They Shall Have Music: Five Years of Lp

by JOHN M. CONLY

DR. PETER GOLDMARK claims now, in 1953, that he didn’t know what he was starting, back in 1948. A hint of a glint deep in his eye as he says this, however, suggests that he may be merely observing the proprieties. It is all very well for a scientist to revolutionize an industry. But he is not supposed to realize what he’s doing. It wouldn’t be in character.

Dr. Goldmark is a competent cellist, a great-nephew of the composer Carl Goldmark, and vice president in charge of research at the Columbia Broadcasting System, a subsidiary of which is Columbia Records, Inc. He is not a demonstrative man. He is, in fact, a very quiet man. However, he is also fervently devoted to the aim of bringing more and better music to more people. And he is persistent.

Soon after World War II, it appeared to Dr. Goldmark that the time was ripe, technologically, for a great new stride in the advancement of his aim. During the last years of the war, tape recording had achieved real reliability. And vinyl plastics had shown vast and increasing versatility.

Dr. Goldmark thereupon proceeded to demonstrate how versatile the scientific brain can be. First he initiated some top-secret work in CBS laboratories — work involving tape, plastics, and specially fabricated diskcutting equipment. Then he took off his lab smock, put on his business suit, and went about selling his idea to his commercial compeers in the corporation. The idea, it is probably needless to explain, concerned some drastic changes in phonograph records.

At this juncture it must be admitted that this is a tale in which none of the dramatis personae show much tendency to obstruct a happy ending. To his mercantile fellowexecutives, Dr. Goldmark’s plan ought (for the sake of plot) to have seemed weird and outrageous, and they should all have blown their tops forthwith. The early postwar years were very good ones in the record business; indeed, 1947 merited the term fabulous. And, when a product is selling handsomely, it is not customary for its manufacturers suddenly to pronounce it obsolete. This is what Dr. Goldmark had in mind.

Alas for drama, no tops were blown. Instead, Dr. Goldmark’s associates went about demonstrating, in their turn, how flexible business brains can be. Current sales were good, but there were portents of decline. In the background the monstrous specter of telev ision was grimacing. Dr. Goldmark got a quick green light.

And so it was that Columbia Records, in 1948, made all sales curves meaningless by introducing Dr. Goldmark’s invention — long-playing microgroove vinylite records, the greatest boon to liv ing-room music listeners in a generation.

This past midsummer, LP passed its fifth birthday, quietly (since business birthdays are seldom celebrated in an off season) but triumphantly. To be sure, there still could be found benighted folk who mentioned microgroove uncertainly as “that new kind of record.” And the habit persisted of referring to 78 revolutions per minute, the spin-rate of the old shellac records, as “standard speed,” but this was merely testimony to the rapidity of LP’s victory. In actuality, “standard speed” disks almost had vanished, at least from the ken of serious listeners. Anyone who wanted the best versions of the Brahms Fourth or La Traviata had to take microgroove or nothing.

No longer did advertisements mention “all three speeds.” Moreover, there had come into existence more than 150 now record companies devoted exclusively to the production of long-playing disks. And, finally, LP had seriously begun its conquest of the rest of t he world, and t he outcome was not in doubt. This was attested last month by a man who certainly ought to know. Remy Van Wyek Farkas, youthful artist-andrepertory manager of the great British Decca combine, leading international record company. In the downtown, dockside, New York offices of London Records, American branch of the combine, Farkas reported without hesitation: “LP is it, everywhere!” He added, not at all grudgingly, “I suppose the credit has to go to Columbia and Dr. Goldmark.”

There was probably only one crucial point at which the future of the long-playing microgroove record was imperiled, and this actually came before its existence was publicly announced. It was when Columbia apprised its huge and formidable rival, RCA Victor, of its plans to go microgroove at once. Exactly what happened next has never been officially revealed. However, it is known that t here was a meet ing of represent at ives of both companies. This, together with subsequent, well-publicized developments, makes it relatively easy to deduce what went on.

