Spinning Discs: Recorded Music

Abstract

Before the later part of the nineteenth century, if you wanted music you either had to play it yourself or find someone else to do it for you. Generations of young ladies were encouraged to learn the piano as an ‘accomplishment’, but really to provide their families with a source of entertainment. Music only existed ‘live’. The exceptions were the chiming of clocks, and barrel organs which could only play one tune, or at best a few short ones.

My idea is that there is music in the air, and music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.

Edward Elgar