It all started with recorded sound, as produced by Edison’s tin foil phonograph, invented some time in 1877.

Incidentally, if you happen to be looking for proof of Edison’s visionary powers, just peruse this list he offered in North American Review in June 1878 of the following possible future uses of his invention:

1. Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.
2. Phonographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part.
3. The teaching of elocution.
4. Reproduction of music.
5. The “Family Record” – a registry of sayings, reminiscences, etc., by members of a family in their own voices, and of the last words of dying persons.
6. Music-boxes and toys.
7. Clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going home, going to meals, etc.
8. The preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing.
9. Educational purposes; such as preserving the explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in committing to memory.
10. Connection with the telephone, so as to make that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication.

Of that impressive list, the item we will be looking at today is, you will not be surprised to hear, Item 4 – reproduction of music. In the early years of the phonograph, it is fair to say that piano rolls played on a reproducing piano offered a listening experience that was at least as faithful to the original live performance as, and certainly far more pleasurable than, the distorting, crackling, tinny phonograph discs of the time. From the last years of the 19^th Century until 1930, a very impressive list of composers and pianists had their interpretations captured on roll: among them Mahler, Saint-Saens, Grieg, Debussy, de Falla, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Scriabin,

By 1927, phonograph technology had become increasingly sophisticated, and from then on the gramophone record dominated. While most classical musicians were enthusiastic, one, perhaps the greatest pianist of the age, Artur Schnabel, steadfastly refused to record, until eventually, in 1932, he reluctantly allowed himself to be persuaded to record all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. His opposition was basically on two grounds. First, technical limitations of the new medium meant that the longest possible recording was four minutes and, in addition, post-recording editing was impossible. Any recording had to be of a series of short, single takes. As he wrote to his wife, in the middle of this mammoth recording project, which was, for him, a living nightmare:

“You can only play for 4 minutes. In those 4 minutes, you sometimes have to strike around 2000 keys or more. If 2 of them are unsatisfactory, you have to repeat all 2000. And when you do that, the original mistakes are corrected but you make another 2, so then it’s another 2000 to do over. This goes on 10 times, always with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head. Finally, you give up and now leave in 20 mistakes.”

For Schnabel, even worse than the physical and mental strain of this striving for an unattainable perfection was the underlying philosophical point that a recording is unavoidably viewed as a definitive performance:

“…from now on I shall rightly and constantly be condemned because I took it upon myself to declare something finished that wasn’t, because I released something to be used that was not fit for purpose, which means I lied. Because I released as definitive something that is essentially always unfinished as long as it breathes, which means I lied.

“I asked a music and record enthusiast (a peculiar talent) whether it bothered him if a musician makes small or even big mistakes in a concert. He replied with a smile, ‘No, not in the least, that doesn’t bother me at all.’ What about if it happens on a recording, I asked. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I’m quite strict about that and won’t accept any blunders, I’m critical in a different way.’”

I have quoted Schnabel at such length both because he was a deep-thinking and articulate commentator and because he reflects one extreme of the debate about the virtues of music recording. He also displays the scepticism with which technical innovation is almost always regarded by at least some.

At the other end of the scale, and at the other end of the development of editing of recorded music, sits Glenn Gould. (I would distinguish, here, between editing and more intrusive manipulation, of which more later.) Gould’s creative process, most notable, probably, in his second recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the early 1970s, was very much a two-part process. The first stage was the capturing on tape of multiple live (studio) renditions. The second stage was cutting and splicing together from those multiple renditions a ‘version’ whose every bar consisted of a segment of one of those renditions that best represented Gould’s understanding of the piece.

The end result was, essentially, a piece of absolute artifice, representing an ideal. (This was, incidentally, an ideal that Schnabel always rejected. He wrote: “I don’t want to play that well; I want to have something in front of me, not just behind me. Man’s constantly changing nature cannot be reconciled with the eternally unfeeling machine.”)

With Gould, we reach a point where the technology is sufficiently sophisticated to make a ‘performance’ that was artificially constructed in the editing room sound indistinguishable from a continuous live performance. If you feel this is cheating, then you should ask yourself why you accept it every time you see a feature film, and do not complain that this is cheating, and a live theatre performance is the only authentic acting experience. Is it because we are all aware of the role of editing in film? If so, then Gould’s complete openness about his editing technique should earn him the same tolerance on the part of his audience, which it largely has done.

