The Marvin Duchow Music Library’s new exhibition, Women, Work, and Song in Nineteenth-Century France, explores women’s work and the cultural work about women in popular music, drawing on a selection of pieces from the Library’s 19^th-Century French Sheet Music Collection.

Women contributed in important ways to the popular music industry in nineteenth-century France. They worked as composers, poets, and performers; they also hosted salons, directed theatres, and earned a living as pedagogues and publishers. The exhibition highlights women’s activities not only within the popular music industry but also more generally within French society, as women joined the workforce, participated in revolutions and armed conflicts, and supported the burgeoning women’s movement.

 

 

 

 

The exhibition follows a chronological narrative, tracing the shift in genres, venues, and means of dissemination of French song over the course of the century. It begins on the third floor by considering the culture of music-making in salons in the early nineteenth century, and highlighting women’s compositions and performances of romances and other song genres. The fourth floor explores the development of the commercial entertainment industry in Paris in the second half of the century, with the café-concerts of the Second Empire and the music halls and cabarets of the Third Republic. A map of Paris along with illustrative material and songs from some of the more famous venues and performers help to acquaint the public with the atmosphere of the café-concerts and cabarets. The influence of the Parisian café-concert industry reached all the way to Montréal: the exhibition displays the rise and fall of Montréal’s Eldorado café-concert, and follows the Parisian cabaret star Yvette Guilbert on her tours to the city over a twenty-year period. The fifth floor analyzes the musical responses to the women’s movement in the final decades of the century, and investigates the instrumentalization of women’s images for ideological and political purposes.

The exhibition seeks to open new avenues of music research by asking compelling questions about the circulation, commercialization, and consumption of nineteenth-century popular music in France. In conjunction with the virtual exhibition, curated by Kathleen Hulley and Kimberly White in 2017, the exhibition provides access to a wide selection of nineteenth-century French popular songs, and supplies the public with an intellectual framework for understanding the various musical genres and the social issues at play in the music industry during the period. Commercial sheet music provides an exceptional window into experiences of daily life. Not only do many songs reflect on and respond to contemporary events and cultural concerns, but each piece of music also presents an opportunity to trace a complex network of agents who contributed to its creation, performance, and circulation.

 

 

Women, Work, and Song in Nineteenth-Century France opens November 8, 2018, and will run until June 2019. The exhibition is located on all three floors of the Marvin Duchow Music Library, Elizabeth Wirth Music Building, 527 Sherbrooke Street West (library entrance on the 3^rd floor).

The latest Marvin Duchow Music Library (McGill University) exhibit explores the history of recorded sound through its rare collection of 20th century recordings and related ephemera. Cylinder, shellac, and vinyl records with varying disc and groove sizes, speeds, composition materials, colours and uses offer insight into the evolution of the medium.

Recordings preserve the soundscapes of bygone eras but can also ensure a certain type of immortality. Nipper, the ubiquitous symbol of early commercial recording marketing, illustrates this point rather poignantly. Poised atop of what appears to be a wooden table, he is listening to sound or music through a gramophone. Upon further inspection, the table turns out to be a coffin and the only remaining evidence of Nipper’s master’s voice, is a recording.

 

And then there was sound…

Thomas Edison was the first inventor to successfully record and play back sound on a tinfoil-covered cylinder in 1878. After experimenting with materials and playback technology, Edison released the earliest commercially-available recordings on cylinders as early as the 1890s.

Blue Ameberol Cylinder

Blue celluloid with plaster of Paris core, 160 rpm, mono, 200 TPI (threads per inch), vertical cut.

Mr. Edison’s Message (In Morse) to the Telegraph Fraternity. Thomas Edison. Edison Blue Amberol Record, 1920, cylinder.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

 

As Edison was working on the development of cylinders and phonographs, Emile Berliner was producing the first recordings on flat discs. The round flat disc would eventually dominate the market, and, as a result, Edison would cease production of his cylinders in 1929¹.

This 12 inch brown shellac record was released by Berliner Gram-o-phone Co. (Victor Talking Machine Company) circa 1907-1908. Note the use of brown shellac as opposed to the more common black colouring, showing early experiments with coloured discs. Also, this record is recorded on one side only, common to early 78 rpm recordings.

 

12 inch Brown Shellac Record

Brown shellac, 78 rpm, mono, coarse groove, lateral cut, one-sided.

