Early recordings can be inadvertently hilarious, like the French folk-song from 1860 that made Charlotte Green corpse on a BBC news report. The first known recording of Western Art Music is more bemusing than funny. Recorded on wax cylinders (“Mr Edison’s phonograph”) at a grand concert at Crystal Palace on 29th June 1888, it apparently contains excerpts from Handel’s Israel in Egypt—but not so you’d know. The review comments interestingly on the revival of the piece that was then under way:

It is now almost as well known to our choirs in various parts of the country as the “Messiah” itself.

Recalling our own times, the review also notes mixed responses to an audience member:

Among the distinguished persons present at to-day’s performance was Mr Gladstone, who occupied the Royal box, and who on rising at the end of the first part was saluted with marks of approbation, which, originating in the Handel orchestra, soon spread throughout the vast assemblage. The applause was varied here and there with a few hisses, which, strange to say, seemed to proceed in all cases from ladies.

Curiously, the detailed review compliments the solo singers but doesn’t mention the conductor, August Manns, “directing an orchestra of some 500 musicians and a choir of over 4,000 voices, in front of an audience of 23,722 people”.

Here are the salvaged fragments, ingeniously identified in the comments:

The tempi, albeit hard to detect, are very slow, in the romantic fashion that persisted until the spread of the early music movement (e.g. Mengelberg’s 1939 Matthew Passion—link in my post on Richard Taruskin). If someone could make a better restoration, it’d be fascinating to hear. Perhaps we’re fortunate that

Colonel Gouraud, who made the experiment, did not attempt to record any solo pieces, feeling that the phonograph was too distant from the vocalist.

So to recover, may I suggest Michael Chance singing Thou shalt bring them in—as good as it gets…

* * *

John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy. Image: Herb Snitzer.

While we can hardly derive any musical satisfaction from the 1888 cylinders, further recordings of the great John Coltrane continue to surface. Complementing his complete Village Vanguard recordings, long-lost live tapes from Trane’s 1961 residency at the Village Gate have just been released, with Eric Dolphy alongside Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Reggie Workman. Here’s Impressions:

and Greensleeves:

A more traditional pairing with Handel would be Jimi Hendrix, who were neighbours in London, though not quite at the same time…