Les Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre and the Grand Prix du Disque
In Louise Hanson-Dyer’s lifetime, the quality of recordings on her Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre label was recognised not only by scholars, musicians and music enthusiasts. On many occasions, these recordings received the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque, an award for outstanding achievements in France across the recording industry and in musical scholarship.
These Grands Prix are awarded by the Académie Charles Cros, a French organisation founded in 1947 by the critics Roger Vincent, José Bruyr, Pierre Brive, Antoine Goléa, Armand Panigel and Franck Ténot. Initially directed by the musicologist Marc Pincherle, the Académie was named after the inventor and poet Charles Cros (1842–1888), an early pioneer of sound recording. The organisation acted initially as an intermediary between the French government and music industry professionals, but today links the recording and live music industries in France by sponsoring festivals and collaborative projects with French and international artists. It also continues to award the Grand Prix du Disque, and in this respect could be described as a French equivalent of the Recording Academy—the American group responsible for the Grammy Awards.
The early prizes: Recordings on 78 rpm discs
The Académie Charles Cros began to recognise Hanson-Dyer’s success in the recording industry from 1949, when she had been releasing Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre 78-rpm discs for over a decade (the firm published printed music from 1932 and recordings from 1938). Between 1949 and 1950, four recordings on Oiseau-Lyre 78s received the Grand Prix du Disque. The first was OL 145, which featured a bassoon concerto by the French Baroque composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier. The recording was made in 1948 by Fernand Oubradous and Roger Désormière, both leading figures in French musical life of the 1930s and ’40s: Désormière was a conductor at the Opéra-Comique; Oubradous was bassoon soloist at the Opéra de Paris and founder of the Trio d’Anches de Paris, the pioneering French reed trio that recorded prolifically for l’Oiseau-Lyre in the 1930s. The Boismortier was the last piece Oubradous recorded as soloist for l’Oiseau-Lyre.
The remaining 78s to receive Grands Prix all featured music that l’Oiseau-Lyre had published in print. In 1949, the Académie recognised the two-disc set of the Two Suites for Strings from Venus and Adonis, a ‘Masque for the Entertainment of the King’ by the English Baroque composer John Blow (OL 153 & 154). Hanson-Dyer brought her close acquaintance Anthony Lewis, an expert on music of this period, over from England to make this recording, and he conducted a handpicked selection of orchestral players. Lewis had also prepared l’Oiseau-Lyre’s print editions of Venus and Adonis, the release of which had been accompanied by photolithographs of original watercolour designs of the characters by the artist Marie Laurencin. Hanson-Dyer re-released Lewis’ edition as a miniature score in 1950, perhaps due to demand created by the recording.
Whereas the first two Grand Prix-winning recordings had been of music from the Baroque period, the third went back even further. Between 1935 and 1948, Hanson-Dyer collaborated with the French musicologist Yvonne Rokseth on the monumental project of editing and publishing the Montpellier Codex, a collection of 337 pieces of polyphonic music from the Middle Ages. After she had edited the collection Rokseth began to record a selection of motets, but her untimely death in 1948 brought this project to a standstill. Determined not to let Rokseth’s years of work go to waste, Hanson-Dyer enlisted the help of the musicologist and librarian Vladimir Fédorov, who followed the detailed notes of his colleague and in 1949 brought her project to fruition. The six-disc collection Polyphonies du XIIIe siècle (OL 230–235 AUT) was dedicated to Rokseth, and features the vocalists Hélène Muller, Jean Archimbaud and Raymond Bonté, the violist Pierre Ladhuie, cellist Gaston Marchesini, and double reed players Maurice Allard (bassoon), Étienne Baudo (oboe) and Robert Jeannoutot (cor anglais). It received a Grand Prix du Disque in 1950.
The last 78 to receive a Grand Prix was of another set of English Baroque pieces: the first twelve trio sonatas by John Blow’s prize pupil, Henry Purcell (OL 207–218 AUT). Scored for two violins, cello and pianoforte, these sonatas had been edited in 1936 by the British musicologist William Gillies Whittaker, and included bowings marked up by his daughter, Mary Whittaker. The recordings feature the violinists Henry Merckel and Georges Alès, the cellist André Navarra, and harpsichordist Isabelle Nef, all of whom appear on many recordings made for l'Oiseau-Lyre in the 1930s.
Prizes at mid-century: Recordings on early long-playing discs
Of the more than 300 microgroove LP recordings released by Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre during the 1950s and ’60s, fifteen received a Grand Prix du Disque. The first, and the only prize-winning LP based on a Oiseau-Lyre sheet music edition, was another recording of Venus and Adonis, again directed by Anthony Lewis (OL-LD 34/OL 50004). Thanks to the increased playing time of the newer discs, this version features the entire work as opposed to only the suites.
