'Piano Sale' (comic sketch on early Berliner disc)
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 7:57 am
In Fred Gaisberg's autobiography, published in America as The Music Goes Round and in Britain as Music on Record, there is a description of a recording improvised, he says, by Emile Berliner himself with Gaisberg's accompaniment; Berliner personates an auctioneer who tries in vain to stir up interest in a rickety piano by alleging that it is the very one on which Wagner composed Die Götterdämmerung.
Now I have a disc dated 26th May 1896 which at first glance seems to be the very one described in the book. However, I have my doubts about this. The passages which Gaisberg quotes from the auctioneer's patter do not quite match (according to him the auctioneer's closing remark is 'Johnny, hand me that perambulator', whereas the record ends 'Hand me that oil-stone and that frying-pan'), but the major difference is that on the record the reciter is unquestionably George Graham and is named as such. Moreover, extracts from Gaisberg's diaries cited in Jerrold Northrop Moore's biography of Gaisberg, Music in Time, indicate that a record named 'Piano Sale' already existed in 1895.
I wonder, therefore, if anybody knows of an even older recording of this sketch in which Berliner himself really does play the auctioneer. As it is, I would like to think that a second voice on my record, which derisively offers a bid of three dollars, could be Berliner's own – but I doubt it. At least, though, I can surely hope that the pianist on my copy is Gaisberg in person.
. . . Where is your appreciation of music? Where is it? Why, on dis pianner Richard Wagg-ner got his foist [sic] inspiration to write the Götterdämmerung – I dunno what that is, but anyhow he wrote it on dis pianner . . .
Oliver Mundy.
Now I have a disc dated 26th May 1896 which at first glance seems to be the very one described in the book. However, I have my doubts about this. The passages which Gaisberg quotes from the auctioneer's patter do not quite match (according to him the auctioneer's closing remark is 'Johnny, hand me that perambulator', whereas the record ends 'Hand me that oil-stone and that frying-pan'), but the major difference is that on the record the reciter is unquestionably George Graham and is named as such. Moreover, extracts from Gaisberg's diaries cited in Jerrold Northrop Moore's biography of Gaisberg, Music in Time, indicate that a record named 'Piano Sale' already existed in 1895.
I wonder, therefore, if anybody knows of an even older recording of this sketch in which Berliner himself really does play the auctioneer. As it is, I would like to think that a second voice on my record, which derisively offers a bid of three dollars, could be Berliner's own – but I doubt it. At least, though, I can surely hope that the pianist on my copy is Gaisberg in person.
. . . Where is your appreciation of music? Where is it? Why, on dis pianner Richard Wagg-ner got his foist [sic] inspiration to write the Götterdämmerung – I dunno what that is, but anyhow he wrote it on dis pianner . . .
Oliver Mundy.