History of Music in Sound/1

 

HISTORY OF MUSIC IN SOUND

VOL. I. Ancient and Oriental Music

RCA Victor, Oxford University Press, 1961, RCA Victor LM-6057

  This is the first volume of an amazing series of ten about history of music. The general editor was Gerald Abraham and the editor of this volume was Egon Wellesz a major British musicologist born in Vienna in 1885. He fled Austria at the time of the Anschluss in 1938 and became  an influent teacher at Cambridge and the Royal College of Music of London. He worked on ancient and early European music; he was also a composer and he died in 1974.

(From Discogs : The History of Music in Sound (HMS), produced by His Master’s Voice (HMV), was an attempt to create a recorded historical anthology in the 1950s. Originating in a BBC radio series, HMS was issued by HMV in 10 volumes between 1953 and 1959. Nineteen hours of music were published on 78rpm shellac discs (10 volumes, 229 sides of 78s) with explanatory booklets containing substantial music examples and texts. The HMS was intended to accompany the New Oxford History of Music (NOHM), published 1954-1990. The recordings were meant for use by students as well as by the interested public. Late 50's and early 60's selected parts the recordings were reissued on vinyl by HMV in the UK and RCA Victor in the US. Some recordings on the vinyl editions were replaced by new ones due to criticism about the quality of the performances and recordings of the originals.)

All the other albums of this series deal with European music so this one is the only one which focuses on Eastern traditions (from Japanese art music to Arab-Muslim world) but also  provides brief examples of Malagasy, Polynesian and Jewish items. Europe is present with only two tracks about ancient Greek music by Arda Mandikian who was a Greek soprano; the approach to ancient Greek music was a western one of course back then.

Some tracks (or bands) are very interesting others are less so but I discovered some good artists like Chinese opera singer  Hsiao Tsung-i on side 1 track 8 or  the Moroccan singer Muhammad el Shuwaikah. 

Each track is well introduced by a text, a translation of the songs and sheet music sometimes. There are pictures in the middle of the booklet included in the scans. 

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