Musicae Scientiae © 2007 by ESCOM European Society

Fall 2007, Vol XI, n° 2, 269-293 for the Cognitive Sciences of Music

Making and hearing virtual worlds:

John Culshaw and the art of record production

DAVID N. C. PATMORE
AND ERIC F. CLARKE
Department of Music, University of Sheffield

• ABSTRACT
A recording represents a paradoxical perceptual source: we can either attend to the
sound of the medium, or to the virtual world conveyed by it, and the work of a
record producer can be understood as either a process of capturing performances
or one of creating virtual worlds. This paper demonstrates that the record producer
John Culshaw had clear ideas about how recordings might approach the condition
of a work of art, rather than being simply the trace of a moment in time. Culshaw's
fundamental aesthetic and technical approach is described and illustrated with
reference to a number of key recordings. Taking the relationship between sound
recording and film as a starting point, and making use of the concept of subject-
position, the tension between Culshaw's radical approach to the listener and
traditional approach to the authority of the score is explored. Possible reasons are
proposed for the abandonment of his ideas, and for the absence of a Culshaw
legacy (apart from the recordings themselves). The paper ends with a brief
discussion of the current paradigm for the recording of classical music, which seeks
in various ways to reproduce "the live experience" in "the finest seat in the house".

INTRODUCTION

When Thomas Edison made his famous tin-foil recording in 1877, he could have
had little idea how far-reaching - both literally and metaphorically - the
consequences of his invention would be. Little more than a century ago, all music
was necessarily heard live, while today vastly more music is heard around the globe
in a recorded (or recorded and broadcast) form. The technological and cultural
history of this revolurion in music has in recent years been the subject of a significant
amount of writing from various perspectives (e.g., Chanan, 1995; Day, 2000;
Eisenberg, 2005; Katz, 2004; Philip, 1992, 2004), but there has been rather less
discussion of the consequences of recording for listening (though see Clarke, in
press). From a psychological perspective, recordings have many of the same
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paradoxical perceptual characteristics as do films and photographs: overwhelmingly,
they are presented so as to maintain the illusion that "what you hear or see is what
happened in reality" - that there is something close to a kind of transparency
between real-world events that took place, and the sights or sounds that are
presented. In this sense, recordings constitute paradoxical perceptual sources: on the
one hand they are objects made of shellac, vinyl, magnetic tape, or silvered plastic
from which sounds can be made by an appropriate technology; and on the other
hand they are "gateways" into a virtual world of instruments and voices - and what
we then imagine that we hear are the sounds of those instruments and voices, rather
than the sounds of the record, tape or disc. Pictures have the same paradoxical
perceptual quality, as the psychologist James Gibson - discussing pictures from the
perspective of ecological perception - points out:

''A picture, photographic or chirographic, is always a treated surface, and it is always seen
in the context of other nonpictorial surfaces. Along with the invariants for the depicted
layout of surfaces, there are invariants for the surface as such. It is a plaster wall, or a sheet
of canvas, a panel, a screen, or a piece of paper. The glass, texture, edges, or frame of the
picture surface are given in the array, and they are perceived. The information displayed is
dual. The picture is always both a scene and a surface, and the scene is paradoxically behind
the surface. This duality of the information is the reason the observer is never quite sure
how to answer the question, 'What do you see?'. For he can perfectly well answer that he
sees a wall or a piece of paper." (Gibson, 1979/1986, p. 281)

Until comparatively recently, it might have been rather unlikely for a listener, when
asked what they heard in a recording, to respond that they heard vinyl or shellac. But
with the advent of sampling and re-rnasrering, both of which have the capacity to
transfer a recording from one medium to another and thus to transfer the sound of
the original medium, it has become more plausible that this really would be the
response - at least for certain kinds of listeners in particular circumstances
(engineers listening to CD transfers of a batch of recordings from different eras, for
example). Sample-based pop music shows how powerful the sound olthe recording
medium (as well as the material recorded in that medium) can be. Arguably much
of the impact and commercial as well as critical success of the 1999 album Play, by
the pop musician Moby, comes from the particular sound of the samples that it uses
(some taken from field recordings by the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in the
1950s), exploiting the nostalgic or "authentic" sense of historical distance that
accompanies the characteristically thin sound of older recording technologies.
The uncertainty to which Gibson refers in relation to pictures, and the duality
with which sample-based music plays, is captured in the distinction between object
and medium. At one level, the object-character of recordings has never been in
doubt: they are shellac discs, lengths of tape, pieces of vinyl, and so on. But this
recognition of "objectness" is very largely confined to the material and tangible
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC F. CLARKE

character of recordings, rather than their sonic character. As Chanan (1995), Symes
(2004), Katz (2004) and others have pointed out, the history of recording is
dominated by the search for (and repeated claims to have attained) "fidelity" - the
ideal of a completely transparent medium, in which any auditory awareness of the
recording as object disappears. The recording supposedly presents the music "exactly
as it is", without transformation or loss of presence.
The impossibility, or paradox, of this fantasy is obvious. Just as a camera (still or
movie) must always capture its images from a particular point of view, so too the
microphone records sound from a particular "point of hearing". In the era of
acoustical recording (up to the mid-1920s), when performers had to arrange
themselves around a large recording horn, there was essentially no room for
manoeuvre -literally as well as metaphorically. If the music was to get onto the disc
at all, then the players and singers simply had to be in particular physical positions
in relation to the horn, dictated almost entirely by the power, frequency range, and
directionality of the instruments in relation to the capabilities of the available
technology. But with the development of electrical recording in the later 1920s,
recording producers and engineers were put in a position similar to that of film
directors and camera operators: the microphone allowed them to make choices about
the perspective from which sounds were recorded, and thus the overall aural image
that they were trying to create. The introduction of stereophonic recording in the
early 1950s enabled a significant further step to be taken towards the transparency
or fidelity of the medium in terms of the apparent location of sounds relative to the
listener, and the size and character of the acoustical space. The expansion of the
frequency range, and reductions in noise and distortion, revealed £'lr more clearly the
potential of the medium, previously limited by the circumstances of monophonic
recording technologies.
Making a recording can never be a transparent process, as the hugely increased
possibilities of record production that came with tape and the post-war studio made
ever more evident: the creation of a recording is always the creation of a virtual
world. Just what kind of virtual world is created then becomes a question of musical
aesthetics as much as technological possibilities - an expression of the virtual
musical world that the record producer conceives as their ideal. What follows is a
discussion of a particular outlook - and some of the working methods - of one of
the most significant post-war classical record producers, John Culshaw, and of the
virtual world that he aimed to create and intended his listeners to experience in the
field of opera. As the Decca sound engineer Gordon Parry (personal
communication) put it: "John had the concept of the recording being an art form in
itself - and that's what he believed in."