It seems likely that Columbia offered its rival the only feasible quid pro quo: Columbia would delay production until RCA Victor was ready, if in return RCA Victor would use, and pay for, the Columbia process. If this was the bid (and it is hard to think of any other), RCA Victor refused it. Perhaps it underlined its refusal by producing and demonstrating, dramatically, some hand-crafted LP microgrooves of its own. This it was easily capable of doing; Columbia’s advantage would have lain solely in having a supply of microgroove master disks already prepared, so it could start pressing at once. RCA Victor made the only available countermove. It announced the advent of its own variety of microgroove records—the 45 rpm “doughnut” disks — and urged people to wait for them. Thus the famous battle of speeds was joined.

Until Brigadier General David Sarnoff of RCA writes his memoirs, it won’t be known whether the little records with the odd speed and the big spindle-hole would ever have come into being without this challenge to RCA Victor, which had long held and highly valued its dominance in the American record market. Anyway, once the huge company was committed it poured vast sums into the campaign, and marketed large numbers of 45 rpm recordplayer “attachments.” For a while, the future of the 33 1/3 rpm LP seemed far from secure.

However, LP had certain strong technical roots. For one thing, 33 1/3 revolutions per minute was the first disk-speed to be worked out scientifically (apparently 78 rpm was an accident). It had been settled on, much earlier, by a man named Maxfield, who was endeavoring to synchronize sound-disks with films, because it met certain requirements. When it was used on a reasonable-sized transcription-disk, the disk could run as long as a standard movie reel. And, throughout its playing, it could deliver reasonably high sound frequencies, so long as the innermost groovecircle was no shorter than half the length of the outermost.

The movies didn’t use disk-borne sound very long, but radio broadcasting promptly adopted it — together with the 33 1/3 rpm speed. So all sound-equipment people learned to work with the speed which was to be that of the LP record. In the mid1930s, as a mat ter of fact, RCA \ ictor itself issued a few 33 1/3 rpm (nonmicrogroove) records, including a four-disk Beethoven Ninth in the Stokowski reading.

To the slow speed, Dr. Goldmark added the narrow groove—1/1000 of an inch, instead of 2.5/1000 — which had been impractical until vinylite was available to replace shellac. This extended the duration of a record side nearly sixfold — at which point, happily, it coincided with the duration of many a symphonic movement and opera scene. As a bonus, vinylite offered almost noiseless surfaces.

Remy Farkas thinks the record industry, in transition, should have added two more changes. LPs should have been designed to play from the inside groove out, so that the fastestmoving, highest-fidelity outermost grooves could have accommodated the crescendi with which most classical works end. And there should have been imposed a time limit, obviating the temptation to cram too many grooves on a record side. This always entails, says Farkas, a lowering of volume level, since the cutting stylus has to be curbed in its swings to save space. Dr. Goldmark, of course, considered the inside-out proposition early in the game, but it was thought wisest to stay with the outside-in tradition, partly to keep makers of mult ispeed record-changers from hopeless madness.

The more serious of the two problems, as a matter of fact, has been largely solved, through the ingenuity of Columbia Records’ research director, William Bachman.

Early LPs did lose some of their fidelity as the stylus moved toward the inner, slow-moving grooves. The more abrupt the tiny curves the recording jewel had to inscribe, the rougher the job it did. Staff technicians spent hours sorting 1/1000inch jewel points, trying to select those with the best edges for this tricky task. Bachman got tired watching them crouched over their microscopes, so he contrived a tiny coil, electrically heated, which could be fitted around a cutting stylus. The heat solved the problem. It softened the lacquer of the master disks just enough to let the styli cut smoothly. Now nearly all LP manufacturers use the “hot stylus” technique in their recording. And there is little loss of high frequencies or of smoothness in reproduction, as the playback arm of the home phonograph tracks nearer and nearer the center label.

The other problem — how to get a maximum of playing time on a record side without sacrificing dynamics — also has been cleverly attacked, notably at Columbia and at Mercury. The latter’s technique is called “margin control,” and involves lifting the cutting head slightly during soft passages, thus narrowing the grooves. In the Columbia system, dubbed “variable pitch,” the between-groove space is simply broadened a little when a loud passage is coming up, so that the cutting stylus will have room to swing wide, and narrowed again when the volume is to decrease. In both cases, an automatic device “reads” the tape from which the disk recording is being copied, getting notice of approaching fortissimi in time to govern the behavior of the cutting stylus. In its first use of “variable pitch,” Columbia managed to fit Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Symphonies on one 12-inch LP. The pair ran well over an hour, but Bruno Walter’s trumpets and drums emerged with robust volume. Nearly all manufacturers use kindred processes now.

The various technical and musical assets of LP probably would have made it the standard medium of classical music anyway, but actually the war of the speeds helped. Both Columbia and RCA Victor tried vigorously to convert the whole industry to their respective techniques. Both made their processes widely available; both went into the business of printing microgrooves for other companies. And it was this — together with the availability of tape recording — that seeded the crop of small LP companies which have so wonderfully enriched the recorded repertory.

It became a safe and simple matter for a small entrepreneur to go to Europe, packing his tape machine, and bring back recordings of such outof-the-way works as, say, Stamitz’s Quartet in A or Milhaud’s La Muse Ménagère — so long as he knew he could get them competently cut and printed as disks by Columbia or RCA upon his return. And it is a fact that the big companies give such customers the same service their own recording directors get. At Columbia, for instance, Bachman okays no test disk until it has been played in synchronization with the tape from which it was made, the two being listened to alternately through the same loudspeaker for comparison.

It would surprise people to discover how little difference there need be between the tape and the disk copy — although some records are “tempered” a little, their dynamics dampened, in cognizance of the frailties of customers’ playback arms and pickups. Other records are not. Westminster, probably the most successful of the new “small” companies nurtured by LP, makes a feature of untrammeled dynamics. Mercury puts out a special series — the “Olympians” — pointedly calling attention to its volume range.

At London, whose “ffrr” trademark (full frequency range recording) was famous in high-fidelity circles even before LP began, full-dynamics records are issued as part of a campaign. “We’ve been consciously trying, all along,” Remy Farkas explains, “to force up the quality of customers’ record-playing equipment. Where we succeed, it makes people’s records more important to them. And then they buy more records.” The onerous part of this campaign, Farkas admits, is the recurrent shower of complaints that one full-dynamics London record or another is making a customer’s pickup “skip grooves.” When he has time, Farkas invites such customers to come in and play the offending records on the superb high-fidelity equipment in London’s own listening room.

There, of course, the pickup doesn’t skip, the records are absolved, and the customer gets a rapid-fire Farkas lecture on the joys of precision turntables and true-tracking tone-arms. “The hi-fi boys owe me a lot of commissions,” Farkas says. “Not that I approve of them, either, you understand — sound-cultists who want to improve on nature. The policy of this company is that no London record is as good as the actual performance.”

Dr. Goldmark concurs very strongly there. “We must stay as close to the sound of the original as we can. It is the only safe norm. If we abandon that, we are really at sea.” Indeed, it is likely that nearly all record makers would cleave (verbally) to this ideal. What makes them suspect each other of betraying it is the wild variety, among them, of what is called “mike philosophy.” Westminster and Capitol, for instance, tend to microphone the sound of a string quartet rather close to. London’s or Concert Hall Society’s microphone is likelier to work at a distance, leaving “air” around the performers. The latter technique, in the phonographic outcome, equates the listener’s living room with the fifteenth row in a concert hall. The former comes closer to making the listener’s loud-speaker sound as if it were the string quartet. Either, it may be pointed out, can be spectacularly good — or bad.

Part of the effect, of course, depends on the loud-speaker and listening room of the listener. More of it depends on the ear and judgment of the man or men who direct the recording in the first place. The exact sound of modern recording is merciless to mistakes. And customers are increasingly critical as the enormous flow of LP output continues. Why accept a tasteless recording Haydn’s Symphony No. 88? After all, there are nine(!) other versions in print now and there’ll probably be a couple more in a month or so.

It is difficult to find an exact count of how many major works have appeared on LP since Dr. Goldmark launched the phenomenon, but it might well run over 10,000. In the fifth LP year, nearly 3000 new titles appeared.

Here is an industry problem which almost no one wants to talk about — repertory. Where are the record companies, particularly some of the small ones, to find marketable new music to put on disks? In 1947, the last shellac year, American record catalogues carried 13 Haydn symphonies. On LP, now, there are 64. Haydn wrote only 104. In 1947, 7 works of Bartók were available on disks. Now 42 are — how much Bartók is left? Faced with something like the Beethoven situation, even big companies betray misgivings.

“I’ve never worried about repeating a work,” says Goddard Lieberson, Columbia’s executive vice president, “on the premise that you couldn’t forbid an actor to try Hamlet simply because Barrymore had already played him. But another Beethoven Ninth? When there are nine in the catalogues now, four of them ours? I’d hesitate.

“Matter of fact,” he added, “the next time I decline to record something by one of our modern American composers, on the grounds that it’s been recorded already, I know what he’ll say. He’ll say, ‘But only once!’” Lieberson has pioneered, of course, at one possible way out of the repertory dilemma — publishing enough new music, largely by living composers, to educate some of the public into liking it. “Either we’re getting foolhardy,” he says, “or we are beginning to sense acceptance.”

RCA Victor, followed by other companies, has opened up another territory, perforce neglected by LP — that of the classic or “semi” classic too short in length to be good LP fare. Such works, in 78 rpm days, sold very well as 12-inch singles. The RCA Victor device is the EP, or Extended Play 45 rpm, perhaps the ideal vehicle for such things as the full Boston Pops treatment of the Emperor Waltz. (The short-play 45 is by way of dislodging the 10-inch 78 from the popular music field. RCA Victor unostentatiously began making LPs as soon as the initial speed war had cooled down.)

Remy Farkas claims that London has no repertory problem at all — yet — because it bases its business on the world market. It makes perfect sense to turn out two Brahms D Minor Piano Concertos within a year, if one of the pianists is a sure seller in America and Britain and the other one can’t fail on the Continent. It keeps people healthily aware that there is always something new to be found in Brahms. And there are two sets of profits instead of one, and they come home to the same place. London, or rather British Decca, counts on America for a little less than half the returns from the average LP. Probably the non-American percentage will go up as LP spreads throughout the eastern hemisphere. To keep its system operating profitably, London must keep an enormous number of artists under contract (it’s liberal about letting them record for other companies, however, so long as they avoid their specialties), hold recording sessions almost incessantly, and turn out records at a spectacular rate. All of these, it does.

One of the more ingenious smallcompany operators recently solved his repertory problom very cannily indeed. This was Dario Soria, who describes himself as the bad boy of old Italian banking family. He defected to America, to become a very good promotion man, mostly in radio work (Edgar Bergen, among others, benefited from his talent). At the end of the war, Soria sensed among Americans a yen for Italian opera. He signed up Cetra, a small Italian record company, to make complete opera tapes; Soria marketed them here, under the title Cetra-Soria, very profitably. Finally, when he had almost exhausted the sure-fire repertory (45 operas) within the limits of his small but inexpensive distribution system, he suddenly sold the whole deal to Capitol — which had a big distribution system but lacked an operatic repertory — for a sum not even a Texas cattleman would sneeze at. Now Soria has signed up English Columbia on the same basis. His new American label will be Angel Records. It will bear watching.

As for Dr. Goldmark, he doesn’t think LP’s problem is finding new repertory. It is finding new people to buy records; the people who, now, don’t even know what they’re missing.

Record Reviews

Bantock:Fifine at the Fair (Sir Thomas Beecham conducting Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; HMV-RCA Victor: 12″ LP). Granville Bantock (1868-1946) was a cheerful Englishman and not a glum German; otherwise he would put one in mind of Mahler — there is the same mastery of the big orchestral song, the same fascination with oriental sound-effects. Browning’s Fifine subject was perfect for his purposes. Beecham plays with fond vigor, and reproduction is rich.

Beethoven: Concerto No. 1 in C Major (Paul Badura-Skoda, piano; Hermann Scherchen conducting Vienna State Opera Orchestra; Westminster: 12″ LP). This eighteenthcentury Beethoven is Badura-Skoda’s best, and Scherchen supports him sturdily. The engineers let them both down; the sound is a little shrill, below Westminster’s usual standard.

Beethoven: Quartet No. 14, Op. 131 (Paganini Quartet; RCA Victor: 12″ LP). A fine, full-bodied recording of the greatest of all works for string quartet. The performance is sensitive and forthright — but, alas, nothing like the interpretive miracle the Budapest Quartet wrought for Columbia.

Beethoven: String Trios, Op. 9 (Jean Pougnet, violin; Frederick Riddle, viola; Anthony Pini, cello; Westminster: 12″ LP). A vital, intimate recording of some vital, intimate music, from Beethoven’s early years as a muscular young melodist. Lots of lift.