The LP was recorded in 1951 and features the English opera specialists Margaret Ritchie, Gordon Clinton, Margaret Field-Hyde, Robert Ellis, John Frost, Elizabeth Cooper and Michael Cynfelin. The chorus also comprised English singers, but the orchestra was EOL's Paris-based house ensemble, the Ensemble orchestral de l’Oiseau-Lyre. The continuo was performed by more French musicians: Marcel Frécheville (cello) and Robert Veyron-Lacroix (harpsichord), both of whom had recorded extensively for l'Oiseau-Lyre in the previous decades. Hanson-Dyer was extremely pleased when Venus and Adonis received the Grand Prix du Disque in 1952. She wrote in March 1952: “years of work are in it both for the edition and the recording. I am ever so happy about it.”1
Across all the Grand Prix du Disque-winning LPs, English music is easily the best represented. Another Purcell recording directed by Lewis, Come ye sons of art (OL-LD 91/OL 50166), received the prize in 1955, whereas in 1957 the Académie awarded another to Thurston Dart and The Boyd Neel String Orchestra’s Dances of Shakespeare’s Time (OL 50127), a release featuring pieces by John Dowland and his English Renaissance contemporaries. In 1959 and 1961, prizes were awarded respectively to The Royal Brass Music of King James I (OL-LD 180/OL 50189/SOL 20503) and the Welsh harpist Osian Ellis’s rendition of three Handel pieces: the Concerto for Harp and Lute in B flat, op. 5 no. 6 (performed with the British lutenist Desmond Dupré); the Concerto for Harp in F, op. 4 no. 5; and the Concerto Grosso in C ‘Alexander’s Feast’ (OL 50181). The soloists are accompanied on the latter disc by the Philomusica of London directed by Granville Jones, a conductor and violinist who formerly led the London Symphony Orchestra.
Despite their strong representation of English music, these prize-winning discs continue to reflect Hanson-Dyer’s dual allegiance to France and Britain. She engaged English music specialists to record the vocal parts for Come ye sons of art (the soprano Margaret Ritchie, countertenors Alfred Deller and John Whitworth, baritone Bruce Boyce and the St Anthony Singers); however, the ensemble was once again French, and the continuo was realised by the Paris-based Italian harpsichordist, Ruggero Gerlin. Similarly, the British Royal Brass Music, or Les cuivres royaux à la cour de Jacques 1er d'Angleterre as it was released in France, was recorded by a cast of French brass players: the celebrated trumpeter Maurice André and his colleague Jean Pirot, alongside trombonists Maurice Suzan, Henri Arque, Camille Verdier and Bernard Gallot. The British keyboardist Thurston Dart directed.
L’Oiseau-Lyre collected yet another Grand Prix in 1953 for a 7-inch recording (from the ‘Oiselet’ series, released in France only), of the French oboist Pierre Pierlot performing two concertos by G.F. Handel (DO-OL 5). But the last LP to receive the prize (in 1964) reversed these roles of France and Britain; recorded in the last year of Hanson-Dyer's life when she was making records only in London, it features Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict performed by anglophone soloists: Josephine Veasey, April Cantelo, Helen Watts, John Mitchinson, John Cameron, John Shirley Quirk and Eric Shilling (OL 256/257). The St Anthony Singers and London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) also appear on this recording, conducted by the legendary Colin Davis.
Of course, being a primarily France-based recording house until the late 1950s, many Oiseau-Lyre LPs were entirely French, and the Académie Charles Cros commended two such recordings. Pierre Cochereau, organist at the Notre-Dame de Paris from 1955, made five LPs for l’Oiseau-Lyre in the second half of the 1950s, each recorded live in the cathedral. This was a far more complex process than recording in a studio, as the sound engineer André Charlin’s equipment first had to be hoisted in via one of the cathedral’s towers. A pulley system was then devised that could position the microphone far enough away from the organ’s console, but also allow for constant adjustments to minimise the eight-second reverberation created by every note. Finally, the many daytime visitors in Notre-Dame meant that the sessions had to take place at night, leaving Cochereau and the recording team to contend with freezing temperatures!2
The Cochereau discs thus reflect a unique and ambitious venture in early recording technology, even if their sound quality is perhaps murky by today’s standards. The Académie recognised the achievement and awarded a Grand Prix du Disque to Cochereau’s one recording of a contemporary work: the Symphonie-Passion pour grand orgue, op. 23 by the then 69-year-old composer and organist Marcel Dupré (OL-LD 118/OL 50112).3 The French release of this disc is notable for its striking cover design; the small, 10-inch sleeve features an austere photograph of Cochereau in Notre-Dame, credited to a photographer or photography agency simply called ‘Chateau’.
