Talk:Israel in Egypt

move libretto to wikisource?

The article seems a little loaded by the inclusion of the full libretto here. I'm not sure about policy, but it seems like we should move the libretto over to wikisource. Any thoughts? Fred 14:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the libretto. -Will Beback · † · 17:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Move to Israel in Egypt (Handel)

As per my project to unify the naming scheme amongst Handel oratorios, I will move this article to "Israel in Egypt (Handel)" early next week. Any objections? Fred 16:17, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Earliest known recorded music?

This article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7318180.stm mentions a newly-reconstructed recording of a fragment of "Au Clair de la Lune" from 1860. I wonder whether this displaces the recording of Israel in Egypt as the first music recording? Arguably it does not count, since its creator never envisaged that the recording would ever be played back in an audible form. It was simply a way of making a visual representation of sounds for research purposes. The First Sounds website has an MP3 of this reconstruction at http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/ which is clearer than the realaudio that the BBC provide from their page.

The BBC article currently also contains a reference to "Thomas Edison singing a children's song in 1877". This recording is not a rival to the claim that the Israel in Egypt recording is the first recorded music, and the BBC's description of this recording seems to be incorrect in two respects. First, Edison speaks the words of "Mary had a little lamb", he does not sing. Second, the recording that we have is a demonstration from 1927 of how he made the recording in 1877. The 1877 recording has not survived. See http://www.archive.org/details/EDIS-SCD-02. I will attempt to contact the BBC and get them to correct their article (this is how incorrect information starts its life, and the BBC is a well-respected source of information).

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