Britten: Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, with Warlock: Capriol Suite (Boyd Neel conducting Boyd Neel String Orchestra; London: 12″ LP). Early, self-consciously modern Britten, oddly mated with Warlock’s fine, unaffected folk-melody arrangements. But both are eloquent, and the Boyd Neel band, in excellent ffrr reproduction, is a real joy.

Chopin: Mazurkas (Guiomar Novaes, piano; Vox: 12″ LP). Sweetly, sanely paced vivacity, endearing sincerity, and flawless dexterity from Brazil’s gift to the piano.

Early English Keyboard Music (Geraint Jones, organ; Thurston Dart, harpsichord; Elizabeth Goble, virginals; London: two 12″ LPs in album). Coronation year has brought a demand for things British, and nothing could be more British than this music of Byrd, Bull, Farnaby, and Gibbons. Elegant, authentic, intelligible, and, even when merry, grandly evocative of a great musical heritage.

Haydn: St. Anthony Divertimento; Divertimento in G (London Baroque Ensemble; Decca: 10″ LP). In a low-priced “4000-series” album, Decca has produced two sparkling “firsts,” one of them containing the theme Brahms used in his famous variations. The recording is a trifle rough, but acceptable.

Haydn: Symphonies No. 44, “Trauer,” and No. 49, “La Passione” (Hermann Scherchen conducting Vienna State Opera Orchestra; Wessminster: 12″ LP). The lovely, plaintive slow movement of the “Trauer” has even more “moonlight” than Beethoven’s famous sonata. The “Passione” (which ought to be numbered 35) majors in drama instead. Both are big, mature works, and played as such by Dr. Scherchen in suitably vivid recordings.

Lalo: Symphonic Espagnole (Campoli, violin; Eduard Van Beinum conducting London Philharmonic Orchestra; London: 12″ LP). Here is a true gem. For once this unpretentiously clever, gay music has received the attention it deserves; it rewards with relaxed delight. The recording is superb.

Mozart: Symphonies No. 39 and No. 40 (Sir Thomas Beecham conducting London Philharmonic Orchestra; Columbia: 12″ LP). Someone at Columbia is aware that certain recorded performances, regardless of age and subsequent competition, remain unique and treasurable. This Beecham-Mozart pairing is but one of eight (initial) issues in a new Special Collectors’ Series. Others present Weingartner conducting two Handel concerti grossi and his own orchestration of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata; Szigeti, Béla Bartók, and Benny Goodman playing Bartók’s Contrasts; Emanuel Feuermann playing the Haydn Cello Concerto; Szigeti playing the Bloch Concerto. The rerecorded sound ranges from good to passable. The engineers should not have been so frightened of 78 rpm surface noise. Collectors aren’t!

Ravel:L’Heure Espagnole (René Leibowitz conducting soloists and symphony orchestra of Radiodiffusion Française; Vox: 12″ LP). This oneact opera about an elderly clockmaker, his cuddly young wife, and her “callers” has nearly the piquancy of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. Clocks — ticking, chiming, cuckooing — play a large part in the plot. It is witty and fascinating, and the recording is extraordinary — but why no libretto?

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1 (Kiril Kondrashin conducting USSR State Orchestra; Vanguard: 12” LP). Only t he good, but elderly, ColumbiaRodzinski competes with this, which is musically less firm and clear, but sonieally superior — perhaps the best Russian-tape record yet to appear.

Strauss, Richard:Aus Italien (Arthur Rother conducting Radio Berlin Symphony Orchestra: Urania: 12″ LP). The last theme to crop up in this youthful (1886) Strauss fantasy is “Funiculi, Funicula!” It is charming. if not very Straussian, and played with apropriate feeling.

Vaughan Williams: A Pastoral Symphony (Margaret Ritchie, soprano; Sir Adrian Boult conducting London Philharmonic Orchestra; London: 12″ LP). To the Englishman, imprisoned by destiny on a small metropolitan island, the countryside is heaven; it is peace, and this sounds in every, note of Vaughan Williams’s 1922 symphony. Here is no drama, little playfulness, just serenity and beauty. The English love it. So will some Americans. The recording is charity itself.