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 JOHN CULSHAW: A CASE STUDY

CAREER
John Culshaw (1924-1980) first became professionally involved with recording in
1946, at the age of 22, when F. E. Attwood, the Publicity Manager of The Decca
Record Co., engaged him on a freelance basis to work in his department. The timing
of this introduction to the company was propitious: the advent of peace and the
gradual return to economic normality resulted in growth in public demand for
recordings, encouraging Decca to increase its output. At the same time, the
introduction of the long-playing record in the USA in 1948 and by Decca in the
United Kingdom in 1950, and the development of recording with magnetic tape
from the late 1940s onwards, created a need for additional expert recording
personnel. After a year working in publicity, Culshaw suddenly found himself thrust
into the role of the record producer. His first assignment was to supervise a solo
recording by the pianist Clifford Curzon, followed shortly afterwards by responsibility
for several of Georg Solti's early orchestral recordings, and after working for Decca
on an ad hoc basis for four years, in 1951 Culshaw was made a permanent member
of staff, working in the Classical Recording division of Decca as a producer.
This work placed him at the centre of European music-making, with recording
assignments not only in London but in several of the other musical capitals of
Europe, notably Vienna. Between 1953 and 1955 he left Decca and served as the
head of European classical recording for the American company Capitol, whose UK
releases at that time were published through Decca. With the take-over of Capitol by
EMI in 1955, and the closure of Capitol's classical music operation in Europe,
Culshaw returned to Decca at the invitation of its chairman, Sir Edward Lewis,
becoming head of the company's Classical Recording Division in 1956.
Stereophonic recordings, issued for commercial consumption through pre-recorded
tapes, had been available in the USA since 1954. With the imminent introduction of
stereo recordings on disc into the consumer market, Culshaw saw this technological
innovation as a major advance. In particular he wanted to develop the recording of
opera using stereophonic sound, and specifically to transform it from a static experience
for the listener, as was the case with monophonic recordings, to a dramatic
experience, possessing at least some of the theatrical characteristics which this new
technology made possible. These included spatial separation, aural perspective,
acoustic modification and sound effects. Culshaw first tried out his ideas with the
1957 recording of Act III of Die Walkiire, followed by a more thorough-going
application of stereo in his production of DasRheingo/d, made in 1958, and the first
time that this opera had been recorded in full. The recording was released in 1959
to great critical acclaim and commercial success in both Europe and America.
Having proved his commercial as well as artistic worth to Decca with this release,
Culshaw then embarked upon a series of very carefully prepared recordings of operas,
several of which were promoted as employing Decca's Sonicstage technique. The first
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERlC F. CLARKE

Sonicstage production was Tristan und Isolde, released in 1961, followed by Salome
(1962); the second instalment of Decca's Ringcycle, Siegfried (1963); Gotterdammerung
(1965); Die Walkiire (1966) and finally Elektra in 1967 - in all of which the
conductor Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra were key
participants. In the autumn of 1967, Culshaw left Decca to take up the post of head
of music at BBC Television, remaining there for eight years. From 1975 he pursued
a freelance career, working as a producer, writer, and lecturer in England and
Australia. He died in 1980.

AESTHETIC AND TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES

From a careful reading of Culshaw's numerous articles and liner notes it is possible
to build up a coherent picture of his ideas on the subject of recording music, and
especially opera, for the gramophone. Although these principles were developed and
articulated over the period during which Culshaw was producing operas in stereo for
Decca, this section presents them as a single body of thought, irrespective of when
they were publicly expressed.
An overriding objective throughout this period was fidelity to the composer's
wishes. One of Culshaw's intentions in recording Das Rheingold was "the idea of
realising every single effect as Wagner wanted it" (Culshaw, 1961a, p. 12). At the
same time technical virtuosity should always serve the musical objective, and not
stand in its own right: "technical facility must always take second place to artistic
continuity." (Culshaw, 1962a, p. 15) - a goal that was clearly explained in Decca's
copywriting of its advertisement for the initial release of Siegfried. "[T]he technical
achievement is but the servant of the music and drama - it has no function other
than to convey through the medium of the gramophone, and in terms of sound
alone, a magnificent interpretation of the musico-dramatic experience." (Decca
Records, 1963). In short, Culshaw was seeking to achieve an aural interpretation as
close as possible to the composer's written directions: "a sort of aural conception,
which as Ernest Newman suggested as long ago as 1914, may often be closer to the
operatic ideal than many average offerings in the theatre." (Culshaw, 1962a, p. 15).
In essence, the techniques of recording, Culshaw argued, often enabled a more
faithful realization of the composer's wishes to be achieved in the recording studio
than in the circumstances that frequently characterised the live performance.
In this respect, Culshaw had little time for the idea of recording live performances
in the opera house.

"Would it not be easier, after all, to record operas directly from the live stage with srereo
equipment? The answer, almost certainly is no. Short of ten identical performances (on
Bayreuth lines), one simply cannot get the musical perfection which the record public
demands; and the acoustical problems oflive theater recording usually defeat even the most
adventurous of such projects." (Cutshaw, 1958, p. 136)

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Fidelity to the composer's wishes required extensive preparation:

"If there is any secret about the sort of work we have been doing in Vienna over the past
few years [... J it has to do with trying to get to the heart of a score before you record a note
of it, so that before you begin you have a concept of what the final record is going to sound
like. This concept may, of course, be right or wrong; it may be sustained or modified as
things progress; but the important thing is that it should be there to start with, for the
catalogues are full of examples to show whar happens when it isn't." (Culshaw, 1968,
p.474)

The arrival of stereophonic sound recording and reproduction, which allowed for the
placing of sounds within the sound stage, opened up many new possibilities in
recording - as Culshaw was quick to grasp: "Stereo, by granting the artist freedom
to move and thus to act, stands a chance of realizing the dream of many opera
enthusiasts: a wholly accurate reproduction of the voice in balance plus the effect of
that voice in action. All that one misses is the visual element, and that is perhaps a
mixed disadvantage." (Culshaw, 1959, p. 46). Stereo permitted the reproduction of
movement by singers similar to that on the theatrical stage. As Frank Granville
Barker reported when interviewing Culshaw in 1958: "A recording session has
become rather like a stage production and calls for expert placing of the performers."
(Barker, 1958). Culshaw himself was even more specific in print a few months later:
"[T]he job of the stereo opera producer is to realize the essential movement of the
drama in aural terms." (Culshaw, 1959, P: 46). In order to accommodate movement
and to replicate further the conditions of a staged performance, "Stages are being
built in halls where monophonic requirements demanded no such amenities."
(Culshaw, 1959, p. 136). At the same time as assisting the general dramatic
realization, "the movement itself may well, to some extent, determine the inflection
of whatever musical phrase is being sung. In other words, the singers have to act, and
in acting, they move." (Culshaw, 1959, p. 45).
The concentrated performance generated through movement on the recording
stage was to be further amplified by recording in long takes. Whereas the wax
medium of 78-rpm recording technology only allowed for an uninterrupted
performance of between four and five minutes at the most, tape recording
offered the possibility of recording in considerably longer takes. "Stereo opera as we
in Decca record it, has resulted in longer 'takes' than ever before. We knew perfectly
well how difficult it is to build up dramatic tension, in a studio performance, and
the long 'take' is some solution." (Culshaw, 1962a, p. 14). The long take, moreover,
found its obvious expression in the longer playing duration of the LP record - a
characteristic that Adorno celebrated in an article from 1969. He argued that for
opera the LP was actually superior to the live performance in distancing itself from
what he described as the "phony hoopla" of the opera house, and in its capacity "to
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC F. CLARKE

recreate without disturbance the temporal dimension essential to operas." (Adorno,