The other (mostly) French recording to receive a Grand Prix was Les Lullistes in 1959 (OL-LD 155/OL 50136). This title refers not only to the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully, but also the Baroque composers who continued his legacy (in opposition to the more harmonically adventurous Jean-Philippe Rameau). Les Lullistes was recorded by the French conductor Louis de Froment and the Ensemble Orchestral de l’Oiseau-Lyre, and features Lully’s Le temple de la paix, J.C.F. Fischer’s Le journal du printemps, and Georg Muffat’s Nobles jeunesses.
In addition to l’Oiseau-Lyre’s excellence in recording English and French music, at mid-century the label was commended on numerous occasions for its recordings of music from the Austro-Germanic tradition. Unlike in the earlier catalogue of 78-rpm discs, much of this music was recorded by musicians based in Germany, a trend that reflects the continually expanding nature of Hanson-Dyer’s professional network.
Three ensembles featured across these four prize-winning German discs: the orchestra of the Collegium Musicum of Frankfurt; the Bamberger Symphoniker (Germany’s premier touring orchestra); and the Pro Arte Orchestra, a Munich-based chamber group founded by the flautist and conductor Kurt Redel. The music on these discs includes Mozart’s Symphonies Nos. 27, K. 199 and 30, K. 202 (OL-LD 72/OL 50039); three sonatas and a trio by J.S. Bach (OL-LD 52/OL 50015); chamber works by C.P.E. Bach (OL-LD 53/OL 50017); and Heinrich Schutz’s musical setting of The Nativity, featuring the German soprano Gunthild Weber, tenor Herbert Hess, and bass Paul Gümmer (OL-LD 98/OL 50020).
Beyond these national categories, the remaining two Grand Prix-winning recordings can simply be seen as reflecting Hanson-Dyer’s steadfast support of the artists she championed. These awards were both conferred shortly before her passing in 1962. For recordings of clarinet music, Hanson-Dyer gave free reign to Gervase de Peyer, principal clarinet of the London Symphony Orchestra and a founding member of the Melos Ensemble. De Peyer’s selections appeared across four l'Oiseau-Lyre LPs in the early 1960s, and for his solo disc he chose two Romantic concertos: Carl Maria von Weber’s Concerto No. 2 in E flat, op. 74 and Louis Spohr’s Concerto No. 1 in C minor, op. 26 (OL 50204). The recordings were made in England with the LSO conducted by Colin Davis.
Finally, the other 1962 award went to a recording by Thurston Dart, who had programmed and performed on the prize-winning discs Dances of Shakespeare’s Time and the Royal Brass Music of James I. Easily the most important British figure in the modern early music revival, Dart lectured in music at Cambridge and was widely known for his historically informed recordings and writings on musical interpretation. The close friendship that Hanson-Dyer developed with Dart is evidenced by his contributions, whether as keyboardist, conductor or editor, to roughly forty-five Oiseau-Lyre publications, making him the most prolific musician represented in the label's catalogue. It is therefore fitting that a solo recording of Dart be lauded with one of these awards, and the disc selected by the Académie was of clavichord music by the German Baroque composer Johann Jakob Froberger (OL 50207).4 Dart performed in these recordings on a modern clavichord by the British maker Thomas Goff, but his interpretation reflects historically informed practices common in the mid-to-late twentieth century regarding ornamentation, touch, tempo and notes inégales. The recording captures Dart’s characteristic approach to early music: attempt to create a ‘historically accurate’ performance without compromising on what was considered modern, ‘good’ taste at the time.
Legacy
Although the organisation awarding them was uniquely French, these Grands Prix were accumulated by a variety of performers and traditions represented on the Oiseau-Lyre label. Clearly, the Académie Charles Cros appreciated Hanson-Dyer’s vision, and the many awards her discs received is testament to her efforts not only to produce but make accessible fine musical recordings in France, Britain, and internationally.
Researched and written by Madeline Roycroft
Curatorial Assistant, Archives and Special Collections
November 2023
1 Dyer quoted in Elina G. Hamilton, ‘The Unique Patroness: Louise Hanson-Dyer's Letters to the Library of Congress, 1936–1952, Notes 73, no. 4 (June 2017): 650.
2 Jim Davidson, Lyrebird Rising, 406–7.
3 Digitised extracts from this LP can be heard at: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8810174g
4 Digitised extracts from this LP can be heard at: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8803953q