Keyboard Immortal Claude Debussy Plays Again In Stereo Vinyl LP Record SEALED

Description: Yes we combine shipping for multiple purchases.Add multiple items to your cart and the combined shipping total will automatically be calculated. Keyboard Immortal Claude Debussy Plays Again In Stereo Vinyl LP Record SEALED Side OneChildren's Corner Suite (Debussy)Dr. Gradus ad ParnassumJimbo’s lullabySerenade for the dollThe snow is dancingThe little shepherdGolliwog’s cake-walkNotebook of Exquisite Things (DelSide TwoFrom Preludes, Book I (Debussy)The Sunken Cathedral, No. 10Minstrels, No. 12The Dance of Puck, No. 11Delphic Dance, No. 1The Wind on the Plain, No. 3Immortal masters perform in stereo ... how is it possible? In 1904,a young scientist named Edwin Welte demonstrated the pianomusic reproduction system shown above, so far ahead of its timein its faithfulness to the original performance that critics, profes-sional musicians, and music-lovers today—almost 70 years later-still marvel at its true high fidelity.Welte’s achievement took the form of two separate inventions.The first was an “electrified" piano that recorded the performance.Underneath the entire keyboard was a tray of mercury. Attached toeach key was an almost weightless carbon prong. When the pian-ist struck the key, the prong dipped into the mercury, closing anelectrical circuit. Measuring both the duration and the dynamiclevel of each note, the “electrified” piano recorded the pianist’sexact performance.The electrical impulses were recorded on a seismograph-likeinstrument, with an inking device that traced the performance ontoa paper roll mounted on a revolving drum. These ink tracings werethen meticulously punched out by hand, thus capturing forever theperformances of the great keyboard virtuosi.The second part of Edwin Welte’s invention was an instrument toreproduce these recordings. Ignoring the traditional concept of the“player piano," Welte introduced a robot piano player. This was ahuge box with 80 fingers and two pedaling feet. He called it a vor-setzer—German for “sitter-in-front.” The vorsetzer receives its“directions” from the perforated piano roll, inserted into the unit.It is the playing of the vorsetzer, reproducing every nuance of theoriginal performance, that you will hear on this album.The vorsetzer may be heard on over 100 radio stations in theUnited States and Canada on “Keyboard Immortals Play Again . . .in Stereo,” sponsored by Sony/Superscope. It is produced by Mr.Joseph Tushinsky, President of Superscope, and owner of both thevorsetzer and the Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand piano youare hearing on this recording. It is largely in response to the en-thusiasm aroused by this program—first heard on station KFAC,Los Angeles, in 1966—that this series is now being released to thegeneral public.Sergei Rachmaninoff did not record for the Welte system. Inorder to bring you these magnificent performances reproduced onthe Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand piano, Mr. Joseph Tush-insky and his technicians developed a vorsetzer system compatiblewith Rachmaninoff’s piano rolls, recorded for another system.For further information and a handsome, free booklet about thevorsetzer, please write to Keyboard Immortals, c/o Sony/Super-scope, 8150 Vineland Avenue, Sun Valley, California 91352. ■This recording documents in modern, authentic stereo sound theperformances of his own music by Claude Debussy—a man whotook the lead in an historic crisis of musical styles and helped toestablish a new era in esthetic history.For three-quarters of a century prior to Debussy's birth, musicin France and Germany, the centers of European art, had followedtwo divergent courses—courses which were related, however, byhaving been generated from similar views of art and human des-tiny. Dramatist Friedrich von Schiller—inspiration to Beethoven,and through Beethoven to all romantic musicians—expressed theimpulse implicit in romantic art when he said to his fellow artists:“. . . labor for your contemporaries, but do for them what they re-quire, not what they praise . . Everywhere you meet them, sur-round them with great, noble, and ingenious forms; multiply aroundthem the symbols of perfection. . ..”If, however, a composer of the nineteenth century had beenasked to state his view of actual human life, he might very wellhave quoted the French poet-statesman Lamartine. In the poemLes Preludes (which Liszt adopted as the program for his tonepoem of the same name), Lamartine cried, “What then is life buta