I stumbled across the earliest recording of a human voice: a little over 148 years old!!


Here is the direct link to the recording:
http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/1860- ... a-Lune.mp3

Here is the link to some background information:
http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/

Quite interesting considering it beats Edison's invention of the phonograph by 17 years. (Any hear the recording of Handel's "Israel in Eygpt" in 1880?)

Makes me wonder how far we have advanced in 150 years. (If you consider it advancement. Advancement to what? self-annihilation? )

I hope you enjoy the recording.

-jg

Thanks, J. That was very interesting, even though it sounds like aliens.
And to think - it's only 11 years after Chopin's death! If only....

I remember seeing this on the news several weeks ago.

I was quite impressed that recording technology actually went that far back.

But one thing that will always upset me is that we didn't get any recordings from the 2 greatest pianistic masters with this technology. As already stated above, Chopin was already dead... but Liszt... well, he died in 1886, right? It's a shame we couldn't have gotten a recording, even a small one of horrible quality, of the master of the piano. I'll actually admit... though I used to despise Liszt with a passion, I'm now finding his works more tolerable, even quite likeable in some aspects. Though, some aspects still annoy me to no end. I just spent around an hour reading his biography on wikipedia (it's quite long), and after reading so much about his amazing technique, I'd really have liked to have it.

Thank God they had better recording technology available for Rachmaninoff though... I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't hear him playing. If what they say about Liszt is true, then I can certianly see why he'd be the master of the piano. But Rachmaninoff is surely in my opinion, 2nd to him.

If only we could ressurect Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Thalberg, Scriabin, etc. in order for them to make recordings with modern equipment. Imagine if we were to hear the masters play their works as originally intended.

There are piano rolls of Granados playing his own pieces. You can imagine that discovering them has been one of the highlights of my month. The recordings sound wonderful and very clear. You can hear what a great player he was.

I've known a lot of people to say that they don't like the way composers like Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich played their own music...

I really don't understand those people though...how can we legitimately argue with Rachmaninoff?

If those people were composers themselves... maybe they'd think differently