Cold comfort
Captain Scott’s gramophone
One of the most moving exhibits in the EMI Archive Trust museum is the HMV ‘Monarch’ Gramophone presented to Captain Scott for his (fateful) ‘Terra Nova’ expedition to the South Pole in 1910. The Gramophone Company included several crates of records too, many of which survive in the Archive and offer a fascinating soundtrack to one of the most famous exploration stories of all time.
During the fierce Antarctic winter of 1911, Scott and his officers warmed themselves with Enrico Caruso’s million-selling ‘Vesti la giubba’ from Pagliacci, and the song ‘Mattinata’ commissioned by the Gramophone Company from Leoncavallo, who accompanied
Caruso himself in their 1904 recording. Inspired by Caruso’s example, the greatest soprano of the age – Nellie Melba – recorded a raft of records in 1904, and the Waltz song from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette must have lightened their steps during the long trudge across the snow.
Bach and Handel also offered a helping hand, with violinist Joseph Szigeti playing the Prelude to Bach’s Partita No. 3 and pianist Wilhelm Backhaus inaugurating a 60-year recording career with Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith. For light relief there were music hall songs (‘Oh! Oh! Antonio’) and Gilbert & Sullivan (‘When Britain really ruled the waves’ from Iolanthe). But most importantly there was music to raise the spirits: Rule Britannia and God save the King, and Clara Butt’s moving rendition of Abide with me from 1910, a recording later featured in the famous 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic.