Mechanical Recording Workshop: Violin study (20/10/23)

Location

University Of Surrey, PATS building (Department of Music and Media), Stag Hill, University Campus, GU2 7XH.

About this event

• 5 hours 30 minutes
• Mobile eTicket

Come and see how wax cylinders and pre-1925 are recorded! Violinists will record in front of a live audience, and mechanical recording sessions will be discussed during the workshop. Tickets are free, but please book your seat. Everybody is welcome!

Recordings of violin playing from the early twentieth century are well-researched sources, mostly explored in terms of studying performance practice. Various insights in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, in terms of traditions, musical approaches and performance styles, have all been well documented (Brown 1999; Fabian 2003; Leech Wilkinson 2006; Katz 2006; Gebauer 2017; Milsom 2003, 2019, 2020). This case study aims to explore the main stumbling block in all the studies done on the historical violin playing styles on record: what is registered on the disc? The question of difference between what was played in the recording session, and what was registered on the disc, was asked by Stanovic’s post-doctoral project ‘(Re)constructing Early Recordings: a guide for historically informed performance’. Through further development of historically informed recording, this case-study expands the research question of the relationship between the performer and the machine, and investigates the possible answers in detail.

Violinists: David Adams (Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama), Dr. David Milsom (University of Huddersfield), Joanna Staruch Smolec (Université Libre de Bruxelles and Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles), Philippe Graffin (Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, and Brussels Royal Conservatoire).

Musicologists: Drs. Barbara Gentili (University of Surrey), George Kennaway (University of Huddersfield), Eva Moreda Rodriguez (University of Glasgow), Inja Stanovic (University of Surrey), Laura Tunbridge (University of Oxford), Georgia Volioti (Univeristy of Surrey), Sean Williams (Open University)

Recording engineers: Duncan Miller, John Warburton.

Video: Sam Sarjudeen

Organiser: Dr. Inja Stanovic

10:30 – 11:00 – Introduction, research questions and methodology

11:00 – 13:00 – Recording session – wax cylinders.

13:00 – 14:00 – Lunch break

14:00 – 16:00 – Recording session – discs.

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