Background Orchestras on Recordings - A Question

[Victor A]

Hey everyone,

Does anyone know about the people who played in the accompaniment orchestras on records? Would they be documented somewhere?

Thanks,

-Jack

[Menophanes]

I think that the absence so far of any answer to Jack's query means simply that the subject is so vast that nobody knows where to begin. I too am deeply interested in it and have been so for fifty years or more, but the amount of information I have been able to gather is miserably scanty. For example, one would think that the musical directors of the Gramophone & Typewriter/Gramophone Company major recording studios would be fairly significant people in the musical world and thus easily identifiable, but to this day I cannot put a name to those who held this office in London (up to the appointment of George Byng in 1915), in Paris or in Vienna. (If anyone does know, I wish they would tell!) Bruno Seidler-Winkler officiated in Berlin from at least 1907 and Carlo Sabajno in Milan from 1904; both were musicians of real stature who continued to work far into the electrical era. I think I have read somewhere that Seidler-Winkler wrote an autobiography, which should be an incomparable historical source, but I have never seen it, discovered its title or met with any quotation from it. Of course we know of Landon Ronald (later Sir Landon), a very distinguished conductor, who was closely associated with G&T and its successor in London from 1900 onwards (initially as pianist), but I do not know of his acting as orchestral accompanist to singers except in isolated instances such as Melba's first recording session in March 1904.

On a less exalted level, a competent violinist named Victor Opferman did some work as both conductor and soloist on Edison-Bell cylinders in the 1900s. Twenty years later he appears as leader/conductor on Homochord discs.

We know a little more about conditions at the Victor studios in America. The diaries of Raymond Sooy, who joined Victor's technical staff in 1903 (http://www.davidsarnoff.org/soo-maintext.html) identify the band-leader and composer Arthur Pryor as Victor's first musical director, perhaps as early as 1903. Sooy says that initially the 'orchestra' numbered only seven or so. Later house conductors included, successively, Walter Rogers, Josef Pasternack and Rosario Bourdon; all were, again, fully qualified musicians, and Rogers had had some opera-house experience. Unfortunately all these conductors, presumably acting on instructions received, seem to have emasculated their orchestras by eliminating almost all the brass along with timpani, oboes and lower strings, so that all one hears is a shapeless, colourless humming whose only virtue is that it does not get in the way of the voice. British and European orchestras are usually less incomplete, though also frequently less polished.

Orchestral accompaniments of some kind existed before 1900. I have a Columbia slow-speed brown-wax cylinder of the Armourer's Song from Reginald de Koven's Robin Hood, sung by J.W. Myers with what sounds like substantial instrumental support, but the cylinder is too faint to allow me to establish whether this was a true orchestra, with strings, or only a military band; the word 'Orchestra' was constantly misapplied by the early companies. There are isolated examples on Berliner discs too.

Stanley Chapple, musical director to the Aeolian company in London, contributed an article to the newly-founded magazine The Gramophone in 1923, giving some details of his methods and a diagram of how the instruments were placed. Unfortunately it is many years since I read this.

Wynn Reeves, second violin in the London Symphony Orchestra in the 1920s, left some notes describing a recording session in the acoustic era, and these are quoted in The LSO At 70 by Maurice Pearton (1974). Reeves says that there were only two first violins and one second – and this in an extract from Wagner's Ring!

These are just a few scattered snippets from what I have been able to learn over the years; and of course I have not even touched on the question of orchestral accompaniments outside the classical and operatic fields. I do hope others in our group will have something to add.

Oliver Mundy.

[FloridaClay]

Complicating things, from what I have read, background orchestras were in many cases made up of local musicians hired for particular recordings sessions.

Clay

[epigramophone]

In his long out of print autobiography "The story of sound recording" Joe Batten, employed by Edison Bell from 1920 to 1927, says :

"I had engaged for the Velvet Face Orchestra (Velvet Face was Edison Bell's premium label) leading instrumentalists picked from the various London orchestras, the yearly contracts I made giving me first claim on their recording services."

It was Batten's ground breaking acoustic recording of Elgar's "The dream of Gerontius" with a 24 piece orchestra, choir of 8 and 3 soloists which resulted in an invitation to join Columbia in 1927 as Music Adviser. He accepted, and later set up Columbia's Special Recordings Department.

[Menophanes]

In his long out of print autobiography "The story of sound recording" Joe Batten, employed by Edison Bell from 1920 to 1927, says . . .

Yes, I should have mentioned Joe Batten, who was a capable conductor as well as a 'fixer'. In 1930 he arranged and presumably conducted a Trafalgar commemoration for Columbia; it is based on John Braham's old ballad The Death of Nelson, which serves as a background for a highly stylised dramatisation of Nelson's last hours with Lewis Casson as Nelson and Sybil Thorndike as an improbably ladylike Emma Hamilton. He was still at work in the 1940s.

Another musician well known in the outside world (so to speak) who was active as a studio conductor was the light-music composer Albert Ketelbey, who did a good deal of accompaniment work for Columbia (London) from about 1915 onwards and also conducted some of his own pieces.

Oliver Mundy.

[dennis]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but a quick Google search turned up this:

https://78records.wordpress.com/2015/09 ... nnel-1904/

[Victor A]

Thanks everyone, all of these replies were quite informative.
And referencing Oliver's mention of the Columbia brown wax cylinders, there is a video on youtube of Steve Porter singing "Always". The "orchestra" (more than likely a larger band) is quite loud and clear. Mabe someone could decipher the instrumentation?


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CvT8XkviS64

-Jack

[Menophanes]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but a quick Google search turned up this:

https://78records.wordpress.com/2015/09 ... nnel-1904/

Thank you! This is most instructive. I knew of C.H.H. Booth as accompanist on early Victor operatic records and I think I have encountered Charles d'Almaine as composer and arranger, but otherwise all this information was entirely new to me. I imagine there must have been further players who were engaged as free-lances, since it makes no sense to describe somebody as 'first violin', 'first viola' etc. if in each case the man was the only player of that instrument. It was not uncommon practice to engage a permanent core orchestra and augment it with ad-hoc extras as required; touring opera companies often did this, and even the B.B.C. followed the same practice until 1930.

Oliver Mundy.