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For some reason I decided to look up Ernest Lough, the choirboy whose 1927 recording of "O for the Wings of a Dove" became iconic (and spawned a weird legend that he'd dropped dead immediately after finishing the last note).
Found this documentary on Youtube, in which the by-then eighty-year-old Lough reveals (at 4:33) that he prefers a later record, Mendelssohn's "Hear, O Israel;" and then casually mentions that the choirmaster, George Thalben-Ball, pulled the music off the shelf because the recording engineers had a spare wax cylinder and needed something just under ten minutes long.
Lough and the organist had *half-an-hour* to learn it.
He downplays this, saying "well it's a very straightforward solo," and when pressed on the subject, gives all the credit to Thalben-Ball's teaching ability. This is the recording of that "straightforward solo."
Found this documentary on Youtube, in which the by-then eighty-year-old Lough reveals (at 4:33) that he prefers a later record, Mendelssohn's "Hear, O Israel;" and then casually mentions that the choirmaster, George Thalben-Ball, pulled the music off the shelf because the recording engineers had a spare wax cylinder and needed something just under ten minutes long.
Lough and the organist had *half-an-hour* to learn it.
He downplays this, saying "well it's a very straightforward solo," and when pressed on the subject, gives all the credit to Thalben-Ball's teaching ability. This is the recording of that "straightforward solo."
