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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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In Reply to: Number of Edits in modern Classical Recordings - Part Deux posted by Chris from Lafayette on November 22, 2010 at 15:08:43:
I read a story about the introduction of editing/over dubbing in the recording industry and Klemperer's reaction to it. The story was related by his daughter, who apparently was present. For those who don't know, the introduction of magnetic tape recording allowed for splicing/editing/overdubbing. Prior to that, recordings were committed 'direct to disk'. If a mistake was made, it was either allowed, or the entire take or side had to be completely re-recorded.
When Klemperer saw what the new tape processes was allowing, his daughter reports his face 'grew longer and longer' through the day, until he finally exclaimed "eine schwind". Swindle. It's a swindle. Klemperer instinctively understood the essence of the process, and immediately recoiled from it.
Other conductors never trusted the recording process, and limited their activities in it; in the case of Carlos Kleiber, severely. Celibidache, according to what I've read, reluctantly agreed to record, but only live performances.
I attend a fair amount of live, unamplified concerts. This season, as never before, every concert has seemed as a miracle, a real and true miracle, to me. Why? Think about it. Everywhere you go, virtually every minute of every single day, we're innundated by recorded sounds. Recorded, processed, electronically folded, stapled, manipulated, and mutilated. You think that typical internet hyperbole? Ask any recording producer/engineer/artist whether the sounds they record are completely free of equalization or processing? The very fact that some amount of electronic processing's necessary [even if it's just something as relatively benign as equalization] condemns recording as inherently artificial. Thus, in a world saturated with amplifiers, microphones, wire, loudspeakers, on and on ad nauseum, a concert with none of this, with nothing but musicians playing acoustic instruments really is miraculous.
Envision it: nothing but musicians playing musical instruments, the hall, and the air you share with them. From this musically corrupted 21st century perspective, it seems so amazing as to be almost beyond reality.
And yet, Stereophile, ostensibly devoted to, and entrusted with, the preservation of the pursuit of reproducing live sound without alteration [something called "high fidelity"] either implicitly, or more recently, explicitly rails against live, unamplified music in favor of recordings. And, they're getting militant about it. A recent editorial vehemently condemned unamplified concerts, while extolling the virtues of artificial sound [recordings].
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Follow Ups
- Klemperer-Kleiber-Celibidache vs Stereophile - Mike Porper 09:13:00 11/24/10 (1)
- RE: Klemperer-Kleiber-Celibidache vs Stereophile - Chris from Lafayette 09:51:51 11/24/10 (0)
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