Ernö Rapée (or Erno Rapee ) (4 June 1891 – 26 June 1945) was a Hungarian-born American symphonic conductor in the first half of the 20th century whose prolific career spanned both classical and popular music. His most famous tenure was as the head conductor of the Radio City Symphony Orchestra, the resident orchestra of the Radio City Music Hall , whose music was also heard by millions over the air on the radio program Radio City Music Hall of the Air .
26-726: General Motors Concerts , offering classical music on the radio, were heard in different formats on the NBC Red and NBC Blue networks between 1929 and 1937. The concerts began 1929-31 as a 30-minute series on the Red Network with Frank Black as the musical conductor on Mondays at 9:30pm. It also aired as General Motors Family Party . The 1935–37 Red series, expanding to a full hour on Sundays at 10 p.m., featured Ernö Rapée conducting, along with violinists Yehudi Menuhin and Erica Morini , tenor Lauritz Melchior , and sopranos Kirsten Flagstad , Lotte Lehmann and Florence Easton . With
52-651: A fellow music student in Budapest, as the Capitol's concertmaster and assistant conductor; Ormandy eventually became musical director of the Roxy's Gang broadcasts. The Capitol orchestra made a number of commercial acoustical recordings (and one released electrical recording, using the Pallophotophone process) under Rapée and associate conductor David Mendoza (who succeeded Rapée as chief conductor in late 1923) for
78-475: A series of three Agitatos , Appassionato No. 1 , Debutante , Frozen North , Screening Preludes 1 and 2 and Tender Memories . Other pieces written solo included The Clown's Carnival and Pollywog's Frolic . In 1926, Rapée collaborated with composer Lew Pollack on " Charmaine " for the film, What Price Glory? (1926), " Diane ", for the Fox Film production, Seventh Heaven (1927), and "Marion" for
104-757: A similarly modulated electrical signal, which was electronically amplified and used to drive a loudspeaker or other device. Surviving examples of pallophotophone recordings have several tracks recorded in parallel on each strip of film, and Hoxie's system has therefore been called the world's first multitrack recording system, as it predates magnetic tape multitrack recording by several decades. However, unlike later multitrack optical, magnetic, and digital sound recording systems, multiple tracks on pallophotophone films are not known to have been used for later mixdown or similar post-production purposes, or for simultaneously recording two or more channels for stereophonic sound reproduction. Multiple narrow tracks, recorded one at
130-410: A speech for broadcast on Christmas Eve. In 1923, celebrities including Thomas Edison , Pope Pius XI , General Pershing and child star Jackie Coogan made pallophotophone recordings for later playback over the air. Although the audio quality was reportedly as good as a live broadcast and the system was otherwise a technological success, these uses were experimental and the system was never adopted by
156-675: A substantial list of films on which he worked as composer, arranger or musical director. Rapée was born in Budapest , Hungary where he studied as a pianist and later conductor at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music. Later, he was assistant conductor to Ernst von Schuch in Dresden. As a composer, his first piano concerto was played by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Vienna, and after
182-482: A time in separate passes through the device, simply made much more economical use of the medium by multiplying the total recording time possible on a given length of 35 mm film running at a given speed. During a brief period shortly after its creation, the pallophotophone system was occasionally put to practical use in radio broadcasting. On December 13, 1922, then-Vice President Calvin Coolidge used it to record
208-539: A title change to The General Motors Promenade Concerts , the program moved April 1937 to the Blue Network for a series of hour-long thematic shows with male/female leads, including one show of Victor Herbert music with Jan Peerce and Rose Bampton . Broadcast on Sundays at 8pm, this series continued until June 1937. As General Motors Concert , the final 13-week series brought together radio's first concert stock company on October 3, 1937. With Rapee conducting
234-736: A tour of America as a guest conductor, began performing at the Rialto Theater in New York as assistant to Hugo Riesenfeld , where he began composing and conducting for silent films. Following positions at the Rialto and Rivoli theaters, he was hired by Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel as the musical director of the Capitol Theatre 's 77-member orchestra in New York. It was at the Capitol that Rapée made his most famous classical arrangement of Franz Liszt 's Hungarian Rhapsody, No. 13 . While at
260-638: The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company between 1923 and 1926, while Ormandy made a number of acoustical and electrical solo violin records as "Concertmaster of the Capitol Theatre Orchestra, New York" for Cameo Records . Rapée's next move was to Philadelphia, where he conducted an orchestra of 68 at the Fox Theatre. Percy Grainger was one of his guest artists during this engagement. After his tenure at
