This week's selection comes from Dr Eva del Rey, Curator of Drama and Literature Recordings and Digital Performance.

American dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown talks to British choreographer Richard Alston at the ICA, London, 15 November 1991 (duration: 59 min 43 sec).

At the time of the discussion there were three works by Trisha Brown programmed at the Sadler’s Wells theatre in London:  Opal Loop (1980), Lateral Pass (1985) and For M.G.: The Movie (1991). Most of the discussion is centred on these three works.

In 1989, Opal Loop was added to Rambert’s repertory under the artistic direction of Richard Alston. This was the first time Trisha Brown had ever agreed to stage it for a company other than her own.  Alston was the artistic director of Rambert from 1986 till 1992.

Brown also talks about her explorations of gravity and perspective for her 'walking on the walls' pieces; how she works with dancers; character and gender in dance; and Set and Reset (1983), a dance work made in collaboration with Robert Rauschenberg and Laurie Anderson.

Trisha Brown – Walking on the Wall. Photo by Sascha Pohflepp / CC BY. The Barbican Gallery, London, 5 May 2011. First performed in 1971 at the Whitney Museum, New York.

This recording comes from a collection of 889 talks and discussions held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London between 1982-1993. 

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This week's selection comes from Dr Janet Topp Fargion, Lead Curator of World and Traditional Music.

This song was recorded in 1991 by ethnomusicologist Lesley Larkum at the Green Hotel, Mek'ele (Mekelle) in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia. It represents one of those wonderful moments of ethnographic fieldwork when you come across something, not necessarily related to the focus of your work, but nevertheless captivating. It's times like those you are thankful for a sound recording device! Lesley was conducting research on Tigrinyan music during revolution. She had heard these two children singing in a bar a couple of nights beforehand and had asked them to return so she could record them. Sadly there's no photograph of them but as I listen, in my mind's eye I see a couple of youngsters with the voices, rhythm and exuberance of a young Michael Jackson.

Children singing at the Green Hotel (C600/15)

The Lesley Larkum collection of Ethiopian field recordings can be consulted at the British Library.

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This week's selection comes from Stephen Cleary, Lead Curator of Literary & Creative Recordings. 

This seasonal offering comes from our African Writers Club collection and was recorded on 7 November 1966 in London on a Revox F36 tape machine. 'No Room at Solitaire' is a dramatization by Cosmo Pieterse of a short story by Richard Rive. It updates the nativity tale to Christmas Eve in northern Transvaal (now Limpopo), South Africa, in the era of apartheid. Contains strong language.

A Christmas story (C134/98)

Entabeni - Limpopo, South Africa by FyreMael via Visualhunt.com / CC BY

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Cathy Courtney, Project Director on the National Life Stories oral history projects Artists’ Lives and Architects’ Lives, chatted to David Govier for our fourth National Life Stories podcast. The conversation starts with why Cathy got into oral history, and moves on to discuss why oral historians ask about Christmas.

Along the way you will hear extracts from the following interviews:

Neil Hufton interviewed by Cos Michael, Food: From Source to Salespoint, 2006 (C821/195)

George Messenger interviewed by George Ewart Evans, 1956 (T1419W)

Bill Adcocks interviewed by Rachel Cutler, An Oral History of British Athletics, 2010 (C790/48)

Christopher Butler interviewed by Andrea Hertz, History of Parliament Oral History Project, 2016 (C1503/142)

Michael Rothenstein interviewed by Mel Gooding, Artists’ Lives, 1990 (C466/02)

John Watts interviewed by Cos Michael, Food: From Source to Salespoint, 2006 (C821/190)

Nigel Bell interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of British Science (C1379/91)

Eric Ash interviewed by Tom Lean, An Oral History of British Science (C1379/92)

Cedric Battye interviewed by Jan Sanderson, Unheard Voices: Interviews with Deafened People, 2008 (C1345/12)

Eva Jiricna interviewed by Niamh Dillon, Architects’ Lives, 2015 (C467/127)

National Life Stories Podcast 4 - Christmas

You can find out more about National Life Stories at our website. Search for 'Christmas' at British Library Sounds  to find over 1,350 Christmas memories, songs and broadcasts!

When a collector’s interest covers a very specific area of recording they often amass something valuable and comprehensive over a lifetime of acquisition.  One such collector is Christopher Steward whose collection of recordings on shellac discs of flute and piccolo recordings seems second to none.  I am delighted to have negotiated for this important and large collection to come to the British Library, even more so as Mr Steward generously decided to donate it.  It is a veritable history of the flute on record.

