Contents

The acoustical era and the flute

From Briccialdi to Bach

Obbligati, light music and more adventurous repertoire

The electrical era and the expansion of instrumental repertoire 

References

Between 1890 and 1925, a period defined as the acoustical era of recording, the flute’s recorded repertoire was an eclectic assortment of genuine flute music, operatic medleys, popular songs and novelties that generally cast the instrument as a warbler. The works of many nineteenth-century flautist-composers, like Boehm and Köhler, were well-represented, yet other composers deemed especially important to the flute were notably absent, as were many of the most iconic works. In addition, the flute was most often relegated to a supporting role, providing obbligati for sopranos or assisting in the standard flute, violin and harp trios that recorded hundreds of salon pieces. Were the recordings of that era an accurate reflection of flautists’ actual preferences or simply a manifestation of popular taste? To what degree did commercial factors influence the selection of recorded repertoire? Did the recording industry create stereotypes for instrumental music and thus influence public expectations of the repertoire?

The earliest commercial recordings reflected the climate of chaotic corporate development, exploitation and technical experimentation that surrounded the emerging music industry. Fred Gaisberg’s account of early recording experiences in his memoir, The Music Goes 'Round[1] gives the impression of performers literally pulled off the street and given the chance to immortalise their speciality, whether it was whistling, a comic monologue or a banjo solo. Paul Charosh, in Berliner Gramophone Records: American Issues, 1892-1900,[2] examined the rather haphazard vocal and instrumental repertoire of the earliest disc records and noted a jumble of new songs from the 1890s, older ballads from the American Civil War era, a smattering of well-known classical works and light classics. Titles recorded ten or more times for the American Berliner label before 1900 included three of Stephen Foster’s songs (with My Old Kentucky Home proving the most popular), Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, that perennial favourite, Blue Bells of Scotland, and the Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. British Berliner recordings of flautist Albert Fransella, made by the affiliated Gramophone Company between 1898 and 1901, presented a similar assortment. Fransella (1865-1935), a noted soloist and principal flautist of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra for many years, recorded pieces actually intended for flute, like Wilhelm Popp’s Vogelsang and Ernesto Köhler’s Hirten-Idylle, while the selections he made with his ‘Fransella’s Flute Quartet’ ranged from Foster’s Old Folks at Home and Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Morn from The Mikado, to the Spinnelied from Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte, Op. 67, no. 4.

As the recording industry grew and larger firms competed for a growing audience, artist prestige became a greater advertising asset. Between 1900 and 1905 the major recording companies developed a strong ‘celebrity’ focus that would come to dominate the production and marketing of most classical recordings throughout much of the century. But most of the great flautists active at the beginning of the twentieth century were excluded from the ranks of featured recording artists. Opera singers, piano virtuosi and a few famous violinists lent the necessary glamour to the catalogues and served as the centrepieces of advertising campaigns. Most other performers were represented in a decidedly secondary fashion, just as most instrumental records were treated as novelties rather than artistic creations. They were marketed as inexpensive alternatives to the higher-priced vocal selections, offering a repertoire of popular songs, light music and other genres deemed more attractive to low-income and ostensibly ‘lowbrow’customers. In addition, instrumental recordings were rarely issued in the celebrity classifications, not appearing on the distinctive red  labels of the Gramophone Company or its American affiliate, the Victor Talking Machine Company, until the 1930s.

