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  • Tempos of older recordings.

    JBacalJ
    JBacalJ
    Were conductors in the early days of LP records ever "pressured" to make their tempos faster than they might otherwise in order to fit the work or movement onto a single side of the record?

    Curious,
    Jay
  • J
    J
    Well, I don't know for certain about LPs, but in very earlier days (i.e. in the age of the 78rpm record) it was essential for composers to have a "hit" which only lasted 3 or 4 minutes at the most. Witness the success of composers like Puccini (Che gelida manina, Un bel di vedremo, Vissi d'arte ) Leoncavallo (Vesti la giubba) or Cilea (Io son l'umille ancella) to name but a few...

    Where that leaves the likes of Wagner with his protracted arguments is a moot point: he's probably be horrified that his art could be demeaned in such a cavalier fashion.
  • M
    M
    The length of Argentinian Tango pieces is a direct result of 78 rpm records. Tango was media music from the start on.
  • M
    M
    while i don't know of a circumstance in orchestral music, charles tournemire indeed recorded his famous victimae paschali laudes at an accelerated tempo so it would fit on the recording media. what ensued was a generation of organists that intentionally played his work too fast until scholarship caught up.

    yes. i would approach tempo with caution if the source was an early recording and it just didn't feel right.
  • A
    A
    last edited
    last edited

    @JBacal said:

    Were conductors in the early days of LP records ever "pressured" to make their tempos faster than they might otherwise in order to fit the work or movement onto a single side of the record?

    Curious,
    Jay


    No. Technically there was no reason to do so as long the music did not exceed 35 minutes. The duration of a vinyl 12"/30 cm 33-1/3 RPM long-playing (LP) format where typical up to 25 minutes. For classical music it was extended to over 30 minutes for one side, maximum I know of is 34 minutes. As longer as one side had to be, as lower was the sonic quality ---> everything above 22 minutes per side was considered reduced sonic quality.

    .
  • W
    W
    I have an LP that was like that. It had Beethoven's 5th on one side, and Schubert's Unfinished on the other. It was not a cut rate one, either. A 70s RCA release with Ozawa conducting, a good performance, but the sound was definitely lower fidelity. On the other hand, some London Records FFRR releases such as the Mahler cycle by Solti, are still higher quality sound than CD. Though they do get worn, especially when you play them nine thousand times...
  • S
    S
    Dear Jay.

    Of course, in the really early days of recordingd, they where under a big time-pressure. You can read about this in the autobiographie "Am I too loud?" of Gerald Moore (a very famous piano accompanist, you maybe know him from the Schubert recordings with Fischer-Dieskau). In his book, he talks a lot about how stressy it was, to bring a longer Schubert Song on tape in a specific time.

    On the other hand, many of the older (and old) recordings of the symphonic repertoire are much slower than they are used to be played today. Like in the most genres, the tempo becomes faster over the decades and the pich becomes higher.

    Best regards, and sorry for my bad english,

    Stephan Kanyar
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