Thom Holmes Noise and Notations

by Thom Holmes

Of the recording technologies available before World War II, the turntable had audio fidelity that was marginally superior to that of optical and wire recording. Table 1 compares the audio storage specifications of several competing technologies in 1930. Drawbacks of disc recording included a play-back time limited to a few minutes at a speed of 78 rpm and, for all practical purposes, no sound editing or mixing capability. Yet disc recorders were more widely available, less expensive, and more amenable to a trial and error process of sound assembly than both wire and optical recording. Despite the limitations of disc recording, or perhaps because “invention is the mother of necessity,”(1) several composers were nonetheless compelled to experiment with turntablism. During the 1920s, turntables were often used onstage as part of performances, such as when composer Ottorino Respighi called for a disc recording of nightingales to be played during a performance of The Pines of Rome in 1924. Gramophones were a possible household item and anybody who owned one was familiar with the amusing effect of letting a turntable wind down to a stop, gradually lowering the pitch of the recording as it did so.

In 1930, inspired by the common gramophone, composers Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) and Ernst Toch (1887–1964) found a new application for the turntable. Rather than using it passively to record the performance of other music, they experimented with the record player as the instrument itself. The occasion for their investigations was the 1930 Neue Musik festival of contemporary music in Berlin. Only a few weeks prior to the festival, the composers were immersed in trial and error tests with microphones and disc cutters, producing what may have been the first music composed exclusively for the recording medium. It was the beginning of Grammophonmusik, the roots of turntablism. Their short program of Originalwerke für Schallplatten—original works for disc— included just five works lasting only a few minutes each.

Hindemith named his two works Trickaufnahmen (“trick recordings”) and the remaining three works by Toch were collectively named Gesprochene Musik (“spoken music”).(3) The fundamental effect exploited by each man was the amusing effect of pre-recorded sounds being played back at the wrong speed, a trait of gramophone machines with which any owner of a handcranked model was already familiar. These short works were composed using a laborious multistep recording process. Equipped only with a microphone, disc lathe (recorder), and several playback turntables, the pieces were created by first recording a set of sounds onto one disc and then re-recording them onto a second disc as the first was played back, often at a different speed. In Hindemith’s case, the Trickaufnahmen were devised for xylophone, voice, and cello, the latter being played at different speeds to change the pitch range of one of the parts. The several parts of Hindemith’s piece may have required the playback of three discs at the same time, with the composer capturing the final “mix” by holding a microphone up to the sound. Hindemith was clearly intrigued by using the turntable to change the pitch of recorded sounds and mixing them to create new interactive rhythmic sequences.

Toch’s pieces used only voice and for these he employed a “four voice mixed choir.”(4) Recordings of Toch’s three examples of Gesprochene Musik have not survived, but one of the pieces, the charming Fuge auf der Geographie (Geographical Fugue), became Toch’s most popular work and has since served to bring many a choral performance to a disarming conclusion. Geographical Fugue is essentially an exercise in tongue-twisting geographical names spoken to dramatic effect in various permutations of volume and pace. With such lines as, “Trinidad, and the big Mississippi,” and “Nagasaki! Yokohama!” Toch’s aim was to transform spoken word into rhythmic, musical sounds. His Grammophonmusik version used disc recordings to change the speed of the voices, a technique that had the unexpected consequence of changing some of the vowel sounds or timbre of the music.

Together, Hindemith and Toch had discovered how to transform the gramophone into a sound-generating machine that could alter the pitch and color of a given recorded sound. What Hindemith and Toch recognized was that the mechanical traits that made machine music possible could also be explored for their own, inherently structural and musical qualities. Toch clearly explained this in a statement published at the time of the festival, saying that their purpose in working with Grammophonmusik was that of “exploiting the peculiarities of its [the gramophone’s] function and by analyzing its formerly unrealized possibilities . . . thereby changing the machine’s function and creating a characteristic music of its own.”(5)

Very few composers immediately followed Hindemith and Toch in the exploration of Grammophonmusik, with the exception of Varèse, who by 1935 was experimenting with the playback of multiple turntables simultaneously at various speeds, and John Cage, who is well known for the turntable work Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939).

1 Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’” Technology and Culture, 27 (1986): 544–60.

2 John D. Cutnell and Kenneth W. Johnson, Physics, 4th edn (New York: Wiley, 1998), 466.

3 Mark Katz, Capturing Sound (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 100.

4 Ibid., 102.

5 Ibid.

Early Turntablism

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Christian Marclay turntables (photo: T. Holmes, 2001)

Recommended Recordings: Turntablism

<< Previous

Next >>