In a Clock Store (Orth). Victor Orchestra. Walter B. Rogers. Berliner Gram-o-phone Co., Victor Talking Machine Company, 31618, ca. 1907-1908.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

 

 

Lateral vs Vertical Grooves

Most discs are recorded with the stylus cutting lateral grooves (side to side), though some, such as Edison Diamond Discs, Pathé discs, and Muzak 16-inch discs have vertical, or” hill and dale” cut grooves (up and down). Edison Diamond Discs were not only produced using this type of groove modulation, but were also made to play at 80 rpm (revolutions per minute). Although 78 rpm would eventually become the standard, recording speeds varied considerably in the early days of commercial recordings. Also worth noting is the considerable thickness of the Edison Diamond Discs (6 mm as opposed to 2 mm for the average record).

 

10 inch Edison Diamond Disc Record

Condensite (resin varnish) with wood-flour based core, 80 rpm, mono, fine groove (150 TPI), vertical cut.

Kahn, Gus, Albert E. Short and Del Delbridge. Beside A Garden Wall. Mering, Constance. Edison Record, 11268, 1926.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

 

Flexible Discs

There is seemingly no end to the variety of materials which have been used to record sound onto discs. Flexible discs were made with light and pliable materials in order to allow for ease of distribution, and, occasionally, production. Sold at newsstands in the 1930s, “Hit of the Week” cardboard records are early examples of commercially-available “flexible discs”. Vinyl “flexi discs”, such as this Reader’s Digest disc, were produced on thin sheets of vinyl, and inserted in publications such as books or magazines. Among the more unusual materials used to produce flexible discs were discarded X-rays, which were used to produce bootleg recordings of “forbidden” music in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, fittingly dubbed “bone music.”

 

10 inch Cardboard Record

Cardboard with Durium acetate resin coating, 78 rpm, mono, coarse groove, lateral cut, one-sided.

Vance, Howard. Old New England Moon. Phil Spitalny’s Music. Hit of the Week, 1082, 1930, record. Donaldson. Hello! Beautiful! Sam Lanin’s Dance Ensemble. Hit of the Week, 1136, 1931.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

7 inch Flexi Disc

Flexible vinyl, 33 1/3 rpm, mono, microgroove, lateral cut, one-sided.

Selections from Country & Western Music Jamboree. Reader’s Digest, Park Lane Recordings, ca. 1960s.

Audiovisual Archives Collection,
Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

Coloured Records

Since the early days of commercial recording, record companies have used coloured discs (and cylinders) in order to gain a competitive edge in the market. While some used these discs to colour-code certain genres of music within their catalogues, others produced coloured discs for their visual impact alone. Produced during the Great Depression, blue shellac Columbia 78 rpm records were deployed to entice people to purchase recordings during difficult economic times. The purple 10 inch record shown here was issued by the Hot Jazz Club of America Record Company. Not only is the colour rather striking but this record was made at a time when formats and materials were changing. Therefore, not uncommonly so for a record of its time, this disc is made of vinyl, but recorded at 78 rpm.

 

12 inch Blue Shellac Record

Record Blue Shellac, 78 rpm, mono, coarse groove, lateral cut.

Milhaud, Darius. La Création du Monde. Darius Milhaud and Symphony Orchestra. Columbia, 68094-D, early to mid-1930s.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

 

 

10 inch Purple Vinyl Record

Purple vinyl, 78 rpm, mono, coarse groove, lateral cut.

Morton, Jelly Roll. Smoke House Blues. Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. Hot Jazz Club of America, HC 48, recorded 1926, reissued late 1940s.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

 

This 16 inch Muzak record stands out not only due to its colour, but also its size. The larger disc surface allowed for music to be played continuously for a longer period of time. The 16 inch format was adopted by radio broadcasters for this very reason. Muzak’s catalogue was colour-coded by genre, “provid[ing] a “red” service featuring dance music and a “purple” service of light concert music.”² When RCA Victor launched the first 45 rpms discs they also used coloured vinyl to differentiate the various genres in their catalogue: “red for classical, midnight blue for light classics, green for county-western, yellow for children’s music, sky blue for international, and cerise (orange) for R&B.”³

 

16 inch Red Vinyl LP Record 

Red vinyl, 33 1/3 rpm, mono, coarse groove, vertical cut.

Bill McCune and His Orchestra. Muzak Corporation, W-803, ca. 1950s.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

 

 

7 inch Coloured Vinyl 45 RPM Records

Vinyl, 45 rpm, mono, microgroove, lateral cut.

 

Symington, Williamson, and Kolgan. When the Ice Worms Nest Again. Wilf Carter and the Calgary Stampeders. RCA Victor, 48- 0139, 1949.

Wieniawski, Henryk. Concerto No.2 in D Minor, Op. 22. The Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia. Mischa Elman. Alexander Hilsberg. RCA Victor, 49-3128, ca. 1949-1951.

