The book under review is an expanded English version of Sardellis La musica per flauto di Antonio Vivaldi (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001), translated by one of the most eminent Vivaldi scholars of today, who also contributed some of the additional material. The original book constituted a considerable achievement in woodwind scholarship: the first book-length study of Vivaldis imaginative music for flute and recorder (in Italian, both kinds of flauto) by someone well-versed in the composers music in general as well as previous research on the subject and possessing an obvious love for the period. The main preoccupations of the book were matters of instrumentation, dating, and the players and occasions for which pieces were written. Perhaps the most stimulating section, on Vivaldis use of the flute and recorder in vocal music, explored virtually uncharted territory. The translation retains the books division into two parts, of disparate length (54, 134 pp.). In part I, The Recorder and Flute in Italy in Vivaldis Time, Sardelli looks at the social, musical, and organological evidence for the presence of the instruments, both in the country and in Vivaldis life. This skillfully assembled mass of evidence supports Sardellis novel reversal of the received scholarly view that, rather than writing for the recorder in the first two or three decades of the eighteenth century, then switching over to the flute, Vivaldi already preferred the flute in the 1710s and did not start writing for the recorder until the early 1720s. In part II, on the music, Sardelli devotes chapters to the sonatas, chamber concertos, flute concertos, recorder concertos, concertos for flautino, concerto for two flutes, concertos with multiple soloists and orchestra, and finally vocal music. I was especially taken by his evidence and arguments that Vivaldi himself taught the flute and had an insiders view of the technique of both instruments. The section showing how Vivaldi reworked the C minor recorder concerto from the violin concerto, RV 202, blends musicological and practical considerations in a masterly way. Sardelli has had two particular advantages in his research. The first is a special kind of bibliographical control: my own, still unpublished, catalogue of Vivaldis self-quotations–a massive accumulation. which I hope will appear in print before long (pp. xvi-xvii). The book is living proof of Sardellis opinion that critical analysis of the dense network of borrowings, reworkings and quotations that pervade the entire output of the composer can play its part. in establishing more firmly the chronology and filiation of the sources (p. xvii). Second, Sardelli has had private access to Peter Ryoms forthcoming large and complete version (Grosse Ausgabe) of his monumental catalogue, the Verzeichnis der Werke Antonio Vivaldis, which is soon to appear from Breitkopf Hartel (p. xvii).
A few years ago a friend played for me a tape copy of an Edison cylinder recorded by Johannes Brahms in Vienna in 1889. Edisons agent in the city, Theo Wangemann, announces the date and place of the recording and that he is with Doktor Brahms himself. After a short pause, the playing begins. I could not at all identify the piece, since the scratch and swish seemed to drown out everything. My friend then conducted what was playing, and it jumped out at me–a snippet from the composers Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor. What was also evident was a rambunctious, freewheeling pianism–what the young Artur Schnabel noted as Brahmss creative vitality and wonderful carelessness. More scientifically, Jonathan Berger, of the Center for Computer Assisted Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, after subjecting the Brahms cylinder to every conceivable scrutiny, notes a liberal rubato, some protracted fermati, and improvisation at a number of points and a tempo considerably slower than any recent recording. My sense is that Brahms was the kind of player who could play a piece all over again using only the notes he missed the first time around. Timothy Day is curator of Western Art Music at the Sound Archive of the British Library in London. He has given us, at the very least, a study of the history and implications of recorded music from the late nineteenth century to our day, beginning with an inaccurate description of that Brahms cylinder right on the first page of his study. Much of this chronological treatment of the history of recordings–from cylinders to 78 rpm discs (first acoustically, then electrically recorded) to the 33 rpm LP vinyl record (mono, later stereo) and on to the compact disc revolution (not to mention DVD)–has been well covered in such works as Roland Gelatts Fabulous Phonograph (1955, rev. 1977) and Guy A. Marcos Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound in America (1993). Moreover, the point of view given in Days historical overview is decidedly English, not to say provincial. He leaves out many historical developments in the Forties and the Fifties on this side of the Atlantic that deserve scrutiny. For instance: how did the long-playing record develop within the CBS labs? Any reader of the various editions of David Halls indispensable Records (not consulted by Day) would know that, after Columbias announcement of the LP revolution in the summer of 1948, RCA Victor, in a burst of foolish commercial effrontery, decided that they would put out their own kind of discs, playing at 45 rpm and measuring only 7, which meant that only five minutes or so of music could be contained on each side. The long-playing record, measuring 10 and later 12, and able to contain twenty-five minutes of music, triumphed. Soon realizing that they had been vanquished in this matter, RCA Victor had to eat crow in January 1950 and ask for a license from Columbia Records, the patentee, to put out LPs, which it then proceeded to do along with everyone else, and the 45 rpm record was relegated to the jukebox where it belonged. But for a while, it was a toss-up between two goliaths, William Paley of CBS and General David Sarnoff of RCA. There is a real story here, but Day is not interested. Similarly, while he is careful to point out the technological advances in recording on tape brought about by Decca/London, EMI, Deutsche Gramophon, and Telefunken, both in England and on the continent, he never mentions the revolutionary recording technique of C. Robert Fine and David Hall of Mercury Records in the United States-the simple device of hanging one Telefunken microphone over the podium, resulting in a series of still stunning and still revered recordings. The idea was that it was a conductors business to balance an orchestra, not an engineer with knob in hand after the fact.
Sylla came to music production through a friend from Ivory Coast who wanted to record Cuban songs in an authentic style. “I got into making suggestions about how to go about it, and how to arrange them,” he says. His recording break came with Orchestra Baobab in 1979 at the legendary Golden Baobab studio in Dakar, now part of Xippi studios, run by Youssou NDour. His production role has been shaped by his extensive terms of reference. “I travelled all round central Africa with my parents, and when I was in Paris I collected all these Cuban records, along with soul and other styles, and I think I bring this to artists. “With Baobab in the Seventies, everyone was doing rumba, but I was the man who actually had the huge record collection and was able to point them in the right direction. Salif Keita was looking for something revolutionary, so I suggested putting him in touch with someone from the West who had the same avant-garde approach. That was Francois Breant - and basically I let them get on with it.”
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