Good find. This reminds us that tastes change with the passing of time. It's hard to imagine a contemporary fiddler taking such a nervously fast tempo, not because of the technical challenge but for aesthetic reasons.
I sometimes wonder if the technology of the era could have influenced the speed. Records and films had limitations we don't have now. I spoke with a retired motion picture projectionest once who recalled the first talking film, Jolson's The Jazz Singer. He had to manually coordinate the film with a spinning disk! I imagine a disk spinning at 78rpm got finished pretty quick.
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Comments
Good find. This reminds us that tastes change with the passing of time. It's hard to imagine a contemporary fiddler taking such a nervously fast tempo, not because of the technical challenge but for aesthetic reasons.
I sometimes wonder if the technology of the era could have influenced the speed. Records and films had limitations we don't have now. I spoke with a retired motion picture projectionest once who recalled the first talking film, Jolson's The Jazz Singer. He had to manually coordinate the film with a spinning disk! I imagine a disk spinning at 78rpm got finished pretty quick.
Posted by: John Ballard | Nov 30, 2007 7:28:27 AM
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