In this environment, it is not surprising that flute recordings borrowed so heavily from the operatic repertoire, the piano and violin literature and the best-known classics. Some of these excerpts and arrangements demonstrated a remarkable life span, at least on record, creating a persistent class of adopted flute standards in the process. For example, Maximilian Schwedler (1853-1940), principal flautist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and designer of the unsuccessful ‘Reform’ flute, recorded six sides for the Polyphon-Musikwerke label of Leipzig in about 1906. His selections, quite typical of the time, included a transcription of the minuet from Mozart’s Divertimento in D, K.334. More surprising is a later recording of the same minuet, recorded in 1931 by flautist Arrigo Tassinari (1889-1988) for Italian Columbia. With a ready supply of appealing and recognizable classical melodies on hand, record companies showed little interest in seeking out original, much less contemporary, woodwind repertoire. Advertising generally stressed the comprehensive nature of a label’s offerings and boldly announced that something to please every taste could always be found in the general catalogue. Quantity and variety, however, often eclipsed quality. If a record catalogue listed duet arrangements of marches and polkas for flute and clarinet, the woodwind area was deemed adequately covered. Ironically, commercial recording matured at a time when the flute’s repertoire was developing in new directions, but remained too conservative, if not altogether indifferent, to reflect this transition. Even a cursory examination of newly-published flute music and concert programmes of the early twentieth century shows that performing flautists were no longer confining themselves to themes with variations. The second edition of Emil Prill’s catalogue of flute music,[3] covering material published between 1898 and 1912, still contained dozens of fantasies, variations and caprices on operatic themes, but also listed works by Andersen, Bach, Blavet, Fauré, Frederick the Great, Handel, Kuhlau, Marcello, Mouquet, Mozart, Schubert and Taffanel. Eli Hudson (1877-1919), a versatile instrumentalist on early Gramophone Company recordings  (flute, piccolo, piano and conductor) and a co-founder of the New Symphony Orchestra, left discs that included nothing more thought-provoking than Paggi’s Rimembranze napoletane and frequent repetitions of Carnival of Venice. In concert, however,  he often performed works like Chaminade’s Concertino (15 December 1907, with the London Symphony Orchestra) and the Bach Suite in B Minor (9 October 1908, with the New Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edouard Colonne). It is also rather difficult to reconcile Prill (1867-1940), principal flautist of Berlin’s Royal Opera, solo flautist at Bayreuth and professor at the Berlin Hochschule, with a recorded legacy that included no fewer than seven recordings of Chopin’s Minute Waltz, and a bevy of operatic fantasies on Faust, Carmen, La Juive, La Fille du Régiment and Norma. Although Prill’s sporadic activity in the studio continued through the mid-1930s, eventually allowing a more representative assortment of titles, it never approached the artistic level of concerts like that staged in Berlin for his sixtieth birthday, when he played Beethoven’s Op. 25 Serenade, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp and von Weber’s Op. 63 Trio.

Further restrictions on repertoire were imposed by the short playing time of the 78 rpm disc, although performers adapted an amazing number of longer works to accommodate such limitations. Ten- and twelve-inch discs, which became the standard formats by 1903, generally allowed about three and four minutes of playing time per side, respectively, while cylinder recordings appeared in two- or four-minute formats. The industry’s many tentative experiments with longer-playing formats began in 1903, but encountered technical and commercial problems deemed too expensive or time-consuming to solve. Edison’s genuine long-playing discs of 1928, which allowed as much as twenty-four minutes of playing time per side, were a theoretical success but a practical failure, as their fine grooves did not track well and overall sound reproduction was exceedingly poor owing to the fact that most were dubbed compilations of conventional four-minute recordings. An additional drawback was the special equipment required to play the discs. Early 33 1/3 rpm discs, introduced by RCA Victor in 1931, had similar problems, compounded by a national economic depression and the faltering financial state of the company. Such discs were used extensively for recording film soundtracks and transcribing radio programmes and live performances, but the final success of a long-playing format would have to wait until 1947.

The early recording method itself posed challenges to flautists, although none as serious as those faced by violinists, who had to accept as inevitable the evaporation of their highest register. Until the advent of amplified (microphonic) electrical recording in 1925, all recordings were made using the acoustical or ‘mechanical’ method, which did not allow for any preamplification of the original source. Performers played to a large recording horn that crudely channeled the sound waves produced by the instrument to the cutting stylus. Even the smallest ensembles had to cluster around the horn in unusual and often cramped configurations to achieve something approaching balance. Volume control was completely dependent upon physical distance, the performer moving towards the recording horn in soft passages and back again in loud passages to prevent over-recording or ‘blasting’.  Because studios were frequently ordinary rooms in commercial or industrial buildings, ideal acoustical conditions were seldom attained. It is no wonder that the greatest technical successes of the acoustical recording era included those instruments that recorded well under the most adverse conditions, including the piccolo, trumpet, clarinet and banjo. The number of early piccolo recordings, in fact, far outnumbered those of the flute by a wide margin. Léon Jacquemont, a member of the Musique de la Garde Républicaine, recorded for the French branch of the Gramophone Company in Paris as early as 1899. In addition to performing many perennial piccolo favourites, he also used the instrument for selections usually performed on the flute, like the ‘Pastorale’ section from the overture to William Tell and Anton Titl’s popular Serenade. German flautist Julius Aschke recorded almost exclusively on the piccolo for the Gramophone Company and Odeon between 1904 and 1909, favoring titles like Karl Komzak’s Le Rossignol Polka and Schlag der Nachtigall. Many early recording ledgers, like those that chronicled the first commercial Edison cylinders of 1889, simply noted ‘piccolo and flute’ for a string of titles, implying that the performer used whichever instrument recorded best or was most suitable for a particular selection.

