Latest Additions to www.jolyon.com 
A site on the history of sound recording.
This page contains any recently added stuff and acts as a sort of staging post before I redistribute the recordings under the appropriate menu headings.
Recordings are in FLAC format downloadable through MediaFire by clicking on each title.
Anything highlighted in Blue denotes either a link to a sound file, or more information on another website.
"Ars Rediviva"
Edmée Ortmans-Bach & Dominique Blot violins
Marcelle de Lacour harpsichord
Noelie Pierront
organ
Claude Crussard director
Rosenmüller,
Johann: Sonata in E minor [file
size 28.5MB]
This is the second sonata from [12] Sonate a 2, 3, 4 e 5 stromenti da arco e altri e basso continuo ~ 1682 [score downloadable from IMPLS]
Recorded: 9 May 1938 at Paris, Studio Albert
Matrix: 2LA 2543-I; 2LA 2544-I
Cat. No. HMV DB 5064
Format: 30cm
(12inch); double-sided, red label
Germaine-Louise-Micheline Crussard, , who took as her concert name Claude, was born in Paris Aug. 31, 1893. She came from a musical family, and showed as a child a disposition and talent for music. Around 1902, she took piano lessons with Annette Cortot, who had just finished the preparation of her brother, Alfred Cortot, for his solo career. From 1906, when her family had settled in Angouleme, Claude continued her studies with Lazare Levy and in 1913 she entered the Paris Conservatoire after only a few months preparing for the entrance exams. There she studied History of Music with Emmanuel Maurice, Harmony with Henri Dallier and Counterpoint with Georges Caussade winning in 1924 the Premier Prix de Fugue. After a period of further study and solo concerts, (notably from 1931 to 1933 at Salle des Quatuors Gaveau and from 1933 to 1935 directing the concerts of the Musique intime, attached to Xavier de Courville's le Petite Scene) in December 1935 she founded the company Ars Rediviva. This was to become her life's work.
Diligently and methodically she worked to revive, transcribe and recover much unappreciated and forgotten manuscript and printed music of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Ars Rediviva performed and recorded, on the BAM and French HMV labels, many compositions that Crussard had recovered, including works by such composers as Albert, Blavet, Blow, Bonporti, Buxtehude, Caldara, Cesti, Charpentier, Couperin, Dornel, Erlebach, Francceur, Guillemain, Hassler, Krieger, Leclair, Legrenzi, Marini, Mazzaferrata, Pergolesi, Purcell, Rameau, Rosenmüller, Scarlatti, Schmelzer and Telemann.
Tragically, just after the War when Ars Rediviva were making a mark on the post war international early music scene, most of the chief soloists were killed in an aircraft accident. Below is a cutting from The Times newspaper reporting the tragic event. [Transcribed from an obituary in Revue de Musicologie, T. 29e, No. 81e/84e (1947), pp. 140-141]
I have been unable to find out much about the other members of the group except the harpsichordist Marcelle de Lacour (1896-1997) a pupil of Wanda Landowska , who was fortunately not on the flight. I do not think any of the Ars Rediviva records have been ever been reissued on LP or CD although a good selection of their other recordings can now be downloaded from the Gallica site
Cercle Jean-Sébasien Bach de Genèva
Francis Bodet conductor
BACH: Motet, Komm, Jesu, Komm! BWV 229 [file size 41MB]
[Thanks to Kip Williams who fixed my scans of these labels]
Recorded: 1st April 1937
Matrix: YL100; YL101; YL102;
YL103
Cat. No. Lumen 32.048 & 32.049
Format:
30cm (12inch); double-sided green label ( impossible in combination with gold to
scan properly).
The Cercle JS Bach de Genève was the inspiration of the French trumpeter Francis Bodet (1894-1981). Bodet first studied at the Lyon Conservatory, where he received a first prize in 1910 before entering the class of Merry Franquin (1848-1934) at the Paris Conservatory, and where in 1914 he again received a first prize. In 1926, on the founding of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande he became principal trumpeter. During the winter of 1928-1929 a group of young singers was formed under Francis Bodet and René Kister (who I believe was a writer and publisher), in order to present to a Geneva audience the works of Bach and his contemporaries. They gave their first concert on the 11th May 1929 in the temple de Saint-Gervais, accompanied by soloists of the Suisse Romande.