2002, p. 285).1
Culshaw's innovations were only possible, however, with considerable collaborative
teamwork, in both technical and artistic terms: "no successful recording can ever be
made without perfect cooperation between the A and R [Artists and Repertoire] man
and the technicians." (Culshaw in Barker, 1958). The addition of movement, longer
takes, and the presence of a stage as the setting for the recording all required greater
rehearsal - ironically approaching the kind of process that takes place in an opera
house itself, and with significant cost implications. "Operas which took twelve days
to make now take three weeks" (Culshaw, 1958, p. 136). These kinds of conditions
place particular demands on the conductor, and Culshaw was very specific about the
need to record with a conductor who understood recording balances, was able to
react positively and promptly to suggestions for improvements from the recording
producer, and who could achieve these quickly in the studio. The particular kind of
co-operation that Culshaw achieved with Georg Solti may be clearly observed in the
BBC's television film of the recording of Gotterdammerung (BBC TV; 1964).
These pre-conditions for a successful recording (fidelity to the composer's
directions, careful preparation, movement, finely judged recording balance, longer
takes, good team work with the engineers, extensive rehearsal time) were designed to
increase the atmosphere of the recording to approach and at times exceed that
experienced in the opera house. A heightened sense of atmosphere in turn helped to
generate greater intensity in performance (in part a consequence of the absence of
the visual component of the drama), and Culshaw offered as an example of this his
recording of Tristan und Isolde. "What you have to do is to make stereo convey in a
way that I think has never been possible on record before, the intensity of feeling in
this opera. You have to get a sound on to this record which is perhaps more intense
than the sound you could ever hope to hear in an opera house with a sunken
orchestra." (Culshaw, 1961a, p. 47). Stereophonic recording was seen as the
technological means to achieve that fundamental philosophy of recording dominant
since the invention of the gramophone - that it represented a faithful representation
of reality; and critics writing at the dawn of the stereophonic era were quick to point
this out. For instance, commenting upon Culshaws recording ofAct I of Die walkure,
conducted by Hans Knapperstsbusch and ironically made even before Culshaw
started to experiment with stereo, the American record critic David Hall wrote: "The
London walkiire album [...] turned our living room into a replica of an opera house

(1) Very much as Culshaw did, but in typically more polemical terms, Adorno saw opera recordings
as improving upon live opera performances by doing away with the distractions of either
anachronistic or perplexingly 'updated' staging and concentrating «on music as the true object of
opera, [... J linked to a perception that is comparable to reading, to immersion in a text. [ ... J The
form of the gramophone record comes into its own as a form of sound figures." (Adorno, 2002,
p.285).

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in such convincing fashion we had to rub our eyes in order not to believe that Kirsten
F1agstad and Set Svanholm hadn't invaded the premises in person." (Hall, 1958).2
What Culshaw was moving towards, however, was the conception of recorded music
as a new kind of experience, equally valid but different from that traditionally
experienced in the live situation.

"The question beginning to emerge in 1960 was whether the gramophone record, which
has long been said to be as good or as nearly as good as the concert hall, should even try to
be anything likethe Concert Hall. Was the gramophone record in fact something that could
exist in its own right, without attempting to imitate at all the kind of sound or performance
you would necessarily have in the Concert Hall." (Culshaw, 1961a, p. 11).

KEy RECORDINGS
The period in which Culshaw developed his ideas for realizing opera specifically in
terms of the medium of stereophonic recording was relatively short (1957 to 1967)
and the recordings themselves were few in number, if often large in scale. This
section provides an overview of six seminal recordings in which Culshaw developed
his innovative recording practices.

Die Walkiire Act III (1957) and Das Rheingold (1958)

Culshaw first articulated his radical ideas in the recording of Act III of Die Walkiire,
made during May 1957 in Vienna. Recorded in both mono and stereo, this set
already looked forward to Culshaw's later, more ambitious, productions. Writing
about it in the December 1957 issue of Records and Recording, he asserted that "With
this recording of Die Walkiire, Act 3, we tried to break some of the conventions of
opera in the studio," aiming to create "the excitement, continuity and drama of the
opera in the theatre," while exploiting "the advantages and facilities of studio
recording." (Culshaw, 1957). To assist in this, a stage was constructed behind the
orchestra sufficiently large to allow the singers plenty of room in which to move,
supplemented at the start of Act III and The Rideo/the Valkyries by an artificial stage
"mountain" to provide the singers with some sense of the actual stage experience.
As well as introducing the physical movement that could now be captured and
conveyed through stereophonic sound, this recording was also notable for utilizing
longer takes than was then usual. As with the stage layout, the aim here was to
capture some of the experience felt in participating in an actual theatrical
production. "In this case it was 23 uninterrupted minutes, a feat of concentration
made possible only by the superb co-operation of the singers, conductor and
125 members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra." (Culshaw, 1957)

(2) Even thirty years later, however, the critic Julian Hirsch was arguing that it was impossible in
terms of physics for domestic sound reproduction even to begin to convey the experience of musical
performance in spaces such as a concert hall or opera house (Hirsch, 1983; 1995).

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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND EIliC F. CLARKE