Christopher Steward studied at Trinity College completing his studies with William Bennett.  A former member of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and BBC Northern Orchestra, he also taught at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

The treasures of the collection include many very early discs by artists born in the middle of the nineteenth century – Léon Fontbonne (1859-1940), Albert Fransella (1865-1935), Adolphe Hennebains (1862-1914) and Edward de Jong born in 1837 when Brahms was only four years old.  Not only are there representations of the great flautists of the past, but Mr Steward also collected recordings by uncredited flute and piccolo players, many from the first two decades of the twentieth century.

A small representation of discs from Mr Steward’s collection have been posted online here on Robert Bigio’s Flute Pages.  I have chosen to present some below that do not appear on these pages.

Because it is Christmas and we are gearing up for the holiday mood we start with Léon Jacquemont, a flautist with the Garde Républicaine.  This is a recording of him playing a delightful showpiece for piccolo, La Tourterelle (The Turtle Dove) Op. 119 by Eugène Damaré recorded around 1909 for the rarely seen Aérophone label.

Jacquemont Aérophone 1047

In the Menuet from Bizet’s L’Arlesienne suite No. 2, the harp accompaniment had to be played on the piano in order for it to register through the acoustic horn, but the Lamoureux Orchestra join in on this disc from 1^st March 1910 to support their principal flautist Pierre Deschamps (1874-1922).

Deschamps 030540

Léon Fontbonne (1859-1940) became first flautist and piccolo player with the Garde Républicaine, a position he held for twenty five years.  Here he is with a great virtuoso showpiece recorded 116 years ago in 1901, Carnaval de Venise Op. 2 by Matheus André Reichert, a work published in 1872.

Fontbonne 39151

Adolphe Hennebains (Pierre Petit [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Another fine French flautist, Adolphe Hennebains (1862-1914) can be heard in early recordings of chamber music on BL Sounds.  Here he plays a Chopin Nocturne arranged for flute by Paul Taffanel (1844-1908) – not the famous one in E flat Op. 9 No. 2 as one may suppose, but the beautiful F sharp major Nocturne Op. 15 No. 2.  The recording was made in the year of Taffanel’s death, 1908, and it is remarkable that even in this primitive acoustic recording with orchestral accompaniment Hennebains’ intake of breath can be heard during the opening phrases.

Hennebains 39200

A surprising disc from the collection appears on the Odeon label.  The flutist is George Ackroyd (1880-1960) who was principal flute with the Covent Garden Orchestra, but it was the violinist’s name that caught my eye – Albert Sammons (1886-1957), one of England’s greatest violinists, who went on to make the first recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto in October 1916 for Columbia.  Here they play an arrangement of Mendelssohn’s immortal Spring Song recorded around 1915 with W. Barker on harp.

Ackroyd Odeon 0788

Theobald Boehm (WikiCommons)

Edith Penville was an impressive player who died as recently as 1981, at the age of nearly one hundred.  This Homochord disc is a conflation of two works - part of the Variations sur un air Allemand Op. 22 by Theobald Boehm (1794-1881) preceded by part of a Faust Fantasie by Edward de Jong (1837-1920) who became the first flute with the original Hallé Orchestra in 1858.  Penville could have studied with him as she was born in the North of England and he worked in the Manchester and Derbyshire area.  De Jong himself recorded in 1907 and these recordings and more details about him can be found on this excellent blog. Penville’s impressive recording was made on 11^th December 1923.

Penville H544

We end with an electrical recording.  Jacques van Lier (1881-1934) (not to be confused with the Dutch cellist of the same name) was principal flautist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra from 1907 to his death in 1934.  He made two sides for HMV on 18^th June 1931 in Czechoslovakia with accompanist Otto Schulhof who had accompanied many great soloists including Heifetz as a child prodigy, Pablo Casals, Fritz Kreisler, Bronislaw Huberman and Jan Kubelik.  Van Lier plays the flute solo from Gluck’s opera Alceste.

Van Lier AM3673

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At the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924, one exhibit that caught the public eye was a dolls’ house, specially created for Queen Mary, which contained a fully-working miniature gramophone complete with six tiny records made by His Master's Voice.

Around 35,000 miniature discs were produced for sale as souvenirs, at sixpence each. Despite this far-from-limited edition, copies are hard to come by now, perhaps because they could so easily be lost or mislaid. The souvenir discs featured a 22-second rendering of ‘God Save the King’ by the popular Australian singer Peter Dawson. At just 34 mm (1 and 5/16th of an inch) in diameter, this is the smallest 78 rpm disc ever made.

A copy is currently on display in the British Library's free Entrance Hall exhibition LISTEN: 140 Years of Recorded Sound.

This is not the world's smallest playable record however. A contender for this coveted title arrived at the Library just a few weeks ago, courtesy of Michael Ridge.