succession of preludes to that unknown song of which deathsounds the first solemn note? . . . where is the heart upon whosefirst blissful happiness some storm does not break, blowing awayits young illusions . . .? And where is the soul, thus cruelly bruised,that does not . . . seek the soothing peace of nature, to recall thehappy hours that are gone? But not for long will man linger in thekindly quiet . . . When the trumpet sounds the alarm, away hehastens to the post of danger. .This, with variations, was the alternative which was “in the air"in the nineteenth century as the ultimate ideal to be hoped for inlife: either the static, contemplative serenity of escape, or anactive existence of endless battle.A comparison of the definitive music of French and German ro-manticism suggests that each school was generated respectivelyfrom one of these ideals.The German composers projected the active, embattled life. Toexpress in music the gravity and conflict they saw as the essenceof the human drama, composers of the German school—such asBeethoven, Schumann, Wagner and Brahms—had developed atradition of strong, thick instrumental textures, of musical formswhich sustained a sense of conflict across immense spans.But psychological dissatisfaction was inevitable with the idealof battle without ultimate victory. As disillusion grew in the latenineteenth century, composers of German tradition became in-creasingly less able to carry their complex, expressive musicallanguage to convincing conclusions.But what of the French?In the early 1880's the short, stocky Claude Debussy was an un-happy 21-year-old student at the Paris Conservatoire, devotinghimself to learning a system of musical conventions which werethe worse, he complained, because they were not even Frenchconventions.Nineteenth-century music in France seemed to opt for the alter-nate ideal as expressed in the Lamartine poem. It sang of “sooth-ing peace”— of contemplation, perhaps, of the “happy hours thatare gone. . . ." Even with the possible exception of such an out-standing figure as Hector Berlioz, French music—as represented byFranck, Saint-Saens, Massenet, etc.—seemed to view happinessas a state of perfectly unblemished, uneventful serenity. In Frenchromantic music we hear a characteristic airy lightness of texture,a wide spacing of material that allows a relaxed atmosphere forcontemplation; it is a music in which turgidity is carefully avoided.In the attempt to portray absolutely unbroken serenity as asympathetic ideal, French romanticists indulged in a rather facilemelodic language of markedly sentimental cast. It was thematiccontent from which intensity and drama could not be generated.This absence of dramatic conflict made it difficult to sustain in-tense interest throughout an extended instrumental work.This dramatic interest was imposed on the music of Frenchromanticism rather artificially from outside by borrowing dramaticformal devices from the German symphonic school. The studentDebussy found himself required to emulate such models as: Saint-Saens, who extended his sprightly melodies into greatly paddedand often uninteresting symphonic movements; and Franck, whoborrowed Wagnerian chromaticism and built musical structuresthat seemingly modulated at every turning largely for the sake ofmodulation—not for compelling dramatic reasons. Thus, the es-thetic crisis in Germany was also a crisis for the music of France.There were fewer new developments in German music for Frenchmusicians to adopt. French music, like German, floundered inrepetitions of the thrice-said.Ultimately Debussy rebelled. A comparison of Debussy’s musicwith that of his French predecessors establishes the artificialityof attempts to force French musical language into the mold ofGerman forms. Debussy demonstrated the means by which Frenchstyle—the light textures, the airy spaces, the extreme clarity—could be used to build cogent, consistent musical structures. Hemade the contemplative serenity of French tradition a virtue-nota liability to be evaded by artifice, and a flaw to be masked withforced sentiment. If the music of German symphonic tradition canbe represented simplistically by thunderclouds gathering to astorm, Debussy’s music is an atmosphere charged with a radiantmist, catching and blending all the colors of the spectrum into anentrancing flux of hues and intensities.Children’s Corner SuiteThis suite was composed in 1908 for Debussy's four-year-olddaughter. Its first movement, Dr Gradus ad Parnassum, takes offon Clementi’s classic course of piano studies. According