If Act III of Die walkiirewas Culshaw's first attempt to exploit the new medium,
Das Rheingold, with its spectacular episodes such as the descent into Nibelheim and
the entry into Valhalla, offered numerous opportunities for experimenting with
stereo to great dramatic effect, which Culshaw seized upon in his 1958 production.
The time and care taken to realise these plans were impressive: "About thirty sketch
plans were needed to cover the various sequences [of movement] in Rheingold, and
rehearsing the artists in their movements took care of half of the preparatory piano
rehearsals, which totalled twenty-five." (Culshaw, 1959, p. 441). Culshaw was not
only energetic in the search for 'authentic' sound effects, but also realized the
opportunities for publicity which these adventures offered. He wrote enthusiastically
of his discovery of an anvil school in Vienna and the subsequent hiring of eighteen
anvils "of the size and type specified by Wagner" (Culshaw, 1959, p. 442), and when
the gold bars specified by Wagner to hide the young goddess Freia were beyond even
Decca's resources, Culshaw settled instead for the sounds of "solid tin, under guard".
(Culshaw, 1959, p. 442) The screams of the Nibelungen at the end of Scene Three
were accomplished only after sixty children from a Viennese orphanage had
undergone four hours of intensive rehearsal.
"Authenticiry" was not Culshaws only concern, however, and in the Rheingold
recording he also experimented with sound manipulation for purely dramatic effect.
When in the third scene Alberich becomes invisible through donning the Tarnhelm
helmet and whips Mime at different, unexpected, parts of the stage, the changes in
position were clearly realized, and the timbre of Alberich's voice subtly adjusted to
convey the helmeted effect. Here was an instance where sound alone could improve
upon the stage: "I maintain that for special moments of this sort, where the theatre
can be improved upon, the effect is legitimate." (Culshaw, 1959, p. 444).
Apart from musico-dramatic effects and the manipulation of vocal sound, Das
Rheingold also offered Culshaw and his team opportunities to exploit the value of
acoustic space in recording purely orchestral music. The hushed opening of the
opera, and other orchestral set pieces, offered the Decca engineers and the Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra opportunities to demonstrate a clarity and luxuriance of
orchestral sound that could rarely, if ever, be heard by most listeners in a real opera
house. A studio production that surpassed the live experience - at least in aural
terms - had become achievable.
The consequences of all these factors were considerable, as Andrew Porter
indicated in his review of the recording in The Gramophone. After acknowledging the
effectiveness of both production and stereophonic recording, he went to suggest that
"it is not exactly a theatre illusion that we have but perhaps something even closer to
Wagner's creation [...] listening to these records is not just like going to the opera
house without looking at the stage. In some mysterious way they seem to catch you
up in the work - not in a particular set of performers - more intimately than
that." (Porter, 1959, p. 472). Culshaw, in Porter's view, had succeeded in his aim of
creating a realisation of Wagner's opera that offered a different, and potentially
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superior, musico-dramatic experience from that encountered in the theatre: "Here
we seem to experience the very characters of The Ring - not grease-painted actors
before cardboard rock - acting out the drama." (Porter, 1959, p. 472).

Tristan und Isolde (1960)

Following upon the artistic and commercial success of Das Rheingold (which entered
the best-selling LP charts in America alongside Elvis Presley), Culshaws next
recording project was Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. For this recording Culshaw took
the idea of position and movement in stage space a step further, redesigning the
traditional stage sets in such a way as to exploit to the full the depth and spread of
stereo. The new set designs commissioned by Culshaw were reproduced in the
accompanying leaflet with the original recordings, much as stage designs might be
reproduced in the programme for an actual operatic performance (see Figures 1, 2
and 3).

Figure 1.
Culshaw's set design for Ad I for his 1960 recording of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Courtesy of
Decca Music Group.

The most significant difference from traditional stagings lay in Culshaw's approach
to the first act. Instead of imagining Isolde's cabin spread out across the stage,
Culshaws design exploited both the depth and width of the stereophonic stage, with
the ship in which the future lovers were travelling located diagonally onstage at an
angle of about forty-five degrees to the audience. Tristan and Kurwenal could be
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC F. CLARKE

Figure 2.
Cu/shaw's set design for Ad 1/ for his 1960 recording of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Courtesy
of Decca Music Group.

heard on the right hand side of the stage, from the audience's perspective, and
standing upstage on the rear deck of the ship; while Isolde and Brangane were
situated down-stage on the left hand side, in their cabin. Culshaw's intentions in this
recording were not, however, to simulate an imagined opera house. As he wrote in
the leaflet accompanying the discs: "The idea furthest from our minds was to copy,
on records, what is heard on the average opera house; instead we tried to ensure that
the intense emotional experience of Tristan und Isolde should survive the transfer to
a medium unknown to the composer, and use to the full whatever advantages that
different medium could bestow." (Culshaw, 1961b, p. 5).

Salome (1961)
Salome is the first of the Culshaw opera productions to be branded with the term
Sonicstage. Neither Culshaw nor Decca ever provided a clear definition of
Sonicstage, which seems to have been a portmanteau term denoting a higher level of
recording detail than was then usual, the presence of effects emulating stage action,
and an advertising brand image that identified those productions on which it was
used. Culshaw described in some detail the objectives of employing the Sonicstage
method for the recording of Salome in the leaflet which accompanied the long-
playing records on their initial release.
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 Figure 3.
Culshaw's set design for Act 11/ for his 1960 recording of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Courtesy
of Decca Music Group.

"In approaching this score for a modern recording, we had one major idea in mind: that
although its detail and subtle colouring are almost without precedent, the fact temains that
much of it, and hence much of the mood and intensity of the drama, is lost in the average
theatre [... J To this end an altogether new technical approach called Sonicstage was devised,
through which every desirable detail in the score might become audible in its correct
proportion to the rest of the vast orchestra (it averaged 115 musicians) and to the voices."
(Culshaw, 1962b)

Culshaw then goes on to list individual passages in the score where specific details in
the orchestral texture are frequently lost in theatrical performances, but which are
clearly revealed in this recording, concluding:

"Salome is our first production in Sonicstage, and we believe it represents a huge step
forward in the quest for a technical-artistic alliance that will finally establish stereo
recording as a legitimate operatic medium [...] It does offer a new kind of personal
involvement to the listener by placing him closer to the score, and thus to the drama, than
has been possible hitherto." (Culshaw, 1962b)

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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC F. CLARKE

Later in his career Culshaw was dismissive of the Sonicstage label, and maintained
that in reality the process was no different from what had gone before: "[T]here was
not a jot of difference between Salome and any other opera we had recorded in
Vienna for the past three years - except, that is, for Strauss's scoring. I wish now
that we had not done it [the Sonicstage branding], because it was childish."
(Culshaw, 1981, p. 281). Nonetheless, the term arguably conveyed two key points
to the consumer. First, the use of the term "stage" communicated the idea that the
singers would be moving around the sound area presented to the listener; and
second, the design of the logo, which drew heavily upon that for the wide-screen film
process Cinemascope, indicated that the sound recording would fully exploit the
width of the stereo soundstage, and thus pin-point orchestral detail and dramatic
action within this virtual space.
A key moment in the opera at which Culshaw sought to emulate directly in aural
terms the stage action was the moment in the closing scene when Salome lasciviously
addresses the severed head of]okanaan, and finally kisses it, immediately prior to her
assassination. In the original play Oscar Wilde's stage directions at this point require
a darkened stage, and with the moon obscured by a passing cloud. Wilde marks the
source of the ensuing lines as "the voiceof Salome", rather than Salome directly, and
Culshaw sought to indicate the psychological intimacy of this moment, mirrored by
the shrouding of the stage in darkness, through changing the balance to give the
voice of Salome a "close-up" quality, when she sings the words ''Ah! Ich habe deine
Mund gekiisst, ]okanaan." Culshaw described his intentions at this point: "[T]he
frightful intimacy and isolation - not a contradiction by the way - of the voice at
that moment conveys the stage situation, with the moon obscured behind a huge
black cloud and a single halo of light illuminating the princess, crouched over the
severed head she has just embraced." (Culshaw, 1962a, p. 15).

