This man’s recordings spent years under a recliner — they’ve now found a new home : NPR

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Lionel Mapleson, then the librarian of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, did something new. He used an Edison “home” model gramophone and recorded the opera being sung on stage with an orchestra.

He attempted to record from something like a prompter’s booth, but eventually landed on a catwalk above the stage. Since microphones had not yet been invented, he recorded acoustically with a giant horn, probably six feet long.

“The Mapleson Cylinder is arguably one of the most important sound documents of the 20th century, at least when it comes to recording,” said Bob Kossowski, librarian and expert in the New York Public Library’s Music Department. About early opera recordings.

“We recorded live performances at a time when people didn’t think it was possible,” he said.

In other words, these are some of the first-ever live recordings.

Mapleson recorded hundreds of cylinders of his family as well as operas. Many are probably lost forever. But at the New York Public Library, he had 126 cylinders by last fall. All known cylinders except his 16 which belonged to the Mapleson family. The library borrowed them in 1981, digitized them as much as possible, and put the collection on LP. The result is hissing and scratching. Music rises like a ghost under a wall of noise.

But last spring, the library purchased an endpoint cylinder and dictabelt machine invented by Nicholas Berg. His NPR article last April focused on how the machine works, saying that even a broken cylinder could be digitized more clearly. He also mentioned that the library is excited to re-digitize his Mapleson Cylinders in his possession to see if they can reduce the noise.

“So my brother Peter, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, found the story and said, ‘Oh, did you see this?’ When I saw it, I was like, “Oh, that’s great. I mean, they can probably read these broken cylinders, too. That’s great. It’s amazing.”

He contacted the library and donated them on behalf of the Mapleson family.

“And Bob and I almost fell out of our chairs with excitement. It was the best news we’ve had in a decade,” says Jessica Wood, assistant curator of the New York Public Library’s Music Department. said.

long family history

According to Alfred Mapleson, the Mapleson family has owned Mapleson Music since the 1700s, and the company rented out its own opera orchestrations. But when it was sold to the Educational Music Service in the 1990s, it kept something more personal with the family: Alfred’s mother’s recliner on Long Island.

But then Alfred moved them to his home along with Lionel’s diaries – about 50 volumes. They’re really like scrapbooks, pasted with photos and news clippings, and containing thoughts about both Lionel’s daily life and that big news of her day. survived), or the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (the Met was there on tour).

He also, according to Wood, “because on the day when Arturo Toscanini and Puccini came to his hotel room at night, they decided on the first act of the opera. Manon I had to reorganize. ”

The journal was shipped to the library along with the cylinder (details of how everything was packed can be found in Wood’s NYPL blog post).

Librarians have examined about 20 journals so far, not much about recordings, but many of them, Kossowski says, are not for posterity, but to hear his friends sing. It is clear that it was captured in such a way that Many of them would never have heard the recorded voice otherwise. Still, there is a wealth of detailed information about life in England and New York a century ago.

Alfred Mapleson himself has two sons, but he believed it was important to make these journals and cylinders available for research by others in order to keep the family legacy alive. rice field.

“All I can say is I want my family to be proud,” he said. “If Lionel, or my grandfather, or my father, can see this, they’re like, OK, you’re doing close to family. We all want to perpetuate the Mapleson name.” I did the right thing to…and for history.That’s the most important thing to me.”