One of the earliest actors recorded onto wax cylinder which I’ve sampled is Sarah Bernhardt, the French actress from the late Victorian, early 20th century period. A remarkable lady, a confident and independent woman, Bernhardt was one of the first global superstars of acting. She had a dramatic personality, love life and career, always being remarkable, ostentatious, scandalous, strong-willed, and of course, a brilliant actor.
Sarah Bernhardt was called “the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture”, Victor Hugo, a former lover, also praised her “golden voice”. Both her physical and vocal talents were therefore perfect for the birth of the age of audio and film recording.
No doubt were she at her prime during the development of talking movies, Bernhardt could have achieved the kind of adoration associated with famous female actors from Hollywood. At the height of her fame, however, the development of electronic media was in its infancy. Nonetheless, she was still one of the earliest actors to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures both for silent movies and even on very early audio recordings before the end of her active career in the 1920s.
The inventor of the wax cylinder phonograph itself, Thomas Edison, actually met Sarah Bernhardt and recorded her voice, the first of a number of recordings. This article in The Independent reports their first meeting:
“Later, touring the lab, the sylphid actress followed her host up and down ladder-like stairways, admiring the machinery, applauding the flashing lights, nodding in response to his running commentary in a language she did not understand. She spoke some lines from Phedre into a marvellous phonograph. She must have it! He would have one specially made. She took his arm; in this short time they were the best of friends. He bore, she decided, a striking resemblance to Napoleon. Gazing over a balustrade into an abyss of revolving wheels and belts, she paid him her ultimate dramatic compliment – she fainted away in his arms”
For my recording, I’ve used a 1910 recording of Bernhardt performing “La declaration” from the aforementioned Phèdre by the French playwright Jean Racine. With it, I simply wanted to let Sarah speak for herself for the entirety of the recording, without any crass chopping, cutting or re-sampling of her words. I did cut out a male vocal who said a few words, so as to have only Sarah speaking throughout.
I followed a method which has been a long-standing leitmotif for my music making, namely the use of two lead guitars playing with each other in a complimentary manner. The first time I tried this was back in 1992 for a Granny Takes a Trip track called “Jeremy” and then later that year for another song written by Pete Lambert, my bandmate, called “Four A.M.” I think I first recorded two separate leads simply thinking that I could choose the best. Instead, both guitar tracks were used as one weaved in and out, complementing, or sometimes counterpointing, the other’s melody. It’s an approach that feels ‘my own’, a personal emblem, and one that I’ve repeatedly come back to in recent years, most recently (after a fashion) on this track “Dedication to Sarah Bernhardt”.
My part of the collaboration was just to add a kind of musical backdrop to her performance, using a guitar with minimal effects (a little overdrive and reverb) to create a general melodic theme which would hopefully sound vaguely uplifting and epic, befitting someone of her status as a ‘legend’.
Legend remains victorious in spite of history.
Sarah Bernhardt
Back in 2000, I wrote a track entitled Dedication to William Sterndale Bennett (Bennett was a 19th century composer). I was largely ignorant of Bennett’s music and I used the name simply because it sounded nice and it mimicked a track title by the band Felt. This Wax Cylinder track is named “Dedication to Sarah Bernhardt” partly to add to a tradition of Carnoe’s Mummingbirds musical ‘dedications’, and partly, on this occasion, as a genuine homage to remarkable lady.
The track is now available from the Carnoe’s Mummingbirds Bandcamp site.
Carnoe's Mummingbirds 
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