A discovery

[rm']

Sometimes you come across something of such great cultural significance that you simply must share it with everyone you know. I discovered that in my possession, I held a set of marvelous CDs with numerous recordings of English literature, read the way it was meant to be read. By this, I mean Chaucer in his original pronounciations, Shakespearean sonnets lyrically read, Donne set to music, and so forth. Two particular recordings caught my attention as beyond extraordinary. The first is an original recording of Alfred Lord Tennyson reading his "The Charge of the Light Brigade". Due to the technology available at the time, the recording is of poor quality; virtually unintelligible in fact, even if you are reading along with a text of the work. The recording was made on an Edison wax cylinder, i.e before the invention of the modern gramophone. Even though the words are not distinguishable, the recording has worth as a historical relic.

The second recording (not quite so unique, but just as significant) is a clear, lucid and articulate Dylan Thomas reading his "Poem in October" in the US Library of Congress. Being one of my favorite poets, it was breathtaking to finally hear these words from the author himself. No one can quite put the meaning into a piece of poetry as the author can, and this piece really proves it. Just as a dramatic work, this recording deserves recognition.

So, for your pleasure, I've ripped and encoded both of these tracks to Ogg Vorbis (1.47 quality setting), properly labelled and tagged. Unzip and enjoy!

http://home.primus.ca/~bakht/xtra/audiolit.zip (3.08 MB)

[Bop]

What a find! Thank you so much, you really made my day (my week, month even). That Dylan Thomas file is priceless- what a command of the language he has, what power and vision he brings to those beautiful words!

The other track is more a curiosity than anything else as it is, as you mentioned, very difficult to make out. I have similar ragtime tracks that were recorded on wax cylinders... but music tends to translate a little easier than spoken words (IMO).

If it is not too much to ask would it be possible for you to make other tracks available... at your leisure of course.

Thanks again... thanks so very much!

[Trigear]

good stuff man. thanks for sharing.

[whiteflip]

ill joyfully listen to it . and i will pass it on to people i know that would probably understand it better to me. thanks very much.

[Bilbo Baggins]

I don't suppose there is any chance of getting Chaucers works upped is there? I love the Canterbury Tales in their original speech (although I think my pronunciation of the words leaves a lot to be desired), and would readily listen to them read by someone who knows the language.

[Signal Box]

Very intriguing find. I hope you enjoy it.

[eleet-2k2]

Wow! What an amazing discovery! Thanks for ripping it for us all to enjoy. You've made my weekened.

[Schismx]

Thanks


BTW, rm' and Bilbo have the same post count. Freaky.

[ujay]

Thanks for that rm'

I second Bilbo's request for some Chaucer.

UJ

[papadoc]

rm'...once again you've impressed me.
You're a credit to this forum.
I tip my bowler hat to you.
Thanks!

[rm']

Heh

I'll definitely share the other tracks, a la Xerxes' Classical MP3 of the Week, but since there are so many tracks to get through (almost 60) and they are short enough to package multiple tracks together, I think I'll do it biweekly, or something like that. I also want to do it chronologically, so that means Beowulf will come before Chaucer.

All the files will come as zipped Ogg Vorbis, simply because my upload speed is around 3kb/s, and MP3 gives lower quality at the same file size.

[rm']

To tide you over until I make the next compilation...

This discovery tempted me to research similar authentic recordings on the web. I couldn't find much (I'll keep on searching; this is intriguing), but I came up with this. James Joyce reading a passage from Finnegans Wake. It's not as clear as the Dylan Thomas recording, but it is understandable, if you follow along with the text. Unfortunately, of all the media players I tried (Winamp 2.81, WMP 6.4, WMP 8, Quicktime 4), Quicktime was the only one which could properly play the file. I'll see if I can convert the file type (CDex won't recognize it either, so I may have to look into TotalRecorder).

[rm']

UJ wanted something special for my 10 000th post, so here it is. Installment number one. "Caedmon's Hymn" and the Prologue and Fight with Grendel from Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Understandably, neither of these are original recordings, because both works date from before the Norman Conquests

The histories of both pieces are so extensive that I request you use Google if you want background information; I couldn't possibly do them justice here. I've added the liner notes that come with the CD, though, and the text of "Caedmon's Hymn" to the Ogg tags. I wanted to add the text for the Beowulf passages as well, but because they are both over 100 lines long, it would've kept me up all night.

So, here for you pleasure, are three additional recordings to add to your collection.

http://home.primus.ca/~bakht/xtra/audiolitvol1.zip (4.99MB)
(Grab them quick, please. I only have 20MB of webspace, and have already taken up 3MB with the previous recording. I've leave both compilations up for 3 days or so)

[InvisableMan]

SPAMM0R! no-grats to you!

[ujay]

Originally posted by rm'
UJ wanted something special for my 10 000th post, so here it is.

That'll do nicely.

UJ