Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings

05/31/2025

The American Baroque Orchestra has released an album of romantic-era pieces that are inspired by the stylistic practices of the era as heard on early recordings in the Yale collection. Mark Bailey, who is head of the Yale recordings archive, leads the orchestra in eight gems of the era that are infused with the style and spirit of the romanticism. Listen to the video below for a taste or go directly to: https://americanbaroqueorchestra.bandcamp.com/album/melodrama

10/14/2024

In November, Mark Bailey will be teaching a course in 3 one-hour long class sessions on music of the romantic era as encountered on historical sound recordings. It will be a great time listening to rare 78s and discussing their performance practice significance. Some of the recordings will be one of a kind.

It's certainly not too late to sign up, so please join us. (For more information, click the photo below.)

Roundtable is live, in-the-moment online courses with respected and passionate experts who give you a place at the table to ask questions, join a discussion, and satisfy your curious mind.

05/18/2024

Another article on vinyl records.

Artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are releasing vinyl albums with exclusive tracks, cover art and more. See how they are made — from lacquer to label.

05/18/2024

An interesting article about the history of vinyl records.

Take a look at the science behind vinyl records, as well as how they are manufactured, play music, and have come a long way since the days of Thomas Edison.

05/24/2023

This is a transcript with sound clips of a talk delivered recently at the Association for Recorded Sound Collections conference on the use and value of historical sound recordings in the study of romantic-era musical performance practice.

https://performingromanticmusic.blogspot.com/2023/05/re-enlivening-romanticism-through.html?fbclid=IwAR3I6XjOAe3Sz9_UE4R2oaZ2Z8JItD9VmBbGV7Jhkgct2SYU4GplsCX8f-U

This is a transcript with audio clips (and one video clip) of a talk I gave on May 18, 2023, at the annual conference of the Association for...

03/31/2023

For those who wonder about the stylus and grove technology that makes records sound, here's a good (and fairly entertaining) video on that process, both in mono and stereo. The video starts with Edison and Berliner.

We answer that question!Links 'n' stuff:Technology Connextras (my second channel where stuff goes sometimes)https://www.youtube.com/...

02/10/2023

From the New York Times: Marianne Mantell, Who Helped Pave the Way for Audiobooks, Dies at 93

Read this fascinating article on the life of a great contributor to sound recordings and the spoken word.

In her early 20s she co-founded the groundbreaking spoken-word record label Caedmon, which had a hit with Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”

01/17/2023

Quite a story.

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/arts_and_entertainment/music/after-fathers-death-daughter-of-famous-collector-tasked-with-determining-fate-of-15-000-records/article_ad9806fd-fbcd-54ea-bb89-cd493afea89a.html?fbclid=IwAR2HI1hFqkJjHRGmC_TIajxd-Gpmfi0_TfnjWxciWzmZfCEuGPHVEdixonc

Susannah Anderson heard her father coming before she saw him.

11/20/2022

Have you ever wondered what kind of stylus works best for your 78s? Here's a summary guide from Audio-Technica that explains the difference between conical (spherical) and elliptical styli.

11/10/2022

A new blog essay by the Yale HSR director discusses the use and reliability of historical sound recordings for performance practice studies.

>>Performance practice on record is not endeavoring to recreate the world in which the music was written – an endeavor laced with traps that, arguably, the Early Music movement fell into toward the beginning – nor is it proposing simply to copy the performances on those recordings today. It is rather about enlivening the modern ear with a multitude of sounds generated in a different era, and, through close listening and comprehension, attending to the details that carry and convey those particular sounds as music.

Are historical sound recordings a trustworthy source of performance practice information and insight, or can their limitations be so severe that they are able to misrepresent the music made in their own time? Could the circumstances of the recording process and their impact on the performers have po...