Au Clair de la Lune
^ We listened to this in class yesterday. The first part is the world's oldest recording, a 15-year-old girl singing "Au Clair de la Lune" from 1860. Soooo crazy. Some of the comments on the video likened it to the voice of a ghost, because it's so scratchy. It is pretty eerie when you think about it. Apparently it wasn't meant to be played back, just to record the pattern that sound waves made. So it's amazing that we actually CAN play it back, and you can in fact distinguish the words (though in French), and that the melody is clearly there. An Edison recording of the same song is played at :45 (how far we've come...and even now the Edison recording is considered "primitive"). I'm writing my final paper on the history and development of recorded sound, so this stuff is fascinating to me.
OH and I nearly forgot (but didn't, thanks to the equally nerdy people in my music theory class) that it's Mozart's birthday! Thus, another video from Amadeus is in order (still can't top the Sexyback vid, but almost as awesome!)