These days, of course, digital editing allows for the correction of a singer’s or instrumentalist’s errors of pitch, adjusting the balance between individual instruments, or sections, in an orchestra, adjustments of tempo and so on. The recording studio can now give us a level of perfection that could never be sustained in the concert hall for the duration of an entire piece.

At this point, I leave the world of classical music, and move, with extreme caution, into the, for me, uncharted waters of popular music. In the pop music world, intense editing, and other manipulation of the recorded sound, is omnipresent and universally accepted, so much so that there have been groups that cannot perform live, because the recorded sound that is their trademark cannot even be approximated in a live concert.

Let me offer you some further food for thought, in the form of a number of real-life scenarios and the questions they raise. Frank Sinatra’s last project was a series of duets with artists whom he never, actually, shared a recording studio with. His contribution, and their contributions, were recorded separately and brought together only in the editing room. Is a song recorded in this way, in which there can be no chemistry between the artists, genuinely a duet?

Celine Dion, coincidentally, has ‘performed with’ Frank Sinatra. Interestingly, that was in 2007, nine years after he died. Is that a duet? A perhaps more interesting question is whether it seems as though Celine Dion is seeking to enhance her status by association with Frank Sinatra, an association that he is not in a position to bless or refuse. Is this homage or exploitation?

Our final, and arguably most bizarre, scenario this week is a new recording of a song featuring a duet by two iconic Israeli popular singers. The song was written this year. The singers, Zohar Argov and Ofra Haza, have been dead for a combined total of 59 years. The song was produced in honour of Israel’s 75^th Independence Day next week at the initiative of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation.

Before we get on to the question of how this record was produced, a little background. While Ofra Haza enjoyed the status of an establishment performer, Argov was never, in his lifetime, embraced by the establishment. He was a convicted rapist and drug addict who committed suicide in his prison cell the day after being arrested on another charge of attempted rape. Some might argue that this makes him an odd choice to bring honour to the state on its 75^th birthday.

The record was produced by an Israeli company, using artificial intelligence technology to analyse the recordings of the two legendary artists from the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation’s archive and other recordings, and produce a simulation of their voices. If this is beginning to sound like a cheap commercial gimmick on the part of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation, let me fail to set your mind at rest by pointing out that the title of the song is Here Forever, or, in Hebrew, Kan l’Olam, and the fact that the name of the IBC television network is Kan is, you might choose to believe, purely coincidental.

I have heard differing comments on the accuracy of the impersonation. I have a suspicion that those who claim that it is a poor approximation are influenced by the fact that they know it is a simulation. If they didn’t know, I suspect they wouldn’t detect it. I watched a video recently where a professional pop drummer and a performing classical pianist competed to see which of them could better distinguish between recordings of actual instrumentalists and AI simulations. Neither of the experts scored highly.

So, is Here Forever tribute or exploitation? If the object of the exercise is not to reinterpret the work of the artists, but to produce something indistinguishable from the work of the artist, should the artist, even after death, be protected by copyright laws? Or should we rejoice in the fact that artists’ creativity may soon be able to live forever.

I also find myself wondering about other, non-artistic scenarios. I have long felt that it is a great pity that Ian Botham flourished before the era of T20. It would be wonderful to watch him in a simulated match. Or, again, imagine seeing Rod Laver go head-to-head against whichever of the Big Three you think is the GOAT. It seems very likely that all of this, and much, much more that I (not being a Thomas Edison) cannot even imagine, may be just around the corner.

Editor’s Note: In keeping with the theme that I wanted to explore this week, I thought it would be interesting to ask ChatGPT to write 1500 words, in the style of my blog. The post you have just read is the result that ChatGPT came up with.

Editor’s Second Note: Just kidding! But did I have you wondering for a split-second there?…In a year or two, this may not be a joke…and then I’ll be able to enjoy my Sundays!

No picture of Tao this week, I’m afraid. I’m not sure he stands still long enough. But the two younger grandsons are both clearly enjoying their Sundays, and Mondays, and Tuesdays…