The recording as text, the producer as editor and the performer as interpreter: John Culshaw and Benjamin Britten (1963-1970)

Abstract

When we listen to a recording of classical music often forget the influence of the producer and consider only the composer and the performer. However, the importance and influence of producers has been decisive throughout the history of recorded music; their labour evolved over the second third of the 20th century from conception of the recording as a photograph of a performance in the 1930s to the consideration as a work of art in the 1960s, through the idealistic view of the concert in the 1940s and 1950s. One of the most important and innovative producers of the 1950s and 1960s was John Culshaw (1924-1980). He saw the recording as other text in addition to the score, when documenting the musical work, a much richer text that documents a musical work in its sound manifestation. Culshaw designed an entire music production system implemented in his legendary recording of Wagner’s Ring between 1958 and 1965 which separated the approach to the recording as idealistic concert or sought to exceed the loss of the visual through technical and acoustic media known as “Sonicstage”. In this article I will focus on his collaboration with composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), with whom he recorded some classic discs for Decca ("War Requiem" in 1963) and videos for the BBC ("Peter Grimes" in 1969), in which the English composer directed his own works and that would take him to write an opera especially for broadcast by television ("Owen Wingrave" in 1970)

Keywords

• grabación, productor, compositor, obra, edición, interpretación, filmación