From Briccialdi to Bach           

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Although many of the earliest instrumental recordings tended toward the utmost simplicity, an enthusiasm for virtuosity in any form quickly became evident. Among the acoustical performances of Briccialdi’s Carnival of Venice variations, for example, are recordings made by Eli Hudson in 1906, by the virtuoso concert flautist from New Zealand, John Amadio, in 1920, and by Robert Murchie, the noted orchestral flautist and professor of flute at the Royal College of Music in London, in 1923. Demersseman’s Op. 7 variations were recorded by Opéra-Comique principal Louis Balleron in 1901, Emil Prill in 1907, Albert Fransella in 1911 and the Dutch Hendrick de Vries in 1912. Cesare Ciardi’s Le Carnaval russe was also extremely popular, with no less than nine documented acoustical versions. The earliest, featuring the American flautist Frank Badollet (1870-1934), was recorded for American Berliner on 16 December 1899 and issued on a seven-inch disc, the performance lasting just under two minutes. Later recordings included performances by Americans Marshall Lufsky and Darius Lyons, Germans Emil Prill, Alfred Lichtenstein, Fritz Kröckel and Maximilian Schwedler, the Russian Fedor Stepanov, and de Vries, who recorded it twice. A similar list could be compiled for Boehm’s Op. 22 variations (Variations sur un air suisse, often identified simply as Du, du). Variations were in fact so popular that many flautists recorded them repeatedly for different labels, sometimes using a different set of variations for each rendition. Equally common were the multitude of bird-imitation novelties that had populated the flute and piccolo repertoire since the mid-nineteenth century. Between 1905 and 1909 Eli Hudson recorded piccolo solos such as Eugène Damaré’s Le Roitelet and Le Rossignol de l’Opéra and Charles le Thière’s Birds of the Field for the Gramophone Company. With his sister Winifred (identified variously as ‘Winnie’ and ‘Elgar’ Hudson on record labels), he performed piccolo duets like Henri Kling’s Birds of Passage and Nightingale and Blackbird. Sousa Band flautist Darius Lyons (1878-1911), recording for the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1909, alternated between flute and piccolo for titles like Damaré’s L’Alouette, Wilhelm Ganz’s Sing, Sweet Bird, and Wilhelm Popp’s Nachtigallen-Serenade.

[Click image to play recording]

Frank Badollet:  (?pf):
“Le Carnaval russe”
(Cesare Ciardi)
U.S., 16 Dec 1899
Berliner 0820

The theme with variations was ideal for cylinders and 78 rpm discs because whole sections could easily be omitted to produce a two- or three-minute solo with little harm to the fabric of the music. Just as successful were the shorter, showy pieces, so often favored as encores, that had been composed for the flute in profusion throughout the nineteenth century. Georges Barrère, Adolphe Hennebains and German flautist Fritz Kröckel all recorded the sprightly ‘Allegretto’ from Benjamin Godard’s Suite, while Albert Fransella’s interpretation of the ‘Valse’ from the same work was popular enough to warrant four different performances on four different labels, issued between 1906 and 1911. The acoustical recordings of Australian flautist John Lemmoné (1861-1949) provide a number of interesting illustrations. Made in New York for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1910, they included Paul Wetzger’s Am Waldesbach, or By the Brook (with piano accompaniment credited to Nellie Melba), Ernesto Köhler’s Le Papillon, Ferdinand Sabathil’s Scherzo capriccioso, Emil Pessard’s Andalouse and Bolero, and Jean Donjon’s Rossignolet. Their vivid style and short length made such works ideal in the 78 rpm era.

When the flautist ran out of pyrotechnics, however, the prevailing preference was for familiar songs, dances and melodies that would be known to the widest possible audience. Traditional airs such as Robin Adair, and Auld Robin Gray were among the most popular choices. Comin’ Thro’ the Rye seems to have been particularly enduring, from an 1898 Edison cylinder featuring pioneer recording artist George Schweinfest (1862-1949) to Robert Murchie’s Columbia recording of 1923. Albert Fransella recorded variations on There is Nae Luck Aboot the Hoose twice, for the Gramophone Company in 1899 and for Neophone in 1906, giving some support to the humorous inquiry as to whether the flute’s repertoire consisted of anything else.[4]  Sentimental ballads like  Silver Threads Among the Gold seem to have been extremely popular, although there were occasional tunes in a more boisterous vein, like We Won’t Go Home Until Morning, recorded by Frank Badollet for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1900 and again in 1902.

