#114 BBC Armistice Broadcasts in the 1920s - with Professor Rachel Cowgill

11 November 1923: The BBC's first Armistice broadcast.

Back in our moment-by-moment timeline of what happened on the early BBC, it's three days short of its first anniversary.

The BBC aired 'The Great Silence', speeches including the Prime Minister... and then the questions began regarding the soundtrack to the Armistice commemorations. Foulds' A World Requiem, even if the Church might not like it? Elgar? Jerusalem? It's A Long Way To Tipperary? Classical or songs from the troops? And how do you broadcast a silence?

Guiding us through the music and lack of it throughout the decade, Professor Rachel Cowgill, cultural-historical musicologist, Professor of Music at the University of York. Her article is in the show-notes...

...as are details of some of the earliest recordings of a BBC broadcast - well, a recording of an event that was also broadcast on the BBC. That surely counts. We found some this episode - I think taking the number of 1920s recordings of the BBC to five. (We'll do an episode about them soon, I'm sure...)  

And Trayce Arssow's research into how 1920's Funeral of the Unknown Warrior became the world's first electrical recording - despite claims it took till 1925.

 

SHOWNOTES:

• Prof Rachel Cowgill's article is Canonizing remembrance: Music for Armistice Day at the BBC, 1922-7 
• Trayce Arssow's article is Pioneers in the Evolution of Electrical Sound Recording: The Guest-Merriman Electrical Recording System, 1918-1922
• 1920's gramophone record of the Funeral of the Unknown Warrior, thanks to WW1Recordings on Youtube.
• 1927's Remembrance Festival at the Albert Hall - one of the earliest recordings of something broadcast on the BBC, thanks to Vintage Sounds on Youtube.
• 1928's Remembrance Festival at the Albert Hall, thanks to EMGColonel on Youtube.
• 1928's Remembrance Festival, as above, but a great tale behind its recording, thanks to Revolutions in Sound on Youtube.
• Original podcast music is by Will Farmer. 
• This podcast is not made by today's BBC. It's just about the old BBC.
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Next time, Episode 115: Music from the BBC's first year, with musician, comedian and gramophone record enthusiast Earl Okin

More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio