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Today's Featured Head-Fi Blog: A Japanese headfier's monologue (Sasaki)
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I used to go to a local Starbucks that had a garden patio with my suitcase Victrola. I'd sip coffee, let my chihuahua romp about and play records. One day, I was playing a Caruso record, and a lady came around the corner, saw my phonograph and gasped. She stood there listening until the record ended and came up to me and said, "I was walking to my car, and I heard a man singing. I came back here to see him. I had no idea it was a record player."
Another time near Christmas, a lady walked by with arms full of packages. She saw my phonograph and told me that her grandmother had one and prized her collection of red seals. I offered to play a record for her, and she asked if I had any Caruso records. I played M'appiri for her. By the time the record was over, she had tears streaming down her face.
The acoustic recording process was not well suited to reproducing pianos. Orchestral music was problematic too, because the recording horn had a sharp dropoff in clarity if the instrument was more than 15 feet away. But for the voice, particularly the male voice, it was perfectly suited. Caruso's voice took full advantage of the format, and was beautifully served by it. If you hear a Caruso record on an acoustic phonograph and close your eyes, you will hear a dimensional aural image of the singer projected about five feet in front of the horn. It's an uncanny presence that will raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and an electrical recording, even a modern one, can never produce the same effect.
See ya
Steve
Bigshot,
I don't care how good the medium was for the male voice, I'll bet you dollars to dimes that if you recorded someone with that technology and then compared it to the same singer live, you would note distortion in the recording playback. I'm glad that your rig gives such a "life-like" sound! Clearly for you, the old dog is still staring into the horn. However, I'll bet the real singer sounded differently from the recording. Perhaps less volume and certainly a subtly different vocal timbre. If you could hear Caruso live I wonder if you would enjoy the sound of his voice as much as the recorded sound.
I have a tube amp because I love the type of distortion it produces on music. There is no way a live orchestra can have the same note decay effects that are produced on playback with a tube amplifier. For that reason, many rock guitarists insist on using a tube amp. I prefer the sound of music played back using a tube amp, but I recognize the fact that there is a degree of distortion so that I am not really hearing the same thing I would hear with a live orchestra or singer. For me, that distortion is an enhancement of the sound. I therefore would never judge the sound of an orchestra based only on tube amp playback, especially if one orchestra is only available on the tube amp. No matter how good the recording process, there's something that is lost, something distorted or enhanced, and the ineffable presence of the live, living flesh only approximated. Caruso was a great singer, the greatest of all time? Why not nominate Farinelli as well as Caruso? Neither singer is alive to compare to the living singers. No doubt, in 100 years time, someone will claim that Pavarotti or Callas, or Sutherland, or Terfel, or Gens, or Cioffi, or della Casa, or Siepi, or de los Angeles, or Melchior, or King, or Bostridge, were all greater than the crop that will then be singing. That's so easy to do and so hard to refute.
I'm happy that your rig is so satisfying to you! I just cannot make judgements about voices of the past that are only available canned.
A good tenor is a good tenor. A good bass is a good bass. James King was a match for Melchior along the line, and was captured in good sound throughout his career. John Tomlinson blasts Friedrich Schorr out of the water, both as Wotan and as Hagen. To make some sort of cultural-relativism argument is to say that middle-C in 1876 meant something different than middle-C in 1992 (assuming the conductor has a historical understanding of concert pitch through the ages). Either a singer hits the notes or they don't. Either they convey the character or they don't. It's as simple as that.
Actually, middle c now may is a little bit higher than it was 100 years ago. But that is another discussion entirely!
Singers put a lot more into their operatic performances than just singing the right notes at the right time, but I do admit that intonation is the single most important thing. Who wants to listen to an aria where the singer doesn't get the notes right? All the acting and inflection in the world won't fix that boo-boo. Similarly, an opera singer who delivers everything uninflected is boring -- one of only many reasons that Bocelli fails as an opera singer. (Thin, small voice and no acting talent also contribute. )
Indeed. And I think all of us classical nerds on here already know this. Otherwise there'd be no point in spending the obscene sums of money that we do on different recordings. I'm surprised that you of all people would make such an oversimplified statement, PSmith.
-Jay
Perhaps. However, at the final assessment, either you believed that the singer was the character (as far as you can ever believe it) or you didn't. The mechanisms that either inspire, pace Kierkegaard, a teleological suspension of doubt or fail to do so don't matter. If they don't make me believe it, that isn't the end of the world. However, I become acutely aware that I am listening to a record or sitting in a concert hall. Then it becomes an exercise in hitting the notes at a tempo that the composer would recognize.
As to the other bit:
Either they hit the notes, or they ducked the high (or low) ones or sounded strained at the extrema of their Fach. You can tell. Trust me. The uniformity of notes is sort of guaranteed by the clef system and ISO-standardized pitch. This isn't rocket science. Now, it takes enormous skill to be able to "merely" hit the notes, and even more to make cynical blowhards like me believe that they really are Siegfried. But when you say, "Caruso was better than Pavarotti," you are making a subjective judgment. In my mind, that's roughly equivalent to saying "Red is better than blue" and trying to back it up.
__________________
New signature forthcoming (or not).
However, I'll bet the real singer sounded differently from the recording. Perhaps less volume and certainly a subtly different vocal timbre. If you could hear Caruso live I wonder if you would enjoy the sound of his voice as much as the recorded sound.
This is getting kind of technical, but one of the aspects of acoustic playback that makes it so present and real sounding is the fact that there is no volume control. The dynamics are 1:1. When Caruso sings softly, the playback is the volume of a real whisper, when he sings full voice, you can hear it a block away. I've never heard electrical transcriptions capture the completely natural dynamics of acoustic playback. They always sound compressed.
Another aspect of the hyper-natural presence is the projection of the horn. The manual for the Victrola suggested placing the machine in the corner of a room. This makes a huge difference in the sound, because the junction of the walls, floor and ceiling of the room act as extensions to the horn, extending the low range frequency response and creating the aural imaging that I mentioned earlier. The image of the singer forms about 3 to 5 feet in front of the horn... the exact distance that the singer stood in front of the recording horn.
When you put a Victrola in a slightly "live" room, the sound takes on the natural reverberation of the room. Since the singer was required to stand close to the recording horn, and the acoustic process wasn't able to pick up sound further away than 15 or 20 feet, there is almost no room reverberation on the recordings themselves. When you put a phonograph in a room, it picks up the natural reverberation of the room- the same reverberation you would hear if you speak in the room. The direct sound from the horn is localized, just as it would from a real singer, and the reverberation comes from all around you in the room. This makes for an incredibly real presence to the sound.
The frequency response of an acoustic gramophone sits right in the same range as the human voice. It may not be flat, but it is certainly euphonic. The response is certainly accurate enough to be able to determine whether a singer is a great one or not. Caruso records reach out of the technology and grab you when you listen to them. Millions of people heard Caruso sing in his lifetime, and millions bought his records. No one complained that he sounded poorer in person compared to his records. The records give a remarkably accurate depiction of his voice.
There were three great (but very different) tenors in the early 20th century who have never been matched since- Caruso, Melchior and McCormack. All you have to do is find good transfers, or original records, and listen. The magic is captured completely in the grooves. There were plenty of other performers who were a long way from being chopped liver as well. If you limit your listening to just modern recordings, you're listening to just a small fraction of the great music out there.
when you say, "Caruso was better than Pavarotti," you are making a subjective judgment.
Exactly. And there are plenty of arguments to support that subjective opinion. Just comparing recorded performances is one way to tell for oneself. Another is to hear what Pavarotti himself had to say about Caruso.
Perhaps. However, at the final assessment, either you believed that the singer was the character (as far as you can ever believe it) or you didn't. The mechanisms that either inspire, pace Kierkegaard, a teleological suspension of doubt or fail to do so don't matter. If they don't make me believe it, that isn't the end of the world. However, I become acutely aware that I am listening to a record or sitting in a concert hall. Then it becomes an exercise in hitting the notes at a tempo that the composer would recognize.
