Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording

Colin Symes

ISBN 10: 0819567213 / ISBN 13: 9780819567215

Published by Wesleyan University Press, United States, 2004

About this Item

Book measures 24x16cm, 313pp. Bound in original publishers quarter cloth with gilt title lettering, paper backed boards. Binding in near fine condition. Dust jacket lightly rubbed. Jacket in good clean condition. Internally, pages clean. A very good clean copy.

Seller Inventory # 005624

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, United States
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819567213
• ISBN 13: 9780819567215
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Record albums are more than records; they include covers and liner notes, catalogs, magazines, and advertisements. In this fascinating study of the materials that surround LPs and CDs, Colin Symes undertakes a cultural history of the record, looking specifically at the way the phonograph helped democratize classical music by enabling it to be heard at home, away from the concert hall. Symes argues that the listening habits associated with classical records and recording were produced and naturalized through a magazine culture, which conveyed the idea that collecting and listening to records were legitimate pastimes for the general public. The first chapter lays out a textual theory of the phonograph and compact disc, while subsequent chapters look critically and historically at the different components of the recording process: covers and cover notes, the rhetoric of the record review, the influence of recording on performance, the domestication of the concert hall, advertising in the record industry, and even the architecture of record shops. Symes's path-breaking history will engage anyone with an interest in classical music and recording.

About the Author

COLIN SYMES is Lecturer at the Australian Center for Educational Studies at Macquarie University.