkinson, The Changing Sound of Music, chapter 4, §§ 10–15; chapter 7, §§ 5–6; Sarah Potter, ‘Changing Vocal Style and Technique in Britain During the Long Nineteenth Century’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds, 2014), 103–13.
81 Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style, 99; Plack, ‘The Substance of Style’, 12, 19; Potter, ‘Changing Vocal Style and Technique’, 67–89.
82 Peres da Costa, Off the Record, 195–249; Zicari, ‘“Ah! Non credea mirarti”’; Zicari, ‘Expressive Tempo Modifications’.
83 Crutchfield, Will, ‘Vocal Ornamentation in Verdi: The Phonographic Evidence’, 19th-Century Music, 7 (1983–4), 3–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
84 For a succinct history of changes in the format of spoken announcements on Columbia records, see Shambarger, ‘Cylinder Records’, 147–8.
85 For example, in ‘Malagueña, cantada y acompañada por Paco el de Montilla, impresionada por el Sr. Regordosa en la Fonda de Oriente, en Córdoba’, CIL-40.
86 The surviving gabinete cylinders suggest that the announcement was always made in Spanish, even when the song was in a different language. No Catalan-language music recorded by the gabinetes survives, but a few Basque- and Galician-language songs do; in these, the announcement is still made in Spanish.
87 Feaster, ‘“The Following Record”’, 305.
88 Ibid., 311.
89 Apart from Regordosa, two further male voices are heard in the announcements, both on several occasions; there is no indication as to whom they might have belonged.
90 Feaster, ‘“The Following Record”’, 313.
91 ‘Seguidilla de la ópera Carmen, cantada por la distinguida artista Srta. Galán’, CIL-307.
92 Peres da Costa, Off the Record, 17.
93 Gelatt, Edison’s Fabulous Phonograph, 110.
94 Zicari convincingly argues (contradicting previous research) that there is no solid evidence that performers would have chosen faster tempos to fit pieces onto cylinders: once longer cylinders and discs were introduced, tempos did not consistently slow down. See Zicari, ‘“Ah! Non credea mirarti”’, 194.
95 Of the surviving commercial cylinders, there is only one instance of this practice: a recording from Lohengrin made by the tenor Lamberto Alonso for the Valencia gabinete Blas Cuesta, split over two cylinders (ERESBIL, FA60/214 and FA60/217). Catalogues, advertisements and the press also fail to mention this practice, suggesting that it was not widespread.
96 ‘Vals de Château Margaux’, Biblioteca Nacional de España, CL/4.
97 ‘Vals de Château Margaux cantado por la Sra. Pastor de Hernández’, CIL-161–2.
98 The only monograph to deal with singing (or indeed performance practice) in zarzuela is Ramón Arribas, Regidor, La voz en la zarzuela (Madrid: Real Musical, 1991)Google Scholar. The subject has also been discussed in Casares Rodicio, ‘Voz’.
99 Muñoz, Matilde, Historia de la zarzuela y el género chico (Madrid: Editorial Tesoro, 1946), 245 Google Scholar; José Deleito y Piñuela, Origen y apogeo del ‘Género chico’ (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1949), 68; Casares Rodicio, ‘Voz’.
100 Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines, 125; Leech-Wilkinson, The Changing Sound of Music, chapter 3, § 95.
101 Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style, 7, 38, 220; Timmers, Renée, ‘Vocal Expression in Recorded Performances of Schubert Songs’, Musicae scientiae, 11 (2007), 237–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peres da Costa, Off the Record, 189; Zicari, ‘Expressive Tempo Modifications’, 42.
102 ‘Cuplé de La Viejecita, por la distinguida artista Srta. Alcácer’, CIL-361. Alcácer recorded six pieces for Regordosa (three on her own, three with a Señor Fernández), all but one (from La verbena de la paloma, premièred in 1894) of relatively recent género chico successes, further confirming Regordosa’s use of recordings as a memento of live performance. La viejecita was a major success of the genre in 1897.
103 ‘Calvo-Vico’, La vanguardia, 18 August 1893, 5; ‘Teatro Romea’, El liberal, 20 September 1895, 3; ‘Teatro de la Princesa’, El liberal, 31 October 1895, 4.
