BRAHMS VARIATION NO. IV

Back in August, I left things hanging once again in respect to that precious and minute (in both senses) 1889 Edison cylinder recording of Johannes Brahms playing piano, improvised, and (maybe) speaking. Seems that the deadly disease I mentioned, the reverse trip along the Information Highway, al lows me to be interactive on Edison Brahms exactly every five months! I promised more-here it is, right on schedule.

I begin with that Professor of Communications who has been so outstandingly helpful to me on the Brahms, Dr. Michael Biel of the Dept. of Communications, Morehead State University, Kentucky. Biel was just back from a profession al conference in Berlin as I prepared to write this. He had gone straight to the Stadtbibliothek Berlin, where there was no Brahms. But that was the city library, and instead of the Brahms he found an intriguing display of some 40 years of East German nude photography. From there he was directed to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-note the similarity-which is the country library, that is, the whole of Germany.

At that library he waved his potent professional IDs, very useful, and in short order he found himself actually holding the Brahms cylinder in his hands, in a see-through case and under the watchful eyes of a curator, one Franz Ziegler.

So the cylinder, or at least a cylinder, is truly there! If you find the right museum. But in a sad state of disrepair, as previously described. Broken, cracked, the grooves barely existing due to an unfortunate partial shaving-off, surely by mistake all this the reason for the prevalent use today of the 1935 disc copies (78 acetates) for reissue. The discs were made, as I explained, when the cylinder-a cylinder-was donated to the Library at that time. They were intended as archival "safeties" and evidently were made well before the shaving-down of the grooves. As state-of-the-art 1935 audio, they are far from ideal today but, alas, better than copies of the Berlin cylinder in its present (and long past) state.

Is this, then, the end of the story? Not by any means. Though much that is left is mystery and speculation. My August '94 account was all European, but there is the American side too, of considerable interest and, indeed, a quite absorbing mystery.

Is there another cylinder, perhaps in the U.S., the one mentioned in February '94? It would now be in Maryland, moved from California along with its owner-if it exists at all. Nobody's saying. Total clam.

This hypothetical cylinder could be either a direct copy-quite possible in the early years, all the way back to the way back to the turn of the century and before. Or, a wild speculation on my part, the actual original, the Berlin cylinder being a surreptitious early copy itself! Not be yond possibility, after the original possessors, friends of Brahms, relinquished control.

If another genuine early cylinder could thus be located, whether it's a copy or an original, Dr. Biel implies that it might prove to be sonically authoritative-a "pantograph" copy could easily pass for the Brahms cylinder itself.

The discovery would be sensational (I speculate)! Much of the lost information could be restored, from unscraped full-depth grooves. And perhaps the confusions over the original opening words could be untangled. (In the 1935 disc masters pre pared for publication, apparently some new words were added, perhaps even in English!)

Dr. Biel warns us that even if such a cylinder seems to exist, it could be a fake made on a cylinder machine from one of the common modern disc or tape versions, to take advantage of some gullible (and moneyed) collector. Such a fake, however, could be quickly detected by a knowledge able pro-Dr. Biel, for instance.

That is the status quo. Heavy clamming continues! No further word from the engineer who was creating a new digitally re stored version via the Ronald Coifman method (September 1993), though I talked to him on the phone and found him entirely friendly. Probably for good reason.

But what version was he using for the Coifman processing? No info. So the clams re main clammy so far. I'm not about to force their shells.

But aha! Here comes a part I had to omit last August. I waxed too lengthy. There is a crucial factor, seemingly un known to most of us here in the U.S.: The original cylinder contained two musical se lections. All of the later reissues have only one, the improvisation (it is that) on the Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 1, a familiar musical theme to most of us. This second piece remains more or less unidentified. There are various claims. It is not by Brahms, though played (or improvised upon) by him. I am amused at the scholarly hoopla that has surrounded this bit of music! One assiduous worker, way back, took it down from the recording (when? which?) and wrote an extensive article upon same, published with the notes of the music. Still, as I remember, not finally identified. Controversy has raged some what preposterously-was it a polka or a waltz? I could tell you in seconds if I could hear it: A polka is in up-beat lively twos; a waltz, as anybody ought to know, is in threes, with that tricky Viennese hesitation in the middle! As to the composer, it really doesn't matter. Brahms plays it, which is what counts.

Now for some reason (perhaps already existing faults in the cylinder), the 1935 disc archive copies-and the briefly published 78 disc along with them-do not include this second piece. Never. The only extant reproduction of it, probably unintelligible by now, is on the still-existing 15-inch tapes in Vienna (see August '94), six tries made direct from the Berlin cylinder a decade-plus ago, hopefully as a base for a first digital restoration. They were eventually not used-but they are there. Dr. Biel may yet get a copy. The Viennese engineers eventually turned back to the 1935 discs, a goodly number, all repeated tries for the best possible transfer ca. 1935. These included acetates that were discovered only recently in London. None of these, apparently, included that second piece-polka or waltz or whatever. And this, you see, is a fine clue as to the authenticity of any existing other earlier cylinder! It almost certainly would have two pieces of music on it, not just one. A modern fake would have only the one.

So if you know of a Brahms cylinder or any other type of recording-with two pieces of music on it played by Brahms, get going! You may have a bonanza on your hands.

One of the curious doubts concerning the original Brahms cylinder, left behind in 1889 as faulty (Brahms would not make another try) at the house where it was made, concerns the content of the spoken introduction before the music starts. It is in that part of the cylinder that a piece was later broken off, and much later, 1983, a reinforcing rubber band put on the now fragile recording, obscuring still more speech. The opening words, then, are lost. (Unless on that hypothetic other early cylinder ...) What words? It is astonishing to read the different versions put forth! In Europe, it is assumed, too, that the body of the introduction is spoken not by Brahms but by the Edison technician, Theo Wangemann. What, then, of the often cited "I am Doktor Brahms, Johannes Brahms"? Wangemann would hardly have faked that, with the composer right beside him at the piano! (On the taped copy of the 1983 Vienna 45-rpm disc, I do not hear any recognizable "I am" or "Ich bin," but the name Brahms, twice, is very definitely audible.)

And then there is that curious direct salutation to Edison, sometimes cited. Could it have been in English? Surely not on any of the 1935 acetate discs. More likely, it could have been added soon after for the limited-edition 78 pressing, during a "live" re-recording session. But a spurious Brahms? Not exactly likely. Instead, I envision merely some sort of helpful new addition to the original introduction, just for the published version. English? Yes, possibly. The publisher, who was at the 1935 copying sessions in Berlin, did indeed re tire to England, accounting for the recent disc discoveries there.

As I imagine it, with Brahms at the piano and in a hurry to get started (he supposedly began too soon), an announcement by him does seem unlikely. These were not microphone days! If so, too bad. I think I would as gladly hear the actual voice of Brahms as his improvisations on the piano, however ingenious as music.

Note that the pitch on the recent 1983 digital recording was adjusted to about a half-tone lower than our present A = 440, a good estimate for Brahms' piano tuning. That puts the voice where it belongs, not the nervous tenor reported in some hearings. The voice I hear myself is not a tenor, whether Brahms or Wangemann.

I hope you will pardon some repetition in the present fourth installment--Sept. '93, Feb. '94, Aug. '94, and now this. Have to make sense for those who missed. May I suggest that readers with any further information let me know-and particularly those who may see fit to un-clam themselves. If they do, I'll be happy to spread out any "publicity" worth telling or respect a continued clamicity, if so desired. The story isn't over yet.

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Jan. 1995)

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