[Click image to play recording]

John Amadio: (pf/?):
“Fantasia Rigoletto”
(Verdi ; arr. Cesare Ciardi)
U.K., late 1920–spring 1921
Vocalion R-6024

Acoustical recordings of flautists playing Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Mozart and Schubert were also issued, but major composers were more often represented by arrangements or excerpts. Adolphe Hennebains (1862-1914), principal flautist of the Paris Opéra and professor of flute at the Paris Conservatoire, recorded the ‘Badinerie’ from Bach’s Suite in B Minor in 1905. This is certainly among the first recordings of a flautist playing Bach (there are also later acoustical performances of the entire suite, or movements from it, by Philippe Gaubert and Robert Murchie), but there are no known acoustical flute recordings of the Bach sonatas. John Lemmoné recorded a severely truncated version of the first movement of the Mozart Concerto for Flute and Harp in 1910, with harpist Ada Sassóli and piano accompaniment, but more extensive concerto performances did not begin to appear until Emil Prill’s performance of Frederick the Great’s Concerto No. 3 in C Major was issued by German Parlophon in 1923. Before electrical recording, in fact, flute records were much more likely to feature Handel’s ‘Largo’ from Serse than even a single movement from one of the composer’s sonatas, or Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’ rather than his Introduction and Variations. Certain composers enjoyed considerable popularity, although it would be difficult to determine if this prominence was genuine, or based simply on the availability of their works and the ease with which they could be arranged for various instruments. Chopin, Gounod and Mendelssohn, for example, appear to have supplied much of the flute’s recorded repertoire between 1890 and 1925. Chopin’s nocturnes and waltzes, already popular as vocal arrangements, were instrumental favourites as well. In a few cases, Taffanel’s transcriptions of the Nocturne in F-sharp Major, Op. 15, no. 2 and the ‘Minute Waltz,’ Op. 64, no.1 are specifically credited on early record labels. Gounod’s Faust was  an especially frequent source of medleys and variations. John Amadio and Eli Hudson both recorded Edward de Jong’s ‘Faust Fantasia,’ and there were probably several other performances of the same work, as arrangements were not always clearly identified on record labels, in catalogues, or even in company recording ledgers. Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte also supplemented the flute’s recorded repertoire from the 1890s until well into the electrical era.

Obbligati, light music and more adventurous repertoire

Already firmly established before the beginning of the recording era, the soprano aria or song with flute obbligato was another staple. Among the most commonly encountered titles were the ‘Mad Scene’ from the third act of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Henry Bishop’s setting of the passage from Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Lo, Here the Gentle Lark. While these recordings preserve the voices of many of the century’s most celebrated singers, they also illustrate the playing of many flautists who might otherwise have not recorded. Manuel Berenguer, obbligatist for Amelita Galli-Curci between 1916 and 1926, can only be heard in eight Victor recordings that the great coloratura made between 1918 and 1924. The solo recordings of Hendrick de Vries appear to be limited to a few sides for the Gramophone Company and Parlophon made in 1912 and 1913, but his obbligati for sopranos such as Frieda Hempel and Maria Ivögun reached a much larger audience and subsequently appeared on LP and compact disc reissues devoted to these singers. Nellie Melba’s 1904 Gramophone Company recordings provide yet another opportunity to hear Philippe Gaubert, who was specially requested by Melba herself to provide obbligati for her first recording sessions.

One extremely popular category of recorded flute music is still to be mentioned. From the onset of recording, trios of flute, violin and harp, sometimes with the substitution or addition of cello or piano, produced an inexhaustible supply of what might best be described as salon music. Every label had its own studio ensembles: in Britain, the Gramophone Company’s Francini Trio (as well as the Francini Quartet) featured house flautist Gilbert Barton (1876-?1955), while in America, Victor’s Neapolitan Trio consisted of flautist Clement Barone, Sr., violinist Howard Rattay and harpist Francis Lapitino. American Columbia’s nameless trio featured flautist Marshall Lufsky with violinist Paul Surth and harpist Carl Schuetze, and Edison’s Venetian Trio, whose members more often than not remained anonymous, sometimes included former Sousa Band flautist Julius Spindler. There were scores of others with such fanciful names as the ‘Mozart Trio’, ‘Philharmonic Trio’ and  ‘Gondolier Trio’,  usually composed of unidentified studio musicians. The prolific output and persistence of these ensembles in record catalogues attests to their undeniable popularity. Recordings of the Francini Trio, made between 1910 and 1924, were sometimes issued in as many as five countries, while Neapolitan Trio recordings from the late 1920s remained in RCA Victor catalogues until the early 1940s. The repertoire was remarkably similar from one label to the next. Well-established ballads like Joseph Ascher’s Alice Where Art Thou (written in 1861) and James Molloy’s Love’s Old Sweet Song (from 1892) were typical of the popular song selections. ‘Light’ classical music—such as the previously noted Lieder ohne Worte of Mendelssohn, with a liberal sprinkling of Humoresques, Caprices and Serenades—was also very common. Most prevalent of all were works by a legion of minor composers who specialised in the salon trifle. Alphonse Czibulka, Franz Behr, August Labitzky, Ludwig André and Anton Titl may receive only brief notice in music lexicons, but their works enjoyed considerable popularity on record until the second world war. While it might be an exaggeration to say that this type of repertoire actually influenced the public’s opinion of the flute, it certainly left a lasting recorded impression. Georges Barrère’s recordings with the Trio de Lutèce, made between 1915 and 1922 for the Columbia Phonograph Company in New York, did not feature the baroque, classical, or twentieth-century repertoire that the group usually presented in concert. Instead, Barrère, cellist Paul Kéfer and harpist Carlos Salzedo performed Franz Drdla’s Serenade No. 1, Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, and arrangements of short pieces by Widor, Lalo, Cui and Saint-Saëns. Albert Harzer, principal flautist of the Berlin Philharmonic by 1910, was heard in flute, violin and harp arrangements of Offenbach’s Barcarolle, the ‘Berceuse’ from Godard’s Jocelyn and several similar selections recorded by Deutsche Grammophon in 1931. An even later example is found in ‘The Aeolians’, an ensemble that included Boston Symphony flautist George Madsen.

