The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This popped up on eBay with one blurry picture and no bids because who in their right mind would buy a record when they don't know what's on it or if it plays?!... anyway it arrived today

I'd wanted a Berliner for a while so thought I'd give this one a go.

Recorded in London 29.12.98 "Waltz Caprice" - Violin Solo by Mr J Jacobs

Congratulations on a great find! The early London records are also made of some unusual materials, which adds to their intrigue.

I don't believe they started recording in London until the summer of '98 and the recording angel appeared in the fall. If I'm mistaken then hopefully someone else will chime in.

The violinist Jacques Jacobs is a most interesting character. His real name was Leopold Jacobs and he was of Dutch birth. Fred Gaisberg discovered him in 1898 leading and directing the band at the Trocadero Restaurant in London and quickly signed him up for the Gramophone Company; Alex's record must be one of his first. Although never a famous soloist, he was well enough known by 1903 to be chosen as a supporting player for a world tour in which the contralto Ada Crossley was the principal artist. Also of the party was Percy Grainger, the Australian pianist-composer. During the voyage out Jacobs and Grainger got into a quarrel resulting from Jacobs's tiresome habit of boasting about his sexual conquests. Jacobs was much the bigger man of the two but Grainger was a notably athletic type, and rather to his own surprise he came out on top in the struggle. Afterwards Jacobs took a mild revenge by grumbling about Grainger's tendency to cut passages out of the larger works which he played. Grainger for his part bore no malice; in some autobiographical notes written some fifty years later, he pays tribute to Jacobs's musicianship and describes him as a fine player of sonatas.

Jacobs seems to have been rather 'difficult' on other occasions. In 1910 he was working at the prestigious Knickerbocker Hotel in New York, but when the management complained that he was getting above himself and behaving as if he and the hotel patrons were socially equal, he walked out in a passion and took ship for Europe. In the middle 1920s he was back in America as director of his own band, with whom he made some rather elegant recordings of light classics; some of these can be heard on YouTube.

I have a very early ten-inch record of his (Gramophone & Typewriter black label), probably dating from 1901, containing a remarkably loud and clear rendering of Edward Elgar's 'Salut d'Amour'. This may well be the first record ever made of anything by Elgar.

Oliver Mundy.

(Details from F. W. Gaisberg, The Record of Music [1947]; John Bird, Percy Grainger [1982]; and my own online researches, notably reports in the New York Times from 1910.)

P.S. On Alex's record, I think the month cannot be February 1898; as Don has said, operations in London did not begin until the summer. Could the '2' be a 9?

donniej wrote:Congratulations on a great find! The early London records are also made of some unusual materials, which adds to their intrigue.

I don't believe they started recording in London until the summer of '98 and the recording angel appeared in the fall. If I'm mistaken then hopefully someone else will chime in.

Thanks Don, I've since gone back and looked at the record, I missed off a number one when reading the date, so it was in fact recorded in December of 98, not the February, still quite early in the recording of London Berliners



Thanks for the back story Oliver, very interesting to hear the history behind some of these old records!


Here is a video I recorded of this record, ignore the dating error I mention

[youtubehd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGbxSuvl1JY[/youtubehd]

Why is it called a violin solo when clearly there is piano accompaniment? Bach wrote partitas for solo violin. Paganini wrote caprices for solo violin. Clearly the violin has the lead, but does that make this a "solo violin" performance as inscribed on the disk?

Thanks for the video. It's interesting to hear some of the earliest recordings. My earliest recordings are from 1901 on Columbia and Zon-O-Phone. I particularly like those recordings in which the performer is introduced. I imagine by doing so this created the effect of a live performance in which each act was introduced on stage.

John

jboger wrote:Why is it called a violin solo when clearly there is piano accompaniment? Bach wrote partitas for solo violin. Paganini wrote caprices for solo violin. Clearly the violin has the lead, but does that make this a "solo violin" performance as inscribed on the disk?

Logically, what John says is of course perfectly true; however, it was general practice at the time to use the expression 'X solo' where the instrument X was playing with a piano. I have seen and heard (in announcements) many similar examples: e.g. 'Violin solo, Imitation of Bagpipes and Scotch Air' (Charles d'Almaine on a Columbia cylinder of 1899, with – probably – Fred Hylands on piano) and 'Bassoon solo, In Cellar Cool' on an Edison-Bell (British) cylinder of about 1900, played by E. F. James who had taken part in the very first of Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts in August 1895. I am not sure whether this is still an acceptable usage, but one does find similar illogicalities even now: thus the term 'violin sonata' can be applied just as readily to violin-and-piano works as to the pieces which Bach, Ysaye etc. wrote for violin alone. Musical terminology, like many other aspects of language, is not always rational; after all, as Fritz Spiegl long ago pointed out, piano trios are not written for three pianos, and Schubert's Trout Quintet does not include even a single trout.

Oliver Mundy.