104 Mari Luz González, ‘Alcácer, Pepita’, Diccionario de la zarzuela: España e Hispanoamérica, ed. Casares Rodicio, i, 134. See also ‘El teatro en provincias’, El arte de el teatro, 15 January 1907, 23.
105 ‘Ch.’, ‘Teatro de Maravillas’, El imparcial, 1 August 1896, 3; ‘Teatros’, El mundo artístico, 63 (1901), 2.
106 ‘Teatro Romea’, El liberal, 20 September 1895, 3.
107 ‘Teatros’, El mundo artístico, 48 (1901), 2; ‘Teatros’, El mundo artístico, 63 (1901), 2; ‘El teatro en provincias’, El arte de el teatro, 15 January 1907, 23.
108 ‘Teatro Romea’, La Iberia, 2 November 1896, 2; ‘Romea’, El país, 5 December 1896, 3; ‘Romea’, La correspondencia de España, 5 December 1896, 2.
109 Blanca del Carmen for the gabinete Viuda de Aramburo, ‘La viejecita: Canción del Espejo’, Biblioteca Nacional de España, CL/434.
110 Manuel Fernández Caballero, ‘Para morir de amor ciego / Brindis, canción de la viejecita (La viejecita)’ (Barcelona: Compagnie Française du Gramophone, 1908; 0263007, 0263008).
111 This is the case for other roles too, such as Pilar in Fernández Caballero’s Gigantes y cabezudos being recorded by singers as different as Lucrecia Arana, Blanca del Carmen, Marina Gurina, Felisa Lázaro Ascensión Miralles, Pilar Pérez, Carlota Sandford and Adela Taberner.
112 Gaetano Donizetti, ‘Linda di Chamounix: O luce di quest’anima’ (Barcelona: G&T, 1902–3; 53141 7241F).
113 Gaetano Donizetti, ‘O luce di quest’anima’ (Milan: Victor, 1907; 52529).
114 ‘Allegro del primer acto de la Linda de Chamounix, cantado por la eminente diva Josefina Huguet’, CIL-328.
115 Indeed, coloratura sopranos such as Huguet were a relatively new development in the operatic world in the early years of recording technologies, following the decline of the drammatica d’agilitá. See de Sagarmínaga, Joaquín Martín, Diccionario de cantantes líricos españoles (Madrid: Acento, 1997), 177 Google Scholar.
116 Trezise, ‘The Recorded Document’, 193.
117 ‘Vals de la sombra de la ópera Dinorah, cantada por la señorita diva Josefina Huguet’, CIL-333.
118 Giacomo Meyerbeer, ‘Ombra leggera, Dinorah, Meyerbeer’ (Barcelona: Compagnie Française du Gramophone, 1906; 053073).
119 Giacomo Meyerbeer, ‘Ombra leggera, Dinorah, Meyerbeer’, Hugens y Acosta (Madrid, between 1896 and 1905), held at ERESBIL, FA60/018.
120 Crutchfield, ‘Vocal Ornamentation in Verdi’, 5, 7.
121 ‘Serenata de Schubert, cantada por la eminente diva Josefina Huguet’, CIL-346.
122 Schubert, Franz, Serenade (Camden, NJ: Victor, 1914 Google Scholar; 74431).
123 Plack, ‘The Substance of Style’, 19.
124 Kelly, The Gramophone Company Limited: The Spanish Catalogue.
125 Gramophone/His Master’s Voice, Orfeó Català (catalogue), 1916 (Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya, Cat 8/11).
126 John R. Bolig, The Victor Red Seal Discography, 2 vols. (Denver: Mainspring Press, 2004–6), ii: Double-Sided Series to 1930 (2006), 324.
127 ‘L’Aucellada de Janequin; cantada per l’Orfeó Català’, CIL-105.
128 ‘El Cant de la Senyera per l’Orfeó Català’, CIL-106.
129 As was the case with commercial recordings of the time, this might have been achieved by having performers moving closer to and further away from the horn at specific moments.