A recording from 1890 and a Qestion for all

Sousa-Washington Post

Sousa Conducting the US Marine Band

Obviously from a cylinder. Is there an earlier recording? From Pop Music the Early years 1890-1950. Columbia Legacy J2k 65768 2 cds

Since you can hear tempos and phrasing I pose this question. Who would have liked to hear on a recording from 1890 or soon after.

I for one would like to hear some of the composers who were known as conductors. I would like to know how Tcahikovsky conducted the Pathetique. Or how Mahler conducted his symphonies.

Obviously a lot is left to the imagination, but considering the primitive state of technology in 1890, not a bad recording at all. Certainly better at conveying something meaningful than the awful Brahms piano cylinder.

And long live Sousa!

The earliest playable recording is a lead cylinder from 1878, part of a talking clock invented by Frank Lambert:
http://www.tinfoil.com/cm-0101.htm

The earliest extant recording of music is an excerpt from Handel's 'Israel in Egypt' recorded on a paraffin cylinder at the Crystal Palace in London, June 29, 1888:

The opening chorus to the last act of the oratorio from the sounds of it: 'Moses and the children of Israel/I will sing unto the Lord'.

Personally, and not in any order, I would have loved to have heard Dvorak, Smetana conducting their own works and Mahler conducting anything.

And long live Sousa!

Kind regards, Alan M. Watkins