The Gramophone: Recorded Music and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars

Abstract

development and rapid diffusion of the gramophone in the late 19th and early 20th centuries offered a historically unique opportunity for serious musicians and their audiences. Phonograph records made permanent what previously was ephemeral. Formerly, the artist was haunted by the knowledge that with him his music must vanish into the unknown, Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote in his essay, The Artist and the Gramophone, yet today he can leave behind him a faithful reproduction of his art, an eloquent and imperishable testimony to his life's achievement.1 Moreover, here was a technology that extended the auditory range of the human ear, just as the cinema broadened the vision of the eye. No longer was the concert the sole means of communication between a musician and his public. phonograph relieved the isolation of the home; the listener could choose when and where to hear his favorite music.

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