Early recordings and musical style: Changing tastes in instrumental performance 1900-1950

Abstract

The first gramophone recordings belong to the earliest period in musical history for which primary (that is, aural) evidence exists. As the revival in our own time of period instrument performance has expanded to encompass music of the Romantic era—a concentration which, twenty years ago, would have been considered precious and unnecessary—a serious study of recordings often made by musicians whose training took place as far back as the middle of the nineteenth century assumes a real importance. As the author states in his introduction: