Rare gramophone records found in stately home

Jim Pattison, a retired recording engineer, has discovered rare gramophone records dating back from the early 20th century in a stately home he was visiting. At Brodsworth Hall, in Yorkshire, records such as a 1908 recording of Goodbye to Sweet Awakenings, made by Caruso, Antonio Scotti, Geraldine Farrar and Gina Viafora and a 1905 recording of John Philip Sousa conducting Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 were found among 100 others.

Oldest musical instrument found

A 35,000 year old flute has been found, the oldest musical instrument discovered. The five hole flute was found in Germany's Ach Valley and was carved from the wing bone of a large vulture. The flute is nearly intact, three other flutes in fragments have been found plus a female figurine. The flutes show that music played a part in the Aurignacian culture which lasted from 40K to 10K years ago.

Past music piracy

A couple of interesting snippets of previous examples of copyright infringements of intellectual property i.e. piracy. Music piracy dates back to at least 1897 according to this scan from the NY Times. Canadian pirates flooded the US market with cheap copies of the latest popular songs, well copies of sheet music that is. It does not say if anyone pirated wax cylinders too.

An interesting comment on a Slashdot article on this mentions even earlier piracy of material :

"In ancient Rome, it was completely ordinary for an audience member to transcribe a poetry recital, hand it over to amanuenses to massively copy, and then sell it in the marketplace with no money going back to the creator. Even poets didn't have a problem with it. The only protest I'm aware of in the literature is Martial's unhappiness that some talentless fellow was putting his own name on the transcription of Martial, and plagiarism is rather separate from copying without authorization."

Of course in both cases it did not kill off the entertainment industries of the time. Just as home taping didn't kill music in the 1980s.

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project is a website dedicated to the preservation and history of cylinder recordings, the format of choice in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the disc took over. Most of the earliest recordings of human voice and performance are on this format, and over 7,000 are digitized and available on this website they say. So check out some Ragtime or Vaudeville!

The recordings can be listened to online or downloaded as mp3 or wav. The oldest recording dates from 1894 and is by Foh's 23rd Regiment Band of New York.