On the same day as BWV 229, the Cercle made a recording of Bach's Motet: Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden BWV 230 on Lumen 32.046 & 32.047. As far as I am aware no other recordings were made by the Cercle until the LP era.
Robert Easton, Bass as 'Robert Merlyn'
HANDEL:
Alexander's Feast ~ Revenge,Timotheus Cries [file size
8MB]
HANDEL: Samson ~ Honour and Arms [file size
9MB]
Recorded: February 1929
Matrix: A8534 & A8601
Cat. No. Regal G9311
Format: 25cm (10inch); double-sided,
magenta label
Why Robert Easton recorded under an assumed name is unclear, but the voice is quite easily recognizable due to the distinctive vibrato.. The record was probably issued as a cheap alternative to Peter Dawson's rendering of Honour and Arms issued in July 1928 by HMV on C1500. The aria from Alexander's Feast is somewhat rare on 78 recordings with the only other contenders before Trevor Anthony's 1948 recording on Decca K2138 being an acoustic version of Malcolm McEachern on Æolian Vocalion X.9500 and an electric version from 1929 of Armand Crabbé, in French, on HMV DB1305.
C.M. Crabtree in The Gramophone of June 1929 was quite taken by the performance:- 'Robert Merlyn (bass), with orchestra. G. 9311 (10in., 2s. 6d.). There is clearly someone on the Regal staff who is exceptionally qualified for picking out first-class singers (and perhaps someone with a gift for finding them). This is a record which will compare well with any Handel aria records. Not only is the soloist, Robert Merlyn, a really fine bass, but also the whole finish—the level of the orchestral accompaniment, the tone and the whole recording—is of the very best. The only criticisms—and they are perhaps trifling—are that in Honour and Arms (from Samson) Merlyn seems a wee bit less fierce and forceful than say Radford ; and that Revenge, Timotheus cries, loses perhaps a little fury by being taken on the slow side. But it certainly doesn't seriously hang fire.'
J.B. Steane, in his fairly praiseworthy review on a selection of Easton's records reissued in 1981 by the Sunday Opera label [SYO 12] described the record as 'Least good, I'm afraid, are the Handel arias, on rare Regal's under the name "Robert Merlyn", which open the recital.' - I leave it up to the listener to decide on the merits of these sides.
I apologize for the roughness of this record, the copy has had a very hard life and only survived as packing material taped round some records I had posted to me. No doubt if it had not been recycled in this way it would have gone to shellac heaven.
Frederick Thurston, Clarinet & Myers Foggin, piano
Baldassare
Galuppi, (arr. by Harold Craxton): Sonata in A minor, Op. 1 No. 3 Largo ~ Sonata in C major, Op. 1 No. 1 Allegro
[file size 13MB]
Philip
Browne: A Truro Maggot ~ C.H. Lloyd.: Gigue
[file size 11MB]
Recorded: 1st .December 1936; poss. London, Thames St. Studio
Matrix:
TA2570-III & TA2569-IV
Cat. No. Decca K 858
Format: 30cm (12inch); double-sided
blue label
No good excuse for these performances of Frederick Thurston and Myers Foggin being here as a) they have been already issued on CD and b) Browne and Lloyd's compositions are 'modern' works in the style of ancient ones, still they deserve to be heard.
The biography of Galuppi is from wikipedia. The other two compositions are not what we would today class as early music, however, they do conform to what Charles Burney and his contemporaries in the latter half of the eighteenth century would allow to be heard at the Concert of Ancient Music. These concerts had a prohibition of music less than 20 years old so as they fill that criteria and I'm boss of this site, I will allow them a place.