This 1" diameter 33 rpm lathe-cut disc by GX Jupitter-Larsen and Zebra Mu (each contributes an 8-second piece) is cautiously described by issuing label Quagga Curious Sounds as 'likely to be one of the smallest lathe cut records ever released'! Sadly, the limited edition of 110 copies is already sold out.

Charlie Morgan, Archive and Administrative Assistant for National Life Stories explores the Oral History of Oral History collection.

What happens when roles are reversed? When a doctor is the patient, when a chef gets served dinner, when an oral historian is the one who gets asked all the questions? Well that’s exactly what you get (minus the doctor and the chef) in one of our newest online collections, an Oral History of Oral History.

An Oral History of Oral History is a collection of life story interviews with the pioneers and leaders of oral history in the UK. The interviews were mostly conducted by Robert Wilkinson and cover the technological, organisational and methodological changes within the discipline since the 1950s. If you've ever had an interest in oral history but haven't really understood what it is or who the people are who practice it, this is the collection for you.

Rob Perks with Paul Thompson and Jennifer Wingate as they prepare for their interview for an Oral History of Oral History (C1149/09)

Although everyone in the collection is well-established in their field, the benefit of the life story approach is that the interviews include everything from childhood to hobbies and not just career highlights. With that in mind, for this blog I went back to the start and tried to find out where it all began, how each person got involved with oral history in the first place.

For many of the early practitioners, especially those with connections to the History Workshop movement or Ruskin College Oxford, there was a political dimension to oral history. In his interview, Alun Howkins describes how he initially went to Ruskin to study economics but on the advice of Raphael Samuel he switched to history. It was then that he began to interview poachers in Headington Quarry near to his home town Bicester. For Alun the entire goal of History Workshop had been “to give back the history of the poor to the poor” and with that in mind “it seemed perfectly logical that the way to do that was a tape recorder”.

Alun Howkins on switching to history at Ruskin (C1149/10/06)

Alun Howkins on interviewing poachers (C1149/10/07)

While for some there was an explicitly political impetus to oral history, for others it has been driven by much more practical purposes. Cynthia Brown first encountered oral history when she was completing her undergraduate dissertation and was looking for additional information on local funeral directors. She needed evidence, had exhausted the documentary sources and so, “which is so often the case with oral history”, decided an interview was the best way to get it.

Cynthia Brown on interviewing funeral directors (C1149/32/06)

Elizabeth Roberts is another oral historian who came to oral history more by chance than pre-planning, and she was initially very sceptical of the whole thing. After being instructed by John Marshall at the University of Lancaster to conduct some interviews, Elizabeth describes how she was “absolutely appalled” at the idea and “couldn’t think how on earth this was going to be valuable”. Luckily for us she gave it a go anyway.

Elizabeth Roberts on her first interviews (C1149/08/03)

As we’ve seen, many people first got involved with oral history on the recommendation of someone else in the field. For Alun Howkins it was Raphael Samuel, for Elizabeth Roberts it was John Marshall, and for Brian Harrison it was Paul Thompson. According to Brian, Paul and Thea Thompson “went around with their machines and made converts” and in him they definitely found one.

Brian Harrison on meeting Paul and Thea (C1149/24/02)

One great strength of the Oral History of Oral History project is that it covers multiple generations. So not only can we listen to Brian Harrison describe the influence Paul Thompson had on him, but we also get to hear from Paul himself. Paul's interview is especially valuable as it fills in a lot of the gaps. For example, many of the interviewees in this collection talk about conducting interviews long before they had heard of the term 'oral history' but Paul is able to tell us where it came from. We also get to hear a very un-catchy alternative term that was thankfully left behind.

Paul Thompson on the term 'oral history' (C1149/29/02)

These interviews and stories featured here are just a small selection of those in an Oral History of Oral History. There are many others in the collection, plus the original recordings of another pioneer of oral history, George Ewart Evans, but of course there are also many stories of being introduced to oral history that have never even been recorded. So if you’re an oral historian or if you work with oral history why not tweet us at @BL_OralHistory and let us know how you first got involved.

This week's selection comes from Richard Ranft, Head of Sound and Vision.

Around this time of year as winter takes it hold, and into spring that follows, a daytime walk around one of Britain’s more remote coastal estuaries and mudflats, or over inland moorlands and heathlands will likely bring about an encounter with a Curlew, the largest of all waders. Its soulful voice carries far across flat and rolling landscapes, adding a magical and haunting feel to wild places. And in early English folklore, it was a harbinger of death, or for the poet WB Yeats, it spoke of a love lost:

"O Curlew, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the water in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind"

 

This particular Curlew recording was made in southern England as long ago as 1937 by the pioneer bird sound recordist, Ludwig Koch (1881-1974). It comprises several takes that illustrate the bird’s varied notes. The recording was used for many years to introduce The Naturalist radio programme, broadcast by the BBC Home Service.

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