Kalitka (At the Garden Gate). Emery Deutsch and his Gypsy Orchestra. RCA Victor, 51-0025, ca. 1949-1951.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

Picture Discs and Vogue Picture Records

Picture discs feature images on the grooved part of the record, for aesthetic appeal. One short-lived and relatively early example of this are Vogue picture records which were produced from 1946 to 1947 by Sav-Way Industries. Noted for their artist-rendered illustrations, “Vogue picture records were sold individually, as well as in albums containing two records (…). [They] were of a very high quality, with little surface noise. The records were produced using a complicated process whereby a central core aluminum disc was sandwiched between the paper illustrations and vinyl.”⁴

 

10 inch Vogue Picture Record

Vinyl coating, paper illustration on aluminum core, 78 rpm, mono, coarse groove, lateral cut.

McCarthy, Tierney. Alice Blue Gown. The Hour of Charm All Girl Orchestra under the direction of Phil Spitalny featuring Evelyn and her Violin. Sav-Way Industries, R725, 1947.

From the private collection
of Cynthia Leive

 

 

Instantaneous Recordings

In parallel to the development of commercial recordings, home and “one-off” recordings were made increasingly accessible due to the development of portable disc-cutting lathes which allowed users to produce instantaneous discs. Although these types of recordings were most commonly made on lacquer discs, a number of other materials were used including aluminum. Given their composition, lacquer discs have a high risk of deterioration. Discs were often made by coating a fiber, metal or glass substrate with nitrocellulose. Over time, the castor oil used in the composition of the nitrocellulose coating could leach out, potentially causing a white film of palmitic acid to form on the record, and/or causing the record to delaminate⁵. Also of interest is the starting point of the playback. This record is to be played from the inside outward and can be found in both commercial and private recordings, though it is not nearly as common as the habitual outside start.

This 10 inch transcription disc was produced as a “one-off” recording by the National Recording and Producing Co., located in the Willis Building (on the corner of St. Catherine and Drummond Streets), a former piano manufacturing plant in Montreal, Quebec.

 

10 inch Transcription Disc

Lacquer disc with metal substrate, 78 rpm, mono, coarse groove, lateral cut, inside start.

Narration. National Recording and Producing Co., ca. 1940-50s.

Audiovisual Archives Collection, Marvin Duchow Music Library

 

 

 

Phonomenal! Rare sides from the history of sound recording is located at the entrance of the Marvin Duchow Music Library, 527 Sherbrooke Street West, 3rd floor.

 

 

1 Edison Blue Amberol Cylinders (1912–1929).” UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. Accessed February 24, 2017. http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/history-blueamberol.php

2 Morton, David. Off The Record (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 175.

3 Granata, Charles L. ―The Battle for the Vinyl Frontier. In 45 RPM: A Visual History of the Seven-Inch Record edited by Spenser Drate, 9. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.

4 “What’s a Vogue Picture Record?” The Association of Vogue Picture Record Collectors. Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.voguepicturerecords.org/records.html

5 “Electric Transcription Discs” The Audio Archive. Accessed March 22, 2017. http://www.theaudioarchive.com/TAA_Resources_Disc_Transcription.htm

The Library’s newest technology – an Ideum touch table is spending the summer in the Music Library.

The table is showing two exhibitions: complementary audiovisual items for the current John Rea’s Musical Universe exhibition and a carousel of images from Hubert Bédard and Hellmuth Wolff: Visionaries of the Early Keyboard Revival, showcasing organ plans from the Hellmuth Wolff Organ Collection. 

We hope you will stop by and try out the touch table.

Visit the Marvin Duchow Music Library and discover the 1962 vinyl LP record titled Oh Yeah by jazz musician Charles Mingus.

More information on this album can be found at Discogs.

Over the past few months, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with the Hellmuth Wolff Organ Collection at the Marvin Duchow Music Library. My work involved sorting and describing the various items in the Collection such as organ plans, photographs, and other textual documents associated with the activities of the organ building firm Wolff & Associés.

Hellmuth Wolff (1937-2013) was an important and respected organ builder who took a leading role in the revival of historical organ building practices in North America in the early 1960s. Born in Switzerland, he studied and apprenticed in Europe and the United States before he immigrated to Canada in 1963 to work for the company Casavant Frères in St-Hyacinthe, Quebec. In 1968 he established his own atelier, Wolff & Associés, in Laval, and started a productive and influential career as a builder of historically-informed tracker organs. Between 1968 and 2008, Wolff designed, built, and installed fifty instruments in churches, universities, concert halls, and homes across North America.