Of Philip Browne I am at a bit of a loss, apart from the present work, three other compositions published during the 1940's and early 1950s for viola and piano, and a choral work available in the 1960s all I have to go on is a review for the printed score of his Truro Maggot:- 'The title of this piece is derived from the old use of the word 'maggot' to denote a fanciful idea and from the fact that at the time it was written the composer was living at Truro. Of moderate difficulty, it is headed allegro giocoso and a full realization of its whimsical humour will require clean execution from both players. It is dedicated to Frederick Thurston, who has performed it publicly and over the radio.' [Tempo, No. 8 (Sep., 1944), pp. 21-22].
The basic facts on Charles Harford Lloyd (1849-1919) are taken from the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica 'English organist and composer, was born at Thornbury, Glos., Oct. 16 1849. He was educated at Rossall and at Hertford College, Oxford, where he was one of the founders of the Oxford University musical club, becoming its first president. In 1876 he became organist of Gloucester cathedral, in 1882 organist of Christ Church cathedral, Oxford, and in 1892 precentor and musical instructor at Eton. In 1914 he became organist at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. Dr. Lloyd was well known both as a teacher and as a composer, his best-known work being the cantata Hero and Leander, composed for the Worcester festival of 1884. He also wrote much church music. He died at Slough Oct. 16 1919.'
Jean-Pierre RAMPAL
Orchestre de Chambre de la Sarre
Karl Risenpart conductor
Pergolese: Concerto in D Major for Flute and Orchestra
[file size 27MB]
Pergolese: Concerto in
G Major for Flute and Orchestra
[file size 30MB]
Recorded: 1958 or before
Matrix: EFM 42044-A-
& EFM 42044-B-3
Cat. No. ERATO: EFM 42044
Format: 25cm
(10inch); double-sided green & white label
Of the enormous number of recordings made by J.-P.Rampal I do not think this LP has ever been reissued although one side may have found its way onto a compellation in the late 1960s but I am not exactly sure of this.
It seems doubtful if these works are actually by Pergolese but they are certainly by somebody of his time.
Lucien Muratore, tenor and Georges Delangle, flute
Gluck:
Armide, Act 2 Plus j'observe ces lieux
[file size 9MB]
*Gluck:
Armide, Act 2 Plus j'observe ces lieux down
a semitone [file size 9MB]
*I can't make up my mind on the pitch of this record so I have uploaded a version down a semitone from the score which sounds to me more comfortable for the tenor.
Recorded: May 1909
Matrix: 4918 [Stamper 42177 GR] Pressed c.1912
Cat. No. Pathe 4918
Format: 29cm (11½inch); double-sided
etched label
Record kindly lent by CharmNick
Although the career of the tenor Lucien Muratore is fairly well documented, that of the flautist Georges Louis Delangle (b. 1889) is not.
A pupil of the famous Claude-Paul Taffanel (1844-1908) Professor of Flute at the Paris Conservatoire, Delangle was instructed like Taffanel's other students to play in a new, smoother style that included a light and carefully-modulated vibrato. Delangle won a first prize in 1903 and went on to become flautist at the Paris Opera, traditionally the most prestigious orchestral position open to a French flautist, where Taffanel was also until 1906 the chief conductor. As Taffanel is generally credited with the revival of early music in France and Muratore made his debut at the Paris Opera in the April 1905 revival of Armida where he had replaced an indisposed an Agustarello Affre:-
19 AVRIL. Dans Armide, M. Muratore remplace M. Affre, subitement indisposé. Le début du jeune ténor paraît des plus heureux. Sa prestance et sa jolie voix lui conquièrent, après la célèbre cavatine du second acte, la faveur du public. (Les Annals du Théâtre e de la Musique 1905, Paris ,1906 p. 12)
Probably as a result of this debut Muratore included this aria as one of the Edison two minute cylinder in he recorded in July 1905, this must be even more truncated than the version here!
The Pathe recording from May 1909 follows the 50th Opéra performance of the 17th February 1909 when Delangle no doubt had become the principle flautist their.
However primitive this recording is it must necessarily, in some way, replicate the actual stage performance.
The information on Muratore is taken mainly from an excellent biography and discography of Lucien Muratore published in The Record Collector Vol. 54, No. 4, December 2009.