Gotterdammerung (1964)
With Siegfried completed in 1962, Decca's traversal ofWagner's Ringcycle continued
in 1964 with the recording of Gotterdammerung. As with Das Rheingold, the work
offered Culshaw various opportunities to put into practice his ideas for "opera as
sound". These were highlighted in an article in The Gramophone in which Culshaw
claimed that "the artists recognized the nature of the beast as something quite
different from an ordinary operatic recording." (Culshaw, 1965, p. 517). An example
of the production team's attempts to achieve their desired psychological effect by
purely acoustic means was the short scene in Act III in which Gutrune reflects in the
empty Hall of the Gibichungs. "We spent a lot of time with Claire Watson [who sang
Gurrune] to create a vocal acoustic in keeping with the mood of the scene: the
equivalent, in aural terms, of putting Gutrune well down-stage in a theatre production
and lighting the set dimly in such a way as to emphasize her fear and isolation."
(Culshaw, 1965, p. 517). A similar psychologically-motivated use of vocal sound
comes at the end of Act I, in which Brunnhilde confronts Siegfried, who is in
disguise. "After a great deal of experiment we were able to do something in this
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direction [...] The voice is Windgassen's [who sang the role of Siegfried in the
recording] - and rightly, just recognizably so. But the timbre had been changed, the
whole colour of the voice altered [...] The change is at its most startling when,
following Wagner's instructions, Siegfried reverts to his natural voice for the last four
lines of Act I." (Culshaw, 1965, p. 518).
Equally subtle and dramatically effective was the way in which Culshaw stage-
managed the appearance and disappearance of Alberich in the scene in Act II in
which he appears to the sleepy Hagen, through the addition of a strangely disembodied
quality to Alberich's voice and its shifting spatial perspective. Culshaw was quick to
insist upon the subtlety of his interventions, not wishing to be accused of gimmicky
or gratuitous effects. "It goes without saying that these changes, departing from and
returning to a basic sound, are extremely slight and likely to be more effective in
stereo than mono; if they work, and I think they do, they should add a subtle
dimension not ordinarily present on operatic recordings." (Culshaw, 1965, p. 517).

Elektra (1966-1967)
The Sonicstage badge was very much to the fore in the promotion of the recording
of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra, recorded in 1966 and 1967. As before, the key
justification for the employment of the Sonicstage technique was "a phenomenal
clarity of orchestral detail and operatic voice reproduction [which] bring the listener
to the very heart of the drama." (Decca Records, 1967). Little is made here of the
aural adjustments undertaken in the name of dramatic realization, reinforcing the
idea of a certain diffidence on the part of Decca to acknowledge the kind of
'interference' in classical recording - although these interventions arguably form
the most significant aspect of the production.
Nonetheless the impact of a creative approach to production was highlighted in
William Mann's review of the recording, published in The Gramophone in November
1967. "Elektra is an opera about psychological disturbance, and John Culshaw and
Gordon Parry have created acoustical atmospheres which convey the changing
ambiances of the music - not only the situations and the words, but what the
characters are feeling at a particular moment." (Mann, 1967, p. 276). Mann went on
to enumerate some of these interventions: the 'outdoor' acoustic of the opening
scene with the five servant girls at the well; the change to a more claustrophobic
sound for Elektra's re-entry and monologue, reflecting her psychotic state of mind;
and her dream of revenge mirrored by a further acoustic adjustment designed to
suggest the bathroom in which her father was killed - just as Clytemnestra's equally
disturbed personal world is conveyed by unstably varying acoustics, the climax of
which occurs at the news of Orestes's death: "[H]er maniacal laughter shifts and
echoes distortedly all round the invisible stage with bloodcurdling effect." (Mann,
1967, p. 276).
Culshaw recognized this recording of Elektra (which included reinstating passages
traditionally cut in performance - allowing Decca to claim in their publicity that
this was the first ever complete recording of the work) as representing the best work
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ER1C E CLARKE

that he and Georg Solei had yet achieved with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Sound and balance of the highest possible sensitivity were clearly for Culshaw the
essential foundations of a successfully realized operatic recording, driven by the score
and a detailed interpretation in sound of the composer's indications. In an article
discussing his final recordings for Decca, he commented: "[I]r is easy for the essential
strands in the musical texture to become obscured by less essential components; and
once that happens, the emotional temperature falls." (Culshaw, 1968, p. 474)

CONCLUSION

SOUND, FILM, AND SUBJECT-POSITION: THE RECORDING AS A WORK OF ART

Culshaw often drew comparisons between record and film production, and may have
seen a parallel between his role as a record producer and that of the film director -
though his role arguably combined that of the film director and producer, in that he
took responsibility for both the practical organisation of the recording and for its
creative vision. The comparison with film is not as far-fetched as it might seem: at
the time that Culshaw was active as a record producer, both media - sound and film
- used the studio as a creative workshop. Photographs of the Decca sessions in
Vienna show large arrays of technical equipment, spread out across the considerable
spaces of the Sofiensaal, a Viennese dance hall which Culshaw used as the studio for
his Decca recordings (see Figure 4). The similarities with a film studio are striking.
In addition to the involvement of large-scale and cumbersome machinery, both
media were founded upon the idea of "the image" (aural, visual or both) "captured"
on a moving ribbon - magnetic tape for sound recording, and 35 mm celluloid for
film. In both cases the intended version of "reality" was pieced together through a
process of repeated takes and editing. Where the film director might intensity the
dramatic moment by means oElighting, the record producer could do the same with
deliberate adjustments in sound - the basic "stuff" of recording and the parallel to
light in film. Editing enabled the record producer and film director to intensify the
dramatic action further, bur demanded a strong grasp of continuity, to ensure for
instance that tempo and pitch relationships matched up, or that a singer did not
suddenly leap-frog her colleagues from one side of the sound stage to the other. And
as with film, one of the consequences ofworking in a studio, and of using techniques
which required detailed preparation and rehearsal as well as expensive singers and
large forces, was that recording in this context became an industrial-scale operation:
"When you get into the realms of grand opera, and take something like Rheingold or
even a standard Italian opera such as Aida, which has all these off-stage forces and a
huge chorus and what-not, the cost by the time you have finished is not really very
far off that of a fairly small-scale film production." (Culshaw, 1961a, p. 47).
The circumstantial, technological and technical parallels between film
production and Culshaw's brand of record production bring into view a parallel that
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 Figure 4.
Photograph of the Sofiensaal set up for Culshaw's Viennese recording sessions (Gotterdammerung.
1964). Photograph Decca / Hans Wild.

sheds light on Culshaw's whole approach. In film theory, an important conceptual

tool is that of the subject-position - an idea that also been applied in music (see
Clarke, 1999, 2005). The term is intended to denote the way in which cinematic
techniques encourage or oblige viewers to adopt a particular relationship with the
subject matter of the film, while recognising that every viewer comes with his or her
own particular experiences, preconceptions, and perceptual sensitivities:

"On the one hand there is the empirical spectator whose interpretation of film will be
determined by all manner of extraneous factors like personal biography, class origins,
previous viewing experience, the variables of conditions of reception, etc. On the other
hand the abstract notion of a 'subject-position', which could be defined as the way in
which a film solicits, demands even, a certain closely circumscribed response from the
reader by means of its own formal operations. This distinction seems fruitful, inasmuch as
it accepts that different individuals can interpret a text in different ways, while insisting that
the text itself imposes definite limits on their room to manoeuvre. In other words, it
promises a method which avoids the infinite pluralism which posits as many readings as
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVlD N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC F.CLARKE

there are readers, and an essentialism which asserts a single 'true' meaning." (Johnston,
1985, p. 245)

