Au Clair de la Lune

Au Clair de la Lune from Dust-to-Digital on Vimeo.

PT-1001 / Single-sided, 45rpm record with etched back
Release Date: September 15, 2009
In 2008 the First Sounds collaborative corrected the history of recorded sound when it identified—and played back—a recording of the human voice inscribed on paper, in Paris, 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville entrusted this and other documents with the Institute of France’s Academy of Sciences in the summer of 1861. With this deposit he sought to establish the priority of his sound-inscribing invention, the phonautograph. He included several phonautograms made in 1860 of vocal scales, songs, and recitations.

Example “No. 5”—Au Clair de la Lune from April 9th 1860—is the earliest dated sound recording in the deposit. Scott prepared its recording surface by wrapping a sheet of paper around a cylinder which he rotated over a smoking lantern to cover with soot. He recorded with two styli—one driven by the vibrations of a tuning fork, the other driven by a membrane vibrating in sympathy with his voice. He removed the paper from the cylinder and immersed it in an alcohol-based fixative.

Scott made this recording to be seen, not heard. He sang purposely into his instrument to reveal the shape of sounds and the frequency of his notes. In listening to Au Clair we eavesdrop not on a musical performance, but on a scientific experiment—wafting imperfectly through a window in time.