to AlfredCortot, the piece “describes a child practicing the piano, andpokes gentle fun at the unequal battle he is raging with Clementi'scomplicated monotony."The title Jimbo's Lullaby — written in Debussy’s faulty English —should probably be Jumbo's Lullaby. Debussy uses the comic ideaof an elephant’s slumber to generate a truly tender utterance, aprojection evoking a sense of delicate inner sensitivity concealedby outward ungainliness.Serenade for the Doll is a humorously mechanistic waltz; thestiff-legged mannequin rocks unevenly from foot to foot, catchingher balance carefully at the cadences. The Snow is Dancing is abrilliant fabric of interlapping and overlaid pieces of melody. Themotifs are primarily three- and four-note kernels. They are givenout slowly over swirling arpeggios. There is time for the listenerto savor each note, and its relationship to what has preceded it.Occasionally the notes of one motif interlap with those of thenext, giving, at this relaxed speed, an uncanny impression of asimultaneous approach and departure from repose.. Underneatheverything is a motivic bass-line, supporting and guiding thestructure. The composition possesses a quality of isolation intime and space, very like the sensation of a silent snowfall intwilight.To express the loneliness of The Little Shepherd, Debussyused another device to break with nineteen-century tradition. Thiswas the adaptation to modern usage of medieval modes — scalesystems characterized, in part, by weak tonal feeling when com-pared to the major-minor system of tonality used in the nineteenthcentury. The latter system yielded a feeling of certainty essentialfor tense dramatic developments; but for the smaller scope ofDebussy’s microcosms, the strange sensation — provided by themodes — of motion within a suspended frame, is ideal.Golliwog's Cakewalk is Debussy’s nod to American ragtime. Italso contains the famous parody on the first phrases of Wagner’sTristan and Isolde, said to be the result of Debussy’s bet that hecould make one of the beautiful Wagnerian melodies humorous.D'une Cahier d’esquisses (Notebook of Exquisite Things)Over a sonorous bass Debussy throws a sustained construct ofrecurring dissonances which are resolved to consonances bysubtle changes of their environment. Notebook is a shifting, evoca-tive succession of transparencies with edges overlapping.La Cathedrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) Preludes I, No. 10Debussy gives us the weight of the ocean to muffle the bells ofthe mythical cathedral tolling beneath its surface. By adding linesand textures gradually, the composer depicts the cathedral risingby almost imperceptible degrees until it breaks the surface in amajestic cloud of foam, to stand motionless as waves wash aroundit. Like Atlantis, the cathedral sinks back into the depths, to be re-membered as a symbol of longed-for ideals.Minstrels, Preludes I, No. 12This is Debussy's tribute to the American Negro Minstrel shows,which were popular in Europe until the turn of the century.La Danse de Puck (Dance of Puck) Preludes I, No. 11This musical portrayal of an imp is evocative of the Parisian street-urchins idealized by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. The spirit ofthe hardiness and devil-may-care gaiety of these children in theface of great hardship is captured perfectly by Debussy.Danseuses des Delphes (Delphic Dance) Preludes I, No. 1This is perhaps one of the most characteristically beautiful of allDebussy’s compositions. Langourous motivic wisps float like gos-samer veils over slightly faster-moving chordal statements. TheDelphic Dance demands a very quiet, almost passive, state of re-ceptiveness in its listeners to make its subtle, hypnotic effect.Le Vent dans la plaine (The Wind on the Plain) Preludes I, No. 3This is another of Debussy’s projections of isolation - in this case,a rather dark and cold loneliness. It is a fitting Debussy utterance.In his own lifetime he was a misunderstood figure. His role as anunraveller of the tangled lines of stylistic progress, his achievementin carrying the traditions of French music to their farthest possiblelimits, has only recently been recognized. That is why this re-cording is so important a document: to the modern listener, whopossesses an historical perspective on Debussy’s period, it islike a fictional time-warp, yielding up Debussy’s own approachto his own epoch-making work.Mid. in U.S.A, bv Superscope Inc., Thank you for your business. Gallimoresgoods

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