The group’s RCA Victor recordings, issued in 1938, included arrangements of Flight of the Bumble Bee, Edward McDowell’s To a Wild Rose, and Stephen Foster’s Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair. Much of this repertoire, of course, is still enjoyed and played today. Twenty-first-century flautists may have more choice in the matter than their predecessors, but currently available flute recordings of a Rachmaninoff Vocalise, the Londonderry Air, Dvořák’s Humoreske and Kurt Weill’s September Song show that they are hardly immune to the charms of light music.

Against this background, the more substantial flute repertoire on acoustical recordings stands out in sharp contrast. British and German flautists furnished much of the best solo and chamber music performances, although the few French flautists who did record also focused on significant works. The 1907 French Gramophone Company recording of the Beethoven Serenade, Op. 25, with flautist Adolphe Hennebains, violinist Pierre Sechiari and violist Marcel Vieux, is an outstanding example. Abbreviated through the judicious omission of repeats, it was issued on six single-sided ten-inch discs.

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[The Aeolians]
George Madsen, flute;
Minot Beale, violin;
Carl Stockbridge, cello;
Nellie Zimmer, harp:
“Guitarrero”
(Franz Drdla ; arr. Beale)
New York or Camden, N.J.,
issued 1938
[RCA] Victor 12449

Philippe Gaubert’s solo recordings, made for the French Gramophone Company in 1919 and 1920, included two of his own compositions, Madrigal, and Soir sur la plaine from Deux esquisses, as well as short pieces by Debussy, Doppler, Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Chopin. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Quintet, featuring flautist Carl Bartuzat (1882-1959), recorded works by Klughardt, Beethoven, Reicha, Mozart and Hindemith (the premiere recording of the Kleine Kammermusik) for Deutsche Grammophon between 1923 and 1925. Rare examples of contemporary flute music on acoustical recordings include Eugene Goossens’ Suite for Flute, Viola and Harp, recorded in 1924 for British Vocalion with flautist Charles Stainer, and a 1923 performance, also British,  of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro with Robert Murchie, issued on the Columbia label (Murchie would later participate in an electrical recording of the same work for the Gramophone Company). Recordings from the early 1920s showed evidence of the early music revival as well.

Emil Prill recorded Frederick the Great’s Concerto No. 3 in C Major and selected movements from other works by the Prussian monarch and his teacher, Quantz, for German Parlophon in 1923. Murchie made the first ‘complete’ recording of the Bach Suite in B Minor (slightly truncated by a few brief cuts and omission of several repeats) in 1924, conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty and issued by Columbia.

With its celebrity focus and conservative approach to instrumental music, the recording industry offered little to flautists, aside from the opportunity for regular (if sometimes anonymous) studio employment. A new venue emerged, however, in the early 1920s and flautists, among others, were quick to take advantage of it. Emil Medicus’ journal, The Flutist, began carrying notices of radio recitals as early as 1921.[5]  Shortly after the Times, London, began printing a daily broadcast schedule on 1 January 1923, a concert by the Band of H.M. Irish Guards would feature a flute solo, the ‘Meditation’ from Thaïs played by one Sergeant Underhill. And while early radio programming was often repetitive, even amateurish, it gave solo instrumentalists and small chamber groups new opportunities to perform for a wider audience. Georges Barrère was broadcasting in New York City as early as 1923 if not sooner; Los Angeles Philharmonic principal André Maquarre (1875-?1936) was heard on KHJ, Los Angeles, by 1924, with his Maquarre Ensemble (flute and string quintet) and with the Philharmonic [woodwind] Quintet.

