AHRC Online Conference

Ambience has been a powerful interpretive tool in recorded presentations of musical texts. Many of Arturo Toscanini's recordings, even those done at about the same time RCA made excellent early stereo tapes in Chicago and Boston, still puzzle listeners with their dryness. We know that Toscanini emphasized textural clarity above all else, and after ...

For cases of recording techniques affecting the notion of musical "text" most substantively,​ we need to look to Leopold Stokowski. Courtesy of developing recording technologies, Stokowski's textual beliefs went far beyond traditional post-Kantian textual-critical attitudes. According to Stokowski's sense of history and music-making, we can draw ev...