Early 20th Century Music Analysis

Ever had that ringing in your ear that just will not stop? With recording technology of the early 20th century, that’s how I feel when listening to music from that period of time. With a constant static being heard it makes it hard for a 21st century listener to enjoy the music. Usually with low quality music the static or “white” noise is often heard as some would say, behind the music, shockingly for early 20th century music is actually heard more so over the music . Tuning out the static of the recording becomes another aspect of listening for music of this time and makes it somewhat of a hassle. For listening to larger ensembles it makes it particularly hard to enjoy. During J.P. Sousa’s “The Thunderer” it is very hard to enjoy the music really with the constraints of the recording technology of the time. Besides the constant static, another problematic aspect of the technology is the fuzziness of higher notes that the technology can’t quite handle. In my opinion these two aspects rob the music of it true beauty. Likewise with Victor Herbert’s “Dagger Dance”. Such a …show more content…
Everyone’s voice has a uniqueness to it and with the sound recording during the early 20th century, recordings consisting of a vocal part are diminished because of that. From what I can tell from the recording of G.M. Cohan’s “I Want To Hear a Yankee Doodle Tune” we get a sense of the uniqueness of Cohan’s voice but it essentially is robbed of the realness achieved by later advances of recording technology. The one true benefit I can see from this technology of the early 20th century is the thirst for live music. I’m sure the thirst for live music was at a way higher level than it is now being that what can be heard live in today’s time can be heard exactly on a recording. To experience the true beauty of music from the early 20th century one would have to hear it live because the recordings just could not achieve to capture