A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History [Hardcover]

Mr. Timothy Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2000

This engaging book is the first thorough exploration of the impact of recording technology on the art of music. Timothy Day chronicles the developments in recording technology since its inception and describes the powerful effects it has had on artistic performance, audience participation, and listening habits. He offers a fascinating comparison of the characteristics of musical life a century ago with those of today.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Day is the curator of Western art music at the Sound Archive of the British Library and, as such, master of a source of authority that crushes any quibbles about his occasional presumptuousness, especially in the title of his book. This is a book about recorded Western classical music only, and to fully enjoy it, perhaps, a broad knowledge of the major figures and terms of that music is desirable. But beyond that, the book raises no barriers, for musical notation is absent and musical jargon minimal. The fascination it possesses for classical music lovers is enormous. Each of the four big essays is on a topic of acute interest: the history of making recordings, the growth of the recorded repertoire (slow until the LP, like a fastball since the CD's advent), the changes in performance styles that the recorded legacy documents, and the impact upon the performance, enjoyment, and development of music that listening to recordings has had. Although he is no master stylist, Day is clear and precise throughout, and he has written what may come to be regarded as a music library cornerstone. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Day is omnivorously interested in his subject, and has digested a huge quantity of material from sources of all kinds. The result is a minor classic, thought-provoking and informative on almost every page." Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph "An excellent narrative history... Day shows how recordings both created and supplied a new market for classical music, how technology deepened the market, and how recordings now affect musicians and listeners alike." James Penrose, Wall Street Journal "Essential reading... undoubtedly a major landmark." David Patmore, International Record Review "A valuable book... and an important aid to broadening our understanding of classical music over the past 100 years." Malcolm Walker, Gramophone "The book raises no barriers, for musical notation is absent and musical jargon minimal in it. The fascination it possesses for classical music lovers is enormous... Day is clear and precise throughout, and he has written what may come to be regarded as a music library cornerstone." Booklist "Day's history is... an introduction - he claims no more - to a vast subject which has the potential to overturn ideals as much as prejudices... he writes about it as though he knows he is on to something, with verve and a profusion of detail." Peter Phillips, The Musical Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300084420
• ISBN-13: 978-0300084429
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,066,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recorded Music as Cultural Product, July 16, 2005

By 

Pierre Filteau (Sainte-Adèle, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (Paperback)

I have purchased this book only lately. I read so many good reviews on it when it was released in 2000 and was hoping to find it in good bookstore in Montreal (Canada). It never showed up. As I have lost all reference to it, I was surprised when I found it 5 years later in Toronto.

What a great book on history of recorded music Mr. Day wrote!

I have read many other books on the topic and none of them can compete with this one. I've read Mark Coleman's Play Back and David Morton's Off the Record. Lots of facts in these books but few lines devoted to classical music.

Under Mr.Day's writing, one discovers that recorded music can be seen as a cultural artefact and not only as a statistical or technical matter.

Men invented way to record music and music once recorded and played back changed the way men perform music. I was surprised when I read how many editing cuts there were on 30 minutes of recorded music released in the LP era. I have learned lately that there are up to 30 cuts in a 4-5 minutes piece of classical music!

I was also surprised, as Arthur wrote, that there's not a line on Naxos label while many specialised labels (Atma, Bis, etc.) find there way in the book. Naxos was by year 2000 a leading classical label. There's nothing on Chandos or Hyperion either.

Strongly recommended!

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Curiously Eurocentric View of Classical Recording History, March 7, 2001

By 

Arthur Leonard (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (Hardcover)

I purchased this volume based on a generally favorable review in Gramophone, and because I have a great interest in the history of classical recording. For the most part, I found it entertaining and informative. However, I think the book suffers significantly from a rather narrow focus by the author, and a curiously incomplete view of the more recent history. After all, a century includes the final decades as well as the early ones. Incredible as it seems, the Naxos label is never mentioned in this book. Naxos emerged in the mid-1980s and became the best-selling classical label in the world. As the current issue of BBC Music Magazine points out, for example, the best-selling cellist in the world today on CD's is Maria Kliegel, one of the house artists at Naxos - not Yo Yo Ma or Mstislav Rostropovich. She's not mentioned in this book, nor are any other Naxos artists, apart from a listing of Jeno Jando (the world's best selling pianist on CD) in a list of pianists. Naxos has had an incredible impact, especially in the past few years as it has revived forgotten repertory. Another weakness of the book is its skimpy treatment of the American classical scene, and its general failure to explore in greater depth the emergence of independent labels in many countries and the consolidation of the traditional "major" labels and their subsequent retreat from classical recording. I do urge enthusiasts for classical music to buy this book for its many useful insights and wealth of interesting "inside" information about classical recording, but I wish the author had done another 100 pages and achieved a more complete coverage.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not the book it might have been, April 6, 2004

By 

Douglas Whittet "Byrdmanic" (Albany, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (Paperback)

This book deals with a fascinating topic (at least to me), and seems to fill a gap in the literature, so I had high hopes. Unfortunately it was a big disappointment - I was amazed that the subject could be make so dull and dry! The author needs to learn the virtues of plain English rather than esoteric jargonese if he wants to enthuse anyone with his subject.