Applied to music, Clarke (1999, 2005) uses the idea to discuss the ways in which
compositional structure, and performance style, can articulate a subject-position in
music, but a potentially stronger parallel can be seen in relation to the recording
process. Just as it is a film director's decisions about lighting, camera angle, editing
style and so on that establish a subject-position in film, so the classical record
producer inevitably establishes what might be called a 'listener-position' in relation
to the recorded work by means of microphone placement, sound treatment, spatial
positioning and pacing - and it is from this perspective that Culshaws radical, but
also paradoxical, stance becomes evident.
As Symes (2004) points out and demonstrates, the dominant paradigm within
classical recording is to present the listener with a listener-position which places him
or her in "the finest seat in the house" - to quote a Pye advertisement for sound
equipment from 1957 reproduced in Symes (2004, p. 74). John Culshaw's philosophy
of recording was directly opposed to this view of the purpose of recording. His aim
was to employ technology to create an aural experience that was different from what
could be heard in the opera house. Writing in 1966, in defence of Glenn Gould's
proposal that a future stage of technological development might see consumers
themselves adjusting records to satisfy their personal musical preferences, he
commented:

"Most of this indignation [against listeners' technical manipulation of sound] derives from
the fact rhar such things can be done - rhe suspicion that technology, as a science, is
inrerfering wirh music which, as an art, since the middle of the 19th century has been
raking on some of the trappings of religion. Howls of protesr go up every time that
rechnology comes to rhe assisrance of music, despite the facr rhar wirhour rechnology rhere
would be no music at all, save for the human voice, for rhere would be no instruments ro
play on and no halls to play in." (Culshaw, 1966, p. 28)

Just as Hollywood film cartoon characters, such as Chuck Jones's Daffy Duck,
occupy a virtual reality in which they exercise all kinds of skills and capacities that
defy normal reality without departing from it altogether (see Creekmur, 1988), so
Culshaw was open to the idea of using the opportunities presented by sound
technology to create a reality different from that of the opera house experience.
Culshaw's aim was to create a listener-position that was unattainable in the reality of
the concert hall, or more especially the opera house, compromised by the position,
size and acoustical characteristics of the typical orchestral pit. This listener-position
could only inhabit the virtual world that can be created with recording and studio
techniques, and it was this virtual world that Culshaw wanted his listeners in turn to
experIence.
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 If this position seems radically constructivist (or even psychodynamic), then the
paradox is that it actually went along with a strongly traditional attitude on
Culshaw's part to the inviolable primacy of the composer's markings and intentions,
as many of Culshaw's statements in relation to the individual opera recordings have
already indicated. In language that bears all the hallmarks of a typically Romantic
idealism, Culshaw time and again asserts his aim to capture the "essence" of a score,
or the wishes of the composer "realising every single effect as Wagner wanted it."
(Culshaw, 1961a, p. 12). One way to understand this is as a defence against the
Pandora's box of Cuishaw's own aesthetic stance: if recording is about creating a
virtual world for the listener, rather than capturingthe reality of a performance, then
what are the limits to that creative enterprise? Is any and every virtual world equally
acceptable? Culshaw's appeal to the score and the composer's intentions as the
touchstone rescued him from the challenging relativism that his approach otherwise
implied.
His position is manifestly similar to the claims of authenticity that characterised
the early years of the historical performance movement, and it is striking that the
origins of specialist historical recording labels coincide with Culshaw's work. The
Deutsche Grammophon Archiv label, specialising in early music and historical
performance, was launched in 1948, and Telefunken's well-known competitor label
Das Alre Werk in 1958. The "authenticity" of the performance practice movement
was pursued by means of the restoration or recreation of instruments, the rediscovery
and implementation of technical and aesthetic advice from performance treatises,
and a commitment to the authority of an unadorned and purified score - the
Urtext. Culshaw's "authenticity" of recording was similarly based on the authority of
the score and the compositional intentions of which it is the trace, but what is
curious is that Culshaw's idealism was accompanied by a commitment to
technological innovation and complete acceptance of the artifice of recording -
rather than the non-interventionist "naturalism" with which it might otherwise have
seemed more obviously aligned.
It was Culshaws commitment to the composer's intentions, his dedication to the
realisation of musical details, his use of innovative sound effects justified by the score,
and his imagination in colouring the recorded acoustic at certain key points to reflect
the dramatic situation, that set his recordings apart, and which taken together, might
justify a description of his recordings as "works of art". Culshaw himself indicated
that this was his point of view, in an article written in 1962: "[AJ fine production in
any medium is the sum of its small details, which have to be mastered and absorbed
before it can transcend them and approach the realms of art." (Culshaw, 1962a,
p. 15). And in a memorial article written for The Gramophone issue of July 1980, the
distinguished record critic Edward Greenfield was explicit about Culshaw's
achievement: "The recording of the Ring set the seed for what in effect was a new
concept in recording as an art-form distinct from live performance [... J It was his
[Culshaws] contribution to appreciate for the first time the vital role which stereo
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC E CLARKE

had to play in the development of recording as an art and opera recording in

particular." (Greenfield, 1980). It is striking to note the commercial longevity of
the Culshaw / Solti recording of the Ring operas: dating back as far as 1959,
they have never been out of the catalogue either individually or collectively, and
have frequently been the critical touchstone against which later versions have
been judged. As another critic, Arnold Whittall, wrote of the Culshaw / Solti Ring
in The Gramophone thirty years after the initial release of Das Rheingold: "it is [... J
open to question whether any studio recording of The Ring could reasonably be
expected to be more atmospheric, exciting or better performed than this one."
(Whittall, 1989).
Given the artistic credibility and commercial vitality of Culshaw's recordings, it
is strange that his ideas and beliefs exerted little or no influence after he had ceased
to work for Decca. After his departure, Decca quickly adopted the traditional "stand
and deliver" style of production for its opera recordings common amongst its
competitors, most notably EMI, Philips and RCA-Victor. Decca was never wholly
comfortable with the Sonicstage branding of recordings of the classical repertoire,
and as has already been noted, Culshaw himself disowned the Sonicstage badge and
recording technique in his memoirs, written just before his death in 1980. While this
does not indicate a wholesale rejection of his production ideas, it does weaken the
context in which his finest productions were originally presented to the public, and
may partly explain the absence of any kind of Culshaw legacy - apart from the
recordings themselves, of course, and his own remarkable reputation. A distrust of
technological gimmickry, and arguably an attempt to distance the 'purity' of classical
recording from the up-front technologism of pop music production - encapsulated
by the non-interventionist approach of the Nimbus recording company, founded in
1972 - led to a lack of sympathy with Culshaw's whole approach. By contrast in
the field of popular music others did follow where Culshaw had led, most notably
the record producer George Martin, whose highly successful production with the
Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band incorporated many of Culshaw's
ideas.
In the longer term, the moves to the miniaturization of equipment and improved
technical standards of recording did away progressively with the need for the
kind of vast studio apparatus employed for Decca's Viennese recordings. By the
end of the twentieth century perfectly acceptable sound could be achieved on
location (and thus at live performances) using portable equipment. Recording
a live opera or concert performance is in general far cheaper than the complex
studio productions managed by Culshaw, and with the advent of video recording
the specific project to realise an opera recording in sound alone, and the primacy
of the sound studio as a place where it was possible to produce a phenomenon
that might improve upon reality, was overtaken by the brave new world of
multimedia.
John Culshaw had the wit to turn the received ideas of his time on their head,
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and to see that recording technology could be used crearively to construct a
performance that was unique to the world of the gramophone, and which at its best
might be considered, in its creative and technical interventions, as approximating to
the condition of a work of art.

