Word: stokowskis
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Conductor Leopold Stokowski was demonstrating a new "Ceno-orchestra System,"* result of a two-year experiment with Bell Telephone Laboratories. Dr. Stokowski sat in the back of the auditorium busily twisting dials, manipulating switches. Three floors above in the Academy ballroom his Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Smallens, played into specially-sensitized microphones which relayed the music to three loudspeakers concealed behind curtains backstage...
Hitherto one loudspeaker has been considered sufficient to transmit orchestral music. The use of three last week, strategically placed, was what distributed the sound as though the players were on the stage, gave what engineers called "auditory perspective." The filters and amplifiers, which Stokowski manipulated, brought out the faintest whispers of the violins as they never have been brought out before. The climaxes, louder than any orchestra could have achieved unaided, were almost deafening but they were not distorted. Offstage singing was also reproduced, with force and clarity...
Three and a half years ago when the Philadelphia Orchestra started broadcasting, nothing so incensed Conductor Leopold Stokowski as the thought that mere radio engineers had the power to regulate his music, to tone down his surging crescendos, to increase the volume of his fragile pianissimos. After his first few broadcasts Stokowski determined to operate the controls himself. Radio authorities were beside themselves but Stokowski would hear no arguments. He was finally given a desk fitted with dials which he could twiddle to his heart's content. The wires were not connected. Hidden from sight was a working...
...Stokowski's numerous radio experiments have been loudly publicized. For a time his chief desire was to hear how his music sounded to outsiders, so he had a soundproof glass box made for himself, stood inside it to conduct, listened to his results through a loudspeaker. Later radio officials decided that he would never be satisfied until he had actually handled the controls. An attempt or two convinced him that the job was too finicky to combine with conducting...
...scorned. In front of his dais on the Academy of Music stage a control desk was set up, with a maze of wires leading from it to the wings. Throughout the program LeRoy Anspach and Dunham Gilbert, two of Columbia Broadcasting System's crack engineers, sat there. Hitherto Stokowski's broadcasts have been monitored from a booth in the wings. But before last week's concert Stokowski announced that they played too vital a part to be kept in the background. His mind would be easier if he had them in front of him, watching his face...