The electrical era and the expansion of instrumental repertoire

In 1925, acoustical recording was replaced by the electrical recording process. In this revolutionary innovation, a microphone was used to convert sound waves to electrical impulses, allowing the sound to be electrically amplified before being transmitted to the cutting stylus. The introduction of microphones freed recording from the spatial restrictions of the recording horn and made it possible to record larger ensembles, even in concert hall settings, with a far greater degree of fidelity. Fearing the worst for their large backlog of acoustical recordings, record companies were cautious when introducing recordings made by this new process—in some cases, early electrical issues appeared without any special announcement or distinctive labeling. As it became apparent that the public response was favorable, advertising vocabulary was stretched to its maximum to describe the new product. Pseudo-scientific terms were coined to inaugurate each company’s new and  ‘exclusive’ process: the Victor Talking Machine Company produced ‘Orthophonic’ recordings while electrically-recorded Columbias were ‘New Process’ in Britain and ‘Viva-tonal’ in the United States. Brunswick and Deutsche Grammophon boasted of their photoelectric ‘beam of light’ process, and Gennett Records, of Richmond, Indiana used the dramatically-advertised ‘Electrobeam’ method (‘Lightning Tuned To Music’). Electrical recordings were touted (much as their acoustical predecessors had been) for their realistic reproduction of sound and their extended range of volume. Apart from the hyperbole, however, the improved ability to record orchestras and chamber ensembles did result in the issue of far more substantial instrumental music. In 1924, Columbia Records introduced its ‘Musical Masterworks’ series, aimed at presenting the best performances of classical repertoire. The company’s 1925 American catalogue (which did not yet include electrical recordings) listed five symphonies, some of the more prominent orchestral passages from Wagner and a selection of chamber works. By 1928 the series had expanded to over seventy ‘Musical Masterworks’ sets of symphonies, sonatas, concertos and chamber music.

The electrical process had a profound effect on the recorded classical repertoire, but attitudes formed early in the century still prevailed well into the 1940s. Wind soloists and ensembles, although attracting much more notice from both composers and the concert-going public by the 1920s, were slow to appear on the new recordings. ‘Classical music’ on record still meant opera and symphonic music. Chamber music seemed to consist of string quartets, with the occasional piano trio thrown in, while solo literature was almost exclusively piano or violin. Georges Barrère, who stopped recording for American Columbia in 1922, did not record again until 1933, when he performed a few contemporary selections with his Barrère Ensemble for the highly esoteric New Music Quarterly Recordings label. John Amadio, although active as a concert artist and acknowledged as a virtuoso, is not known to have recorded between 1929 and 1940. The dearth of recordings by such prominent artists was eventually commented on by reviewers. As late as 1937, George Sutherland wrote of flute recordings for Gramophone: ‘A few crumbs of consolation have been offered recently in the supplementary lists from Columbia, and for these we give thanks; but these few recordings by Marcel Moyse, far from satisfying, only serve to whet the appetite.[6]

During the 1920s, increased interest in both contemporary music and early music brought the flute to the fore in both live and recorded performance and flautists began to specialise in one or both genres. Illustrations of this trend include recitals like the one presented by Louis Fleury in Paris on 3 December 1925. Announced as a programme of Musique ancienne et contemporaine, it included a Bach sonata for two flutes and keyboard and the ‘Air de Reynaud’ from Gluck’s Armide featuring tenor Yves Tinayre. The contemporary half of the programme turned to Caplet’s Reverie et petite valse, Koechlin’s Sonata for Two Flutes and Roussel’s Joueurs de flûte. Fleury was widely known for presenting this type of innovative programme, but he was not alone. A similar recital was given by Ary van Leeuwen, principal flautist of the Cincinnati Symphony, on 5 January 1926. ‘Ancient’ works of Mattheson, Scarlatti and C.P.E. Bach balanced with modern compositions by Desiré Inghelbrecht, Sigfrid Karg-Elert and Eugene Goossens. It would be a mistake to assume, however, that this type of concert activity translated into a barrage of new flute recordings. There are no known recordings of Fleury, and van Leeuwen’s 78 rpm recordings were limited to a few obbligati and four short solos recorded for the Gramophone Company in Vienna in 1905. Still, the introduction of record labels and series devoted to specific musical eras and genres did offer some new opportunities. In particular, the emergence of three important connoisseur labels in France during the 1930s ensured a number of recordings by prominent French flautists. The original 78 rpm series L’Anthologie Sonore, recorded between 1933 and 1949, endeavored to present performances of fourteenth- through eighteenth-century music that conformed to the most exacting standards of performance practice.

[Click image to play recording]

Emil Prill:
(string orchestra of the Berlin State Opera/?):
Concerto in G Major,
Allegro vivace (J.J. Quantz)
Berlin, 8 Dec 1923
Parlophon P-1626

Flautists featured in the monumental project (over 150 discs) included Marcel and Louis Moyse, Gaston Blanquart, Gaston Crunelle, Fernand Dufrêne, Jean (or Jan) Merry and Jean-Pierre Rampal, performing works by Mozart, Blavet, Leclair, J.C Bach, Boismortier, Hasse, Frederick the Great and others.

