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 subjectposition, 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".
25 A4-sider. Kos dere.
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 subjectposition, 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".
25 A4-sider. Kos dere.