Address for correspondence:

David N. C. Patmore
Department of Music. University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom
e-mail: [email protected]

Eric F. Clarke
Department of Music, University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom
e-mail: [email protected]

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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC F. CLARKE

• REFERENCES

Adorno, T. W (2002). Opera and the Long-Playing Record. In R. Leppert (cd), Essays on Music.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
Barker, F. G. (1958). The man who plans and makes the records. Records and Recording, 1110, 9.
BBCTclevision (1964). The Golden Ring. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.
Chanan, M. (1995). Repeated Takes. A Short HistoryofRecording and its Effects on Music. London:
Verso.
Clarke, E. F. (1999). Subject-position and the specification of invariants in music by Frank Zappa
and P. J. Harvey. MusicAnalysis, 18, 347-74.
Clarke, E. F. (2005). waysofListening. An EcologicalApproach to the Perception ofMusicalMeaning.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Clarke, E. F. (in press). The impact of recording on listening. Twentieth CenturyMusic.
Creekmur, C. K. (1988). The Space of Recording: The Production of Popular Music as Spectacle.
Wide Angle: A Film Quarterly ofTheory, Criticism, and Practice, 1012,32-40.
Culshaw, J. (1957). Our search for stage atmosphere. Records and Recording, 1/3,27.
Culshaw, J. (1958). Songsters in Motion. High Fidelity, 8/11, 45-46, 136.
Culshaw, J. (1959). Making a stereo Rheingold. The Gramophone. XXXVI/430, 441-2, 444.
Culshaw, J. (1961a). What ro record and who to record it? Records and Recording, 4/6, 10-12,47.
Culshaw, J. (1961b). Tristan und Isolde. Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, Decca MET / SET 204-8,
accompanying leaflet, 3-5.
Culshaw, J. (1962a). The challenge of stereo opera. Records and Recording, 515, 14-15.
Culshaw, J. (1962b). Salome: the characters and the Sonicstage approach. Richard Strauss: Salome,
Decca MET / SET228-9, accompanying leaflet, 4.
Culshaw, J. (1965). Gotterdammerung. The Gramophone, XLII1504, 517-18.
Culshaw, J. (1966). The Mellow Knob, or the rise of records and the decline of the concert hall as
foreseen by Glenn Gould. Records and Recording, 1012, 26-28.
Culshaw, J. (1967). Ring Resounding. London: Seeker and Warburg.
Culshaw, J. (1968). Three for the road. The Gramophone, XL /504,473-76.
Culshaw, J. (1981). Putting the Record Straight. London: Seeker and Warburg.
Day, T. (2000). A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Decca Records (1963). Advertisement: Siegfried. The Gramophone, XL1479, supplement between
pp.482-83.
Decca Records (1967). Advertisement: Elektra. The Gramophone, XLV1534, supplement between
pp.276-77.
Eisenberg, E. (2005). The Recording Angel. Music, Records and Culturefrom Aristotle to Zappa
(2 nd ed). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gibson, J. J. (1979/1986). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Greenfield, E. (1980). The Art of Cuishaw. The Gramophone, 58/686, 123.
Hall, D. (1958). Opera - fulfilmenr of the stereo promise. Hi-Fi and Music Review, 1/10, 6.
Hirsch, J. D. (1983). The myth of concert-hall realism. Stereo Review, 48,31-32,34.
Hirsch, J. D. (1995). Is concert-hall realism possible in the home? Stereo Review, 60,32.
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Johnston, S. (1985). Film narrative and the structuralist controversy. In E Cook (ed), The Cinema
Book. London: British Film Institute.
Katz, M. (2004). Capturing Sound. How Technology Changed Music. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Mann, W. (1967). Review of Elektra. The Gramophone, XLV/534, 276-77.
Party (personal communication). David Patmore interview with Gordon Parry, London, 8 th March
1999.
Philip, R. (1992). Early Recordings and MusicalStyle: ChangingTastes in Instrumental Performance,
1900-1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Philip, R. (2004). Perftrming Music in the Age ofRecording. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Porter, A. (1959). Review of Das Rheingold. The Gramophone, XXXVI/430, 472-73.
Symes, C. (2004). Settingthe Record Straight. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
Whirtall, A. (1989). Review of Der Ring desNibelungen. The Gramophone, 66/790, 1498.

• DISCOGRAPHY

Richard Strauss: Elektra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solei (recorded Sofiensaal,
Vienna, June 14, September 1966, February 1967 - exact dates not available). First
release: Decca mono MET 354-5, Decca stereo SET 354-5 (LP: 2 LPs).
Richard Strauss: Salome, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti (recorded Sofiensaal,
Vienna, October 16-25, 1961). First release: Decca mono MET 228-9, Decca stereo
SET228-9 (LP: 2 LPs).
Verdi: Aida, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan (recorded Sofiensaal, Vienna,
September 2-15, 1959). First release: Decca mono LXT 5539-41, Decca stereo SXL
2167-69.
Verdi: Otello, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, (recorded Sofiensaal, Vienna,
May 1-21, 1961). First release: Decca MET 209-11, Decca stereo SET 209-11.
Wagner: Das Rheingold, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti (recorded Sofiensaal, Vienna,
September 24-26, 29, 30, October 1-3, 6-8, 1958). First release: Decca mono LXT
5495-7, Decca stereo SXL 2101-3 (LP: 3 LPs).
Wagner: Die Witlkiire, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti (recorded Sofiensaal, Vienna
October 29, 31, November 2-5, 12-19, 1965). First release: Decca mono MET 312-6,
Decca stereo SET 312-6 (LP: 5 LPs).
Wagner: Die Witlkiire: Act III (complete), Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti (recorded
Sofiensaal, Vienna, and May 13-17, 1957). First release (with the Todesverkiindigung
scene from Act II, recorded Sofiensaal, Vienna, May 27-28, 1956): Decca mono LXT
5389-90 (LP: 2 LPs).
Wagner: Gottediimmerung, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti (recorded Sofiensaal,
Vienna, May 20-June 6, October 26-31, November 2-5, 17-24, 1964). First release:
Decca mono MET 292-76, Decca stereo SET 292-7 (LP: 5 LPs).
Wagner: Siegfried, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti (recorded Soficnsaal, Vienna,
May 6-17, October 21-November 5, 1962). First release: Decca mono MET 242-6,
Decca stereo SET 242-6 (LP; 5 LPs).
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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC E CLARKE

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solri (recorded Sofiensaal,
Vienna, September 2-30, 1960). First release: Decca mono MET 204-8, Decca stereo
SET204-8 (LP: 5 LPs).
Bearles (1967). Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band First release: Parlophonc mono PMC
7027, Parlophone stereo PCS 7027 (LP).
Moby (1999). Play. Mute Records CDSTUMMI72 (CD).