Another French label, Boite à Musique, focused on both early music and twentieth-century repertoire. Rampal’s first documented recording, a Mozart flute quartet with the Pasquier Trio, appeared onBoite à Musique in 1946, and was followed by many baroque, classical, and twentieth-century works, including a 1949 performance of Milhaud’s Sonatine and Roussel’s Joueurs de flûte in 1950. L’ Oiseau-Lyre was established in 1937 to supplement the editions of music produced by the noted publishing house.

Flute performances on the label ranged from Lucien Lavaillotte’s participation in woodwind trio arrangements of fifteenth-century chanson to Marcel Moyse’s 1938 recording of Stanley Bate’s Sonata, composed that same year.

In Great Britain, the National Gramophonic Society had begun in 1923 with the goal of making a greater selection of chamber music performances available. Ren é Le Roy’s first commercial recordings appeared on the Society’s label in 1929: the Mozart flute quartet in D major, the Bach Sonata in E-flat major, Handel’s Sonata in G, Op. 1/5 and Arthur Honegger’s Danse de la chèvre, dedicated to Le Roy. In America, New Music Quarterly Recordings was founded by Henry Cowell in 1933 to record performances of contemporary music. Chamber works by Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, Nicolai Berezowsky and Walter Piston were performed by Georges Barrère with members from several of his ensembles.

Four unaccompanied works for flute, including Varèse’s Density 21.5, were recorded by René Le Roy in 1948 for the label’s final issue.

As the audience for recorded chamber music increased, more of the flute’s standard repertoire became available. The first full-length recordings of Bach flute sonatas were made in 1934 by Boston Symphony principal Georges Laurent (1886-1964) when he recorded the sonatas in B minor and E major for American Columbia; the first recordings from the sonatas to use harpsichord were Georges Barrère’s, made for RCA Victor in 1937. The first full-length recordings of Bach flute sonatas were made in 1934 by Boston Symphony principal Georges ‘Complete’ collections of the sonatas (usually consisting of BWV1030-1035 and BWV1020) arrived in about 1949 with Fernand Caratgé’s recordings on the Trésors de Musique label (probably a Deutsche Grammophon series) and Rampal’s, which appeared on Boite à Musiquebetween 1948 and 1950. Robert Murchie’s lone acoustical recording of Bach’s Suite in B Minor was eventually succeeded by at least ten electrical recordings of the work featuring Sebastian Caratelli, Georges Laurent, Ernst Liegl, Erwin Milzkott, Gareth Morris, Marcel Moyse, André Pepin, Gustav Scheck, Walther Theurer and possibly K. Willeke, principal flautist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1931 when Mengelberg recorded the work for Columbia.

Marcel Moyse’s 1930 performance of the Mozart Concerto in D Major, which received France’s Grand prix du disque, was viewed as a major achievement in a new era of commercial recording that would go on to produce five performances of Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp between 1928 and 1948, and no less than seven electrical recordings of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro.

Growing attention to contemporary music also yielded significant composer and creator performances. Marcel Moyse, for example, can be heard in a 1930 recording of Manuel de Falla’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Seven Wind Instruments with de Falla at the harpsichord and in a 1928 performance of Gabriel Pierné’s Sonata da camera for flute, cello and piano, with the composer at the keyboard.

René Le Roy recorded Robert Casadesus’s flute sonata in 1935 and that of Paul Bowles in 1944, both with the composers at the piano, while Gustav Scheck and Walter Gieseking recorded Gieseking’s own Sonatine in 1937 for German Columbia. Flautist-composers who recorded their own works in the electrical era included Otto Luening and Lamar Stringfield (a pupil of Georges Barrère). With his wife, soprano Ethel Luening, Luening recorded one of his Four Songs and the Suite for Soprano and Flute for New Music Quarterly Recordings in 1935 and 1939, respectively. Stringfield, whose works frequently drew inspiration from both American folklore and folksong, recorded his Moods of a Moonshiner in 1940 for the small Royale label.

For flautists and other wind soloists, radio continued to provide a somewhat more accessible and flexible medium. Relatively few broadcast transcriptions from the first decade of radio survive, but those from the mid-1930s and later have contributed significantly to the flute’s recorded history. Transcriptions of orchestral broadcasts are now acknowledged to be among the most important sources of performance. Robert Murchie can be heard in many BBC broadcasts, including contrasting interpretations of the ‘Scherzo’ from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream conducted by Toscanini (in 1935) and by Mengelberg (in 1938). Broadcasts of the NBC Symphony, led by Toscanini, feature principal flautists Carmine Coppola, Arthur Lora, Paul Renzi and John Wummer in prominent orchestral passages. Many AVRO broadcasts (Algemeene Vereeniging Radio Omroep, the broadcast network of the Netherlands) preserve solo performances by Amsterdam Concertgebouw principal Hubert Barwahser, including Bach’s Suite in B Minor (17 April 1939) and the Mozart Concerto in D Major (3 May 1942). Thanks to the reputations of the various conductors, many of these broadcasts have been reissued frequently on LP and compact disc.

