History Rewound

Voices from the Belfer Archive
by Suzanne Schaffer
Goldring Arts Journalism Student

In a small, gray building tucked under the shadow of Syracuse University’s Bird Library on Waverly Avenue, you’ll find some of history’s great personalities — photographers, singers, orchestra conductors and politicians. Well, not them exactly, but their voices.

The Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive is among North America’s top five audio collections, and it contains a treasure trove of recordings.

"Those voices, it’s them, not just a picture," said Susan Tyler Stinson, the curator of the archive.
"It’s all that we have left of them."

The archive’s catalog is a tour through the history of recorded sound: Wax cylinders date from the 1910s, magnetic tape from the 1940s, long-play records (LPs) from the 1960s and 8-track tapes from the 1970s. The archive displays the machine that Thomas Edison used in 1877 to record his voice by indenting tin foil.This Columbia Gramophone from 1907 plays lacquer discs. Photo by Suzanne Schaffer.

But the real story is what’s between the lines, or between the grooves of a record, one might say. Take, for example, an interview with Margaret Bourke-White, the first female photojournalist hired by Life magazine. On Oct. 6, 1938, radio announcer Foster May of Omaha, Neb., spoke with Bourke-White. The interview, recorded on lacquer disc, offers a rare glimpse
into the photographer’s personality.

FM: Miss Bourke-White, I’d like to know how you got into this business as a lady.

MBW: It was very simple. I got broke while I was in college and needed to make some money ... I was studying art and design. So I turned to my camera.

Bourke-White’s voice sounds confident in the way she pertly answers May, as if to tell him that she doesn’t appreciate being called a "lady" photographer. Later in the interview she describes herself as a "just a Middle-Westerner" from Ohio. But her time in the Northeast clearly affected her, right down to her pronunciation of art as "ahhh-uht."

To some, older audio formats like lacquer discs and vinyl records seem unfamiliar and inaccessible. But that’s exactly why SU Associate Music Professor Stephen Meyer requires his students to visit.

"A lot of students, they’re only dimly aware of LPs," Meyer said. "I see them in the archive trying to figure out what they’re doing. And that’s strange for me because I grew up listening to LPs. But that’s what they need to learn. Downloading, clicking, using iPods — that too will be historical someday."

The pace of change in recording technology is only accelerating. While the LP lasted about 45 years, Stinson predicts the CD will disappear within the next five years. Even the first iPod looks clunky next to the latest iPod Nano. But our relationship to technology is not just about figuring out how to use the latest gadget, Meyer said. It changes the way we communicate.

"The Belfer helps us to understand the interface between technology and human creativity," he said. "The archive provides a model for a bigger question: how human expression changes with the technology through which it’s delivered."

Meyer uses the archive’s extensive collection of musical recordings to compare operatic performances. Before recordings were affordable, singers took more liberties in interpreting a song. Meyer said his students are astonished when they listen to early recordings of "Elsa’s Dream" by Richard Wagner, for example, because the performances vary dramatically.

"We often think of classical music as a static thing," Meyer said. There’s a great value in listening to older recordings, he pointed out, because "we begin to understand music as organic, a constantly changing network of traditions. That includes the present day and reflects the future."

Along with spoken word LPs and commercial music, Belfer has a few audio samples that were not originally intended for public entertainment. On Nov. 21, 1946, the great conductor Arturo Toscanini was recorded rehearsing Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture with the NBC Symphony.

Listening to his rehearsal is like examining the stitches on the back of an elaborate tapestry.

The sound of the music begins and the string section starts to lag behind the orchestra. Toscanini sings loudly over the music to get everyone back together, but the orchestra falls further behind.

"Dramatico!" he shouts. "El arco sospiro!" Toscanini alternates between yelling at the orchestra and angrily mumbling to himself. The pages of a score slap close and the sound of metal scraping on the floor suggests that someone is dragging a music stand across the stage. The musicians do not make a sound. Toscanini starts the passage again and the horns fall behind the strings.

“Hey!" he shouts.

For Meyer, the Belfer archive is "a typical Syracuse thing. There are such wonderful treasures all around, but people do not know about it," he said.

"Right next door is an incredible history with amazingly rich possibilities."

The Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive is open to the public by appointment. For more information, call (315) 443-3477.