As to the other bit:
Either they hit the notes, or they ducked the high (or low) ones or sounded strained at the extrema of their Fach. You can tell. Trust me. The uniformity of notes is sort of guaranteed by the clef system and ISO-standardized pitch. This isn't rocket science. Now, it takes enormous skill to be able to "merely" hit the notes, and even more to make cynical blowhards like me believe that they really are Siegfried. But when you say, "Caruso was better than Pavarotti," you are making a subjective judgment. In my mind, that's roughly equivalent to saying "Red is better than blue" and trying to back it up.
I have to agree with what you have posted!
Actually, rereading this thread has reminded me of my experience seeing great works of art that I had previously known through slides in art history classes. Those slides showed works of art that just glowed: the colors incredibly vibrant and the whole as large as a movie screen. Later when I saw the works in the churches and museums (and the former in incredibly poor lighting), they really were almost a let down. Yes, the same composition and colors were present, but that glow that is conveyed because you are looking at an image composed of reflected light, not an image composed of pigments, was gone and they were so much smaller in scale than I imagined from the huge projected image. We get used to the distortions of reproduction, and then, when we see the originals we have to adjust ourselves to accept the reality. There is no way I can compare a work that is now lost with a modern work if I am comparing the reproduction with something real -- one or the other will suffer in comparison, especially if the lost work is imbued with the enhancement of memory.
Exactly. And there are plenty of arguments to support that subjective opinion. Just comparing recorded performances is one way to tell for oneself. Another is to hear what Pavarotti himself had to say about Caruso.
Still, this smacks of deciding what conclusion you want and then interpreting the evidence in such a way that it supports your conclusion. Caruso sounds best on acoustic recordings dating back to the Harding administration, so those must be the most accurate reproductions of a voice. Therefore, Caruso was the best. Perhaps you're right, but shouting at a horn with a stylus at the vertex seems mildly idiotic compared to modern digital recording techniques.
Golden Age arguments are sometimes demonstrably true (Cf. the Keilberth Bayreuth Ring), but - often as not - nostalgia is no defense.
__________________
New signature forthcoming (or not).
Pavarotti has called Caruso "the greatest" on many occasions. Here are some of his quotes...
"Caruso's is the voice by which all tenors should gauge themselves."
"No matter what the year, Caruso will always. be a 'modern' tenor because he, more than anyone else, created what we think of as 'modern' tenor singing. His voice and his art still speak to us today, as. they always will."
“Caruso, his singing, to me, is the base of the building. Doesn’t matter how tall the building is, or how heavy it is, because on the basement of this Caruso will always rest. It is essential, because vocally he is enormous and very, very close to the truth in expression.”
Pavarotti cites four tenors as his inspiration... Caruso, Gigli, Schipa and Di Stefano.
Pavarotti has called Caruso "the greatest" on many occasions. Here are some of his quotes...
"Caruso's is the voice by which all tenors should gauge themselves."
"No matter what the year, Caruso will always. be a 'modern' tenor because he, more than anyone else, created what we think of as 'modern' tenor singing. His voice and his art still speak to us today, as. they always will."
“Caruso, his singing, to me, is the base of the building. Doesn’t matter how tall the building is, or how heavy it is, because on the basement of this Caruso will always rest. It is essential, because vocally he is enormous and very, very close to the truth in expression.”
Pavarotti cites four tenors as his inspiration... Caruso, Gigli, Schipa and Di Stefano.
I would add McCormack and Bjorling to that list.
See ya
Steve
Oh heavens! That old Great Performances!
And Baryshnikov called Fred Astaire the greatest. It's so much easier praising those who have gone before than anyone you are in presently in competition with.
It doesn't matter whether Caruso was the best or the greatest as we really don't have anything but a shadow of what he was like on the stage. It's wonderful that we have some record of his singing, and although I may take out the recordings every so often for reference, on an everyday basis, they are not the recordings I listen to.
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