Archival collections also ensure that much useful non-commercial material will survive. The holdings of the National Sound Archives of the British Library range from early twentieth-century cylinders of African flute-playing, made by anthropologist Northcott Whitridge Thomas, to BBC interviews with flautist Gareth Morris. In the United States, the Library of Congress holds live recordings from many of the famous chamber concerts sponsored by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation. Flautists heard in recordings of this series include René Le Roy, John Wummer, Julius Baker, Claude Monteux, Samuel Baron, William Kincaid and Marcel Moyse. The sound archives of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, preserve live and broadcast concerts recorded over the past seventy years, making it possible to hear unique performances by Leonardo de Lorenzo and Joseph Mariano, among others. Many of these non-commercial recordings are slowly becoming accessible as archives continue to catalogue their collections, offer on-line sound files or produce commercial reissues. Germany’s Deutschen Rundfunkarchiv provides an excellent example with its recent compact disc, Barocke Kostbarkeiten. It features broadcasts made between 1936 and 1943, including a performance of a Telemann concerto by flautist Gustav Scheck (1901-1984).

While there are surely many imbalances, the repertoire preserved on flute recordings from a century ago still reveals some similarity to the music offered today. The flautist of 1907 had fewer options in the studio, considering that the limitations imposed by time alone were so severe. The opportunity to indulge in both virtuoso showpieces and enduring melodies, however, was not restricted. It would be careless to dismiss early recordings as trivial, when both Carnival of Venice and Chopin’s nocturnes have survived in the flute’s recorded repertoire. It might also be concluded that a common obstacle for the musician, then as now, was the dictated preference of recording companies. Just as the commercial labels of the 1910s were eager to fill their catalogues with new renditions of Labitzky’s The Herd Girl’s Dream, so those of the LP and even compact disc era seem equally committed to an abundance of Telemann or another complete set of Handel sonatas.

Finally, there is the question of whether recording had any lasting influence on the flute’s repertoire or even on the image of the flute itself. The earliest flute recordings, with their miscellany of ballads, popular songs, and operatic themes treated the flute as an affordable substitute for the higher-priced voices of opera stars. A burgeoning array of flute, harp and violin trios contributed to the flute’s association with lighter music, a connection that persisted through the early 1940s and even affected the recording activities of acknowledged virtuosi. The combination of electrical recording, the early music revival, and gradual forays into the recording of contemporary music led to the appearance of more flute records in the 1920s and 1930s, even though reviews from that time still tended to hail any flute recordings, regardless of repertoire, as both welcome and unusual additions. While it took the advent of commercial long-playing records to bring about the abundance of recorded flute repertoire and the more balanced representation of the instrument that we take for granted, flute recordings from the first half of the twentieth century should not be overlooked. The repertoire is sometimes astonishing and sometimes disappointing, but its value as part of the flute’s tangible history is undeniable.

1. Gaisberg, Fred. The Music Goes ‘Round. New York: MacMilllan, 1942 (American edition);
Music on Record. London: Robert Hale Limited, 1942 (British edition).
2. Charosh, Paul. Berliner Gramophone Records: American Issues, 1892-1900 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. [Discographies, No. 60].
3. Prill, Emil. Ergänzungsband zum Führer durch die Flöten-Literature: Neuerscheinungen von 1898-1912. Leipzig: Zimmermann, 1912.
4. As reported by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon in his Story of the Flute, 2nd ed. London: William Reeves, 1928, page 110.
5. ‘Flute Solos by Wireless,’ The Flutist 2/12 (December 1921), page 558.
6. Sutherland, George. ‘And Now the Flute,’ Gramophone, February 1937, page 376.

[Click image to play recording]

Gustav Scheck:
Walter Gieseking, piano:
Sonatine for Flute and Piano, Moderato
     (Gieseking)
Berlin, Apr 1937
German Columbia LWX199

More Information

Susan Nelson is a flute player and teacher living in northern Minnesota. She attended Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, studying flute with David Tessmer, and continued her flute studies with Betty and Roger Mather at the University of Iowa. Ms. Nelson has published discographies of Georges Barrère and Marcel Moyse, as well as several articles on early woodwind recordings.

Susan Nelson’s The Flute on Record—the 78rpm Era was published by Scarecrow Press in 2006.  The discography is a guide to the wealth of flute recordings made between 1889 and 1954, listing commercial, private, and unpublished recordings for over two hundred flautists.  The book is available for purchase from Scarecrow Press. For more information click here.

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