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 • Fabricar y escuchar obras virtuales :
John Culshaw y el arte de la producclon grabada

Una grabaci6n representa una parad6jica fuente de percepci6n : podemos escuchar

el sonido del medio 0 la obra virtual concebida por el, y la obra producida por una
grabaci6n puede ser comprendida como un proceso de captura de interpretaciones
o como uno de creaci6n virtual de una obra. Este trabajo demuestra que el
productor de grabacionesJohn Culshaw tuvo ideasc1aras sobre como las grabaciones,
en su condici6n, podian aproximarse a una obra de arte en lugar de ser simplemente
el retrato de un momento temporal concreto. 5e describe la aproximaci6n a la
estetica y la tecnica de Culshaw en referencia a un nurnero clave de grabaciones.
Tomando como base la relaci6n entre el sonido grabado y la pelfcula como punto
de partida, y haciendo uso del concepto de posici6n subjetiva, se explora la tensi6n
entre la radical aproximaci6n al oyente planteada por Culshaw y la aproximaci6n
tradicional a la autoridad de la partitura. 5e proponen posibles razones para el
abandono de sus ideas y para la ausencia de un legado Culshaw (aparte de las
grabaciones en sf mismas). EI trabajo concluye con una breve discusi6n del modelo
actual para la grabaci6n de musica clasica, que busca reproducir de diferentes
formas, la "experiencia en vivo" desde "el mejor asiento de casa".

• Creare e udire mondi virtuali :

John Culshaw e J'arte della produzione del suono

Una registrazione rappresenta una sorgente percettiva paradossale : possiamo

concentrarci sui suono del mezzo di diffusione 0 sui mondo virtuale da esso
veicolato, e i1lavoro di un produttore del suono si pub intendere come un processo
di appropriazione delle esecuzioni 0 come la creazione di mondi virtuali. II presente
articolo dimostra come iI produttore John Culshaw avesse Ie idee ben chiare su
come Ie registrazioni dovessero avvicinarsi alia condizione di un'opera d'arte,
piuttosto che essere semplicemente la traccia di un momenta nel tempo. II
fondamentale approccio estetico e tecnico di Culshaw e descritto ed illustrato in
riferimento a numerose registrazioni chiave. Assumendo come punta di partenza il
rapporto fra registrazione del suono e pellicola cinematografica, e adottando iI
concetto di posizione del soggetto, si esplora la tensione fra I'approccio radicale di
Culshaw nei confronti dell'ascoltatore ed il tradizionale approccio all'autorita della
partitura. 5i espongono alcune possibili ragioni per I'abbandono delle sue idee, e
per I'assenza di un'eredita di Culshaw (eccezionfatta per Ie sue stesse registrazioni).
J:articolo si conclude con una breve discussione dell' attuale paradigma per la
registrazione di musica c1assica, il quale cerca in vari modi di riprodurre
I"'esperienza dal vivo" dalla "migliore poltrona di casa".

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 Making and hearing virtual worlds: John Culshaw and the art of record production
DAVID N. C. PATMORE AND ERIC F. CLARKE

• Creer et entendre des mondes virtuels :

John Culshaw et I'art de I'enregistrement

t:enregistrement est en fait une source paradoxale et perpetuelle. Nous pouvons

ecouter Ie son de ce medium ou bien Ie monde virtuel qu'Il communique; Ie travail
d'un producteur d'enregistrement peut etre vu comme saisissant une interpretation
ou creant un monde virtuel, Dans cet article, nous montrons que Ie producteur
d'enregistrements, John Culshaw, voyait c1airement que ceux-ci peuvent tendre
vers I'ceuvre d'art au lieu d'etre simplement la trace d'un moment dans Ie temps.
La methode esthetique et technique fondamentale de Culshaw est ici decrite et
lllustree par un grand nombre d'enregistrements importants. Nous prenons com me
point de depart Ie rapport entre I'enregistrement sonore et Ie film ; en utilisant Ie
concept de la position du sujet, nous etudions la tension entre la rnaniere radicale
dont Culshaw s'adresse a I'auditeur et la methode traditionnelle fondee sur Ie
respect de la partition. Nous proposons des raisons possibles de I'abandon de ses
idees et de I'absence d'un legs de Culshaw, en dehors de ses enregistrements
eux-memes, En conclusion, nous considerons Ie paradigme qui fonde aujourd'hui
I'enregistrement de la musique c1assique, et qui cherche differentes rnanieres de
reproduire « l'experience vivante » ressentie de la « meilleure place d'une salle de
concert »,

• Produktion und Horen von virtuellen Welten:

John Culshaw und die Kunst der Tontragerproduktlon

Ein Tontrager stellt eine paradoxe Wahrnehmungsquelle dar: Wir konnen uns
entweder dem Klang des Mediums oder der virtuellen Welt zuwenden, die durch
das Medium vermitte!t wird. Genauso kann die Arbeit eines Tontrager-Produzenten
entweder als Interpretationsaufzeichnung oder als Erzeugung virtueller Welten
verstanden werden. Dieser Artikel dokumentiert, dass der Tontrager-Produzent
John Culshaw anstatt einfach puren eines Augenblicks darzustellen, klare
Vorstellungen daruber hatte, wie Aufnahmen den Status eines Kunstwerks
erreichen konnen, anstatt einfach Spuren eines Augenblicks darzustellen. Culshaws
grundlegende asthetische und technische Herangehensweisen werden exemplarisch
anhand einiger zentraler Aufnahmen beschrieben. Die Spannung zwischen
Culshaws radikaler Herangehensweise an Horprozesse und seiner tradition ellen
Haltung bezuglich der Autoritat des Notentexts wird erforscht, wobei die
Beziehung zwischen Tonaufnahme und Film als Ausgangspunkt dient und das
Konzept der Subjekt-Position verwendet wird. Mogliche Grunde fur die Abkehr von
seinen Ideen werden ebenso vorgestellt ebenso wie der Umstand, dass es (auBer
den Tontragern selbst) keine Erben Culshaws gibt. Der Artikel schlieBt mit einer
kurzen Diskussion der aktuellen Paradigmen zur Aufzeichnung von klassischer
Musik, wo mit unterschiedlichen Mitteln Live-Erfahrungen aus der Perspektive des
"besten Sitzplatzes eines Konzerthauses" reproduziert werden solien.

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