Fwd: Tarras's clarinets/"78RPM"

[SamWeiss <SamWeiss...>]

Further from Kurt Bjorling <Muziker (at) aol(dot)com>
in reply to:

 >> Do you think that is the case also with "Undzer Toyrele"? There we have an
Eb-clarinet playing (on my recording) in Ahava Raba on concert Ab. 
Certainly not
impossible for the Eb-clarinet, but more likely for the other instruments 
in Bb and C to
play a half tone down. <<

"Undzer Toyrele" is in G and, as you guessed, on an Eb clarinet.  This works
very nicely!

 >> This phenomenon of 78´s playing back at wrong speed - is it like silent
movies, that they mostly go to fast? <<

No - We happen to be discussing two examples that are like that, but I find
roughly equal numbers of old recordings that are too slow or too fast when
played at 78rpm.  Most of the European-made records from before the 1914-18
war need to be played faster than 78rpm.  (All the Belf Orchestra recordings
on Syrena run at about 81-82rpm - but Steiner's "Haneros Halelu" must be
played slower than 78 - about 74rpm!.)  Many (but not all!) records made by
Columbia in America around 1917 need to be played slower than 78rpm.  There
seems to have been no exact standard, or no accurate way of controlling it,
before electric motors were used to run the machinery.
Records by the same company can vary from day to day, BUT recordings made at
the same session will almost always run at the same speed as each other, and
this is useful in determining the correct speed for examples where there is
doubt: Sometimes the reverse side of a record, or another record made at the
same recording session, will provide evidence of key or pitch - woodwind
instrument fingerings or violin fingerings or string crossings - something
that will tell us the correct key of that recording and of all the others
made with it.

But sometimes we are not so lucky: There is one anonymous flute solo with
tsimbl that was made in Europe before 1914 and re-issued in America.  It has
a totally unrelated violin solo on the reverse side, and there are no other
known recordings by the same musicians or from the same date.  At 78 rpm the
piece sounds in Ab-minor.  The flute also sounds higher than a normal
c-flute, but not as high as a piccolo.  So - is this piece really in A, or in
G, or is it an Ab fife being played in Ab?  I am also still in doubt about
the single recording by Max Weissman of a doina on clarinet.  This was
reproduced on LP in a key close to A, but the piece is much easier to play in
G.  Is it played on a D-clarinet!?!?

But by the 1940's, when "Der Glater bulgar" was made, the speeds of
recordings were much more standardized.  I would be surprised if this disk
actually played in B at 78rpm, so I must ask from what source do you have
your copy of this record - did it perhaps get copied via tape at some point?

Kurt Bjorling - October 2002 

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