Spanish
and French HMV Labels
The
two recordings above were made in Paris
in December 1902 and in April 1903,
probably by Cleveland Walcutt.
The
disc at the left above was recorded
by Fred Gaisberg on July 26, 1904, despite
the fact that it bears a matrix number
3467F, which should have belonged
to Cleveland Walcutt, the recordist
located in Paris. The disc on the right
was recorded in Paris on March 1, 1914
by Charles Scheuplein.
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Spanish
label, October 16, 1908
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French
label, early 1908
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The
matrix number of the disc on the left
below is 7217F, while that on
the right is 7530F. In their
original article in The Record Collector,
Vol. XXIII, Nos. 3 & 4, May
1976, Perkins, Kelly and Ward cite many
of the Walcott recordings before 1908
has having been made in various cities,
e.g., Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon,
Brussels, Amsterdam, and The Hague.
In a note following those listings,
they proposed that all of this series
before 1908 were probably recorded in
Paris, despite the other city locations
shown on the labels. Now some thirty
later, Kelly believes that the city
locations shown on the labels and the
1976 listings are indeed correct. Although
under the ægis of the Paris branch,
the factory at Ivry was not opened until
1907, while the plant in Barcelona was
opened in 1908.
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Barcelona,
1902
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Lisbon
1903
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Brussels
1903
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Madrid
pre-DOG, October 16, 1908
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Berlin,
June 1906
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Madrid,
December 17, 1908
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The
disc on the left above has a pre-DOG
label, and was recorded in Paris in
1908. That on the right reads "Disque
fabriqué par La ▬▬▬▬▬
Cie Française du Gramophone"
in an arc below the outer ring.
It was pressed some time after 1924,
when the Gramophone Company decided
to reissue Caruso’s recordings on double=sided
discs.
The
manufacturing plant in Barcelona was
completed in late 1907 or early 1908.
The labels used by that plant had two
similar but slightly different designs.
The four labels below all have the phrase
Fabriccado por la Compañia
Francesa del Gramophone: Barcelona above
the trademark. The dates are those of
the recordings.
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26
Nov 1911
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27
December 1911
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Both
discs were manufactured in the Barcelona
plant
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December
27, 1911
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February
10, 1919
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The
disc on the lower right below was recorded
and manufactured in Milan on February
16, 1917, as part of a complete opera
recording of La Bohème
on 19 single sides. This was the fourth
in a series of seven more or less "complete"
operatic recordings made by Fred Gaisberg
between March 1915 and April 1919. The
statement below the outer ring reads,
"Fabriccado in Italia della
SOCIETÀ NAZIONALE DEL "GRAMMOFONO’
Milano", which indicates that
there was a record manufacturing plant
somewhere in Italy, most likely in Milan
at that time. A letter addressed to
Fred Gaisberg at The Società
Nazionale di Grammofono, Vie Orefici,
2, Milano, and dated 10th
August 1918 displays the subject as
MILAN PROCESSING PLANT. [Author’s
note: The Gramophone Company had been
making "complete" recordings
of operas and operettas as early as
1906, beginning with sixteen 10-inch
and one 12-inch side of Gilbert and
Sullivan’s The Mikado.]
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10-inch
November 1905
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Paris
12-inch October 15, 1908
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![](images/Image1202.gif) |
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Paris,
January 3, 1914
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Milan,
16 February 1917
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Barcelona,
August 25, 1917
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London,
19 December 1921
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Arabic
Recordings
Around
1900, Cairo was a cosmopolitan city
of more than a third of a million people,
over 80 per cent Egyptians, but the
balance made up of Greeks, Italians,
French, Austrians, English, Germans
and Turks. Cairo became the centre of
all Arab recording activity throughout
the first 30 years of the past century.
Artists travelled to Cairo from Syria
and the Lebanon, from Damascus and Jaffa,
to record for the major European companies.
Cairo was, strategically and economically,
the hub of all commerce between Western
Europe and the Arab countries. The great
novelty of that era, the talking hine,
was therefore in a prime position to
take a handsome slice of new business.
As
early as 1894, talking machines and
records, available by mail from London
and Paris, had been advertised in the
Cairo press. The records offered the
standard mix of Opera, military bands,
cornet solos and popular European song.
It became clear to the early record
companies that much greater success
could be gained by making records of
what they themselves referred to as
'Native Music'. In the spring of 1903
the London-based Gramophone Company
sent engineer Franz Hampe to Cairo where
he made 165 single sided recordings.
Later that same year, his endeavours
having been manufactured in London and
shipped back to Cairo, the first catalogue
of Arab music was presented to an eager
public. As in India, where similar events
were occurring at the same time, the
Egyptians took to the gramophone with
an enthusiasm that caused smiles of
satisfaction to cross the faces of record
company executives in England.
In
1905 the expert W. Sinkler Darby was
sent to Cairo, where he made nine 7-inch,
138 ten-inch, and twenty twelve-inch
recordings of genuine traditional music.
Classical, improvisational, poetic,
theatrical and popular styles were all
represented, and the musicians were
almost always people who brought a deep
understanding of the idiom to their
art. Yusuf al-Manyalawi, the most important
of the early singers, had been a court
musician to King Abd al-Hamid and when
first recorded by the Gramophone Company,
in about 1905, he was already 65 years
old.
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Cairo,
pre-DOG, 1907
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Cairo,
Cupid Concert January 12, 1912
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The
record on the left above was recorded
by George Dillnutt in 1907 under the
supervision of Fred Gaisberg. The disc
on the right was recorded by Arthur
S. Clarke.
As
the public demand for authentic music
grew, the nature of the gramophone itself
began to alter the character of the
music. Because it was only possible
to record a maximum of three and a half
minutes on one side of a 78 rpm record,
many early Egyptian records are at least
two parts, and sometime four spread
over two discs. However, the musicians
had to stop every time a side finished
and then start again. Not used to these
restrictions, some found difficulty
in adjusting to the technology and remained
little recorded. Others, Manyalawi included,
adapted well and prospered as a result.
The music itself bent to the restrictions
of the fledgling industry. Shorter,
through-composed pieces were produced
specifically for recording purposes,
and larger instrumental ensembles, difficult
to record accurately in the early acoustic
days, were pared down to quartets and
trios.
Fred
Gaisberg arrived in Cairo in March 1906
and again in late September 1906, at
which times he made 162 and 272 ten-inch
recordings, respectively. An additional
40 12-inch recordings were made during
October. Arguably, then it can be said
that the gramophone itself altered the
course and character of Egyptian music.
What we hear today in old records has
much to do with the technical limitations
of early recording as it does the music
itself. That said, what is left constitutes
a remarkable legacy.