Charming Cine-film of Elgar in Worcester between 1926 and 1933.
- Thread starter George J
- Start date
George J
Herefordshire member
The most famous Elgar film. Opening Abbey Road Stdios in November 1931:
Amazing to see the "engineer" so comfortable operating the wax cutter, and starting the recording, subsequently not quite co-ordinated with the newsreel film!
Best wishes from George
I have this sound-track on CD from 1993. I wish EMI had licensed the Pathe film and made a really good job of issuing it on DVD. I am sure that the EMI of those days could have licensed something like Ken Russell's Elgar bio-pic film to make a full length disc, and hopefully have co-opperated with the Elgar Foundation to secure the six minutes of home cine-film.
Interesting that for the recording here they had four percussionist but only two double bass players. The Western Electric [moving iron system of microphone and cutting head] used to be very much biased towards the bass octave [below the cellos], but in 1932 Alan Dower Blumlein's moving coil system meant that a full six or eight double basses were regularly employed to get the proper balance.
AD Blumlein worked for Sir Isak Schoenberg's English Columbia Company [rival to HMV] and in 1931 the merger between these two companies [and about six others including Parlophone and Regal] created EMI, who very much wanted Blumlein's Columbia recording system as it cut out payment to Western Electric. Blumlein's microphones were in use at the BBC TV studios till the 1970s. They were hand-made and probably the most expensive microphones ever made considering inflation ...
Of course AD Blumlein was one of the handful of boffin electronic engineers who helped keep the Allies afloat during WW II with his work on RADAR [or RDF as it was called], quite apart from inventing electronic [rather than Bairds's mechanical] TV and his 405 line TV system, which worked for the BBC from the mid-1930s till the 1970s when 625 line analogue TV came in with colour. He also made internationational telephone systems practical with his transmission line amplifiers for long intercontinental telephone lines.
Amazing to see the "engineer" so comfortable operating the wax cutter, and starting the recording, subsequently not quite co-ordinated with the newsreel film!
Best wishes from George
I have this sound-track on CD from 1993. I wish EMI had licensed the Pathe film and made a really good job of issuing it on DVD. I am sure that the EMI of those days could have licensed something like Ken Russell's Elgar bio-pic film to make a full length disc, and hopefully have co-opperated with the Elgar Foundation to secure the six minutes of home cine-film.
Interesting that for the recording here they had four percussionist but only two double bass players. The Western Electric [moving iron system of microphone and cutting head] used to be very much biased towards the bass octave [below the cellos], but in 1932 Alan Dower Blumlein's moving coil system meant that a full six or eight double basses were regularly employed to get the proper balance.
AD Blumlein worked for Sir Isak Schoenberg's English Columbia Company [rival to HMV] and in 1931 the merger between these two companies [and about six others including Parlophone and Regal] created EMI, who very much wanted Blumlein's Columbia recording system as it cut out payment to Western Electric. Blumlein's microphones were in use at the BBC TV studios till the 1970s. They were hand-made and probably the most expensive microphones ever made considering inflation ...
Of course AD Blumlein was one of the handful of boffin electronic engineers who helped keep the Allies afloat during WW II with his work on RADAR [or RDF as it was called], quite apart from inventing electronic [rather than Bairds's mechanical] TV and his 405 line TV system, which worked for the BBC from the mid-1930s till the 1970s when 625 line analogue TV came in with colour. He also made internationational telephone systems practical with his transmission line amplifiers for long intercontinental telephone lines.
Last edited:
ciderglider
pfm Member
And when Blumlein was doing his radar work, he was based in Malvern, Worcestershire. Sadly he lost his life in the course of that work.