The Collection, which is now located and available for consultation at the Marvin Duchow Music Library, consists of organ plans, pamphlets, concert information, photographs, posters, three-dimensional models, periodicals, and correspondence that document the industriousness of Wolff’s workshop, which was active from 1968 until 2012. Of great importance are the organ plans for nearly all of the fifty organs that Wolff built. These range from preliminary sketches to large-scale drawings, and thus form a unique opportunity to study the development of mechanical organ building in North America. The plans also attest to the mastery of Wolff’s craft, as the art of organ building requires a sophisticated familiarity with several disparate fields such as music history, acoustics, architecture, art history, and engineering. Notable organs that Wolff produced include the beautiful instrument at Redpath Hall on the McGill campus, which was completed in 1981, as well as the instrument at Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria BC, completed in 2006.

My work also involved curating the exhibition “Hubert Bédard and Hellmuth Wolff: Visionaries of the Early Keyboard Revival,” which will be on display at the Marvin Duchow Music Library until December. This exhibit, which was coordinated with Historical Keyboard Society of North America’s annual Conference held at McGill in May, was meant to showcase some of the items in the Hellmuth Wolff Organ Collection. This involved digitizing and reproducing several of the organ plans, as well as choosing photographs, CDs, and pamphlets for the exhibition.

The Hellmuth Wolff Organ Collection provides invaluable insight into the style, construction, and installation of the fifty organs produced by Wolff & Associès over the span of forty years. The Collection is thus an indispensable resource for not only documenting the evolution of Wolff’s style, but also for capturing the activities of a pioneer in the historical keyboard revival and the building of tracker organs in North America.

David Henkelman
Research Assistant

Paul Helmer’s Growing with Canada Collection is now preserved in the Marvin Duchow Music Library’s special collections room and is available for consultation. For detailed information about the Collection, please refer to the finding aid on the McGill Music Library website. Certain restrictions apply.

Paul Helmer’s Growing with Canada Collection consists of material gathered by former Schulich School of Music Associate Professor of Musicology, Dr. Paul Helmer for his book, Growing with Canada: The Émigré Tradition in Canadian music, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2009. The Collection contains original documentary evidence including interview transcripts and recordings, as well as Dr. Helmer’s notes and drafts for Growing with Canada and copies of primary and secondary sources.

Growing with Canada is an account of the lives and legacy of 121 musicians who emigrated from Europe to Canada between 1933 and 1948.[1] Fleeing racial and political persecution in their home countries, these individuals made a lasting contribution to Canadian music. Paul Helmer’s Growing with Canada Collection, then, constitutes an important resource for research in Canadian music culture of the twentieth century. Of particular interest are the interview transcripts described by Robin Elliot, Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music at the University of Toronto, as “an invaluable resource of national importance.”[2] The Collection also contains Helmer’s edited transcripts (originally intended to be published in a second volume), audio recordings, and biographical information for each “émigré” musician discussed.

Dr. Helmer’s research files contain many gems for the scholar or the performer interested in Canadian music of the post-war period. As a performing musician, for example, I find Paul Helmer’s diary of notes from his studies with Béla Böszörmenyi-Nagy at the Banff School of Fine Arts in the summer of 1952 particularly fascinating.

For those interested in the development of post-secondary music education in Canada, there are extensive files on Helmut Blume and Arnold Walter. These two musicians revitalised the Faculties of Music of McGill University and the University of Toronto, respectively, laying the foundation for growth and prosperity in the following decades.

Another important subject broached in Growing with Canada is the internment of “enemy aliens” by the British and Canadian governments during World War II. An unpublished collection of internment camp chronicles by Hans Kaufman entitled “Behind Barbed Wire” sheds light on the lives of internees.

Most importantly, however, the Collection contains the voices of European émigrés who fled racial and political persecution and found a new home in Canada.

The Marvin Duchow Music Library invites those who wish to consult Paul Helmer’s Growing with Canada Collection to contact Cynthia Leive, Head Music Librarian.

[1] Helmer uses the word “musician” here “in its widest sense to include not only vocal and instrumental performers, teachers and educators, conductors, and composers, but also music administrators, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, lexicographers, broadcasters, managers and music patrons.” See Paul Helmer, Growing with Canada: The Émigré Tradition in Canadian Music (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press), 4.

[2] Paul Helmer’s Growing with Canada Collection, Box 1, S.1/F.1, i, Marvin Duchow Music Library, McGill University, Montréal, Québec.

Submitted July 28, 2014 by Eric Braley.