286-467: The sound waves vibrated a tiny mirror which reflected a ray of light through a narrow slit onto the moving film, creating a "sound track" that encoded the audio-frequency variations in air pressure as variations in the width of the track. After the film was developed , each track could be played by running it between a slit illuminated by a steady light and a photoelectric cell , converting the variations in track width into variations of light intensity and
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#1732779792406312-553: The Capitol, he pioneered orchestral radio broadcasts from the theatre over station WEAF, beginning with him conducting the Capitol Grand Orchestra (as it was called) in the first known broadcast of Richard Strauss 's tone poem Ein Heldenleben on Sunday evening, 19 November 1922 as part of the Capitol's pre-feature film multi-act stage presentation, which was announced over the air by Rothafel himself. This
338-692: The Fox production 4 Devils (1928). Rapée and Pollack's songs were covered by Mantovani , Frank Sinatra , Jim Reeves and numerous other artists, including 1960s hits for the Irish M-O-R group The Bachelors . Rapée also wrote several music books that were first published in the 1920s. The following are still in print: Pallophotophone The pallophotophone (coined from the Greek root words pallo , to oscillate or shake; photo , light; and phone , sound, therefore literally meaning "shaking light sound")
364-749: The Fox, Rapée went on to international success in Berlin with an orchestra of 85 at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo . While there he was invited to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert. Later he appeared as conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic and other European orchestras. In 1926, he returned to America after notable European successes. He began an engagement at the Roxy Theatre in New York, opening
390-539: The General Motors Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, these broadcasts were part of a Sunday Nights at Carnegie Hall series sponsored by General Motors. Swedish tenor Jussi Björling made his American debut as part of this series on November 28, 1937. The rotating line-up of leading name performers featured Björling, Donald Dickson, Helen Jepson , Maria Jeritza , Grace Moore , Erna Sack , Joseph Schmidt and Richard Tauber . In addition to
416-466: The apex of his career as the musical director and head conductor of the symphony orchestra at Roxy Rothafel's new Radio City Music Hall , a position Rapée held until his death in New York City , New York , from a heart attack on June 26, 1945. During his years conducting for silent films on Broadway, Rapée arranged and composed a bulk of his library. In 1923, Robbins-Engel Music began publishing
442-495: The archives of the Schenectady Museum by curator Chris Hunter and John Schneiter, a former GE researcher and museum board member. The films were labeled "radio programs of 1929–1930” and had several unusual characteristics that were puzzling. Unlike normal 35 mm film , they did not have sprocket holes . Schneiter contacted his former colleague Russ DeMuth, a mechanical engineer at GE Global Research , to help decipher
468-413: The broadcasting industry. In 1925, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company , maker of Brunswick phonograph records , licensed parts of GE's system for use in the electrical recording process it was developing. Instead of beaming the light onto photographic film, the vibrating mirror reflected it directly into a photoelectric cell, generating an electronic audio signal which was amplified and used to drive
494-479: The later 1920s and early 1930s, GE experimented with variations of the system and recorded many radio broadcasts from its Schenectady, New York radio station WGY . Unlike the first-generation recorder, in these variants the tiny mirror was not vibrated directly by sound waves, but by an electromagnetic audio signal originating from a conventional microphone. In 1927, GE publicly unveiled a variable-area sound-on-film motion picture sound system based on this method. It
520-517: The music of Rapée and his associates under the banner of the "Capitol Photoplay Series". Under their "Gold Seal" series (carefully selected pieces chosen to be printed on high-quality paper), his song "When Love Comes Stealing" was published the same year. Five years later, it became the theme song of the Paul Leni film, The Man Who Laughs . Collaborating with Dr. William Axt , Rapée co-wrote an eminent collection of photoplay music, which included
546-413: The music, John B. Kennedy narrated science stories. The announcer was Milton Cross . The series presented its final broadcast on December 26, 1937. Ern%C3%B6 Rap%C3%A9e A virtuoso pianist, Rapée is also remembered for popular songs that he wrote in the late 1920s as photoplay music for silent films . When not conducting live orchestras, he supervised film scores for sound pictures, compiling
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#1732779792406572-456: The side-to-side motions of the recording stylus as it engraved a spiral groove into the rotating wax master disc. Brunswick publicized its unique method as "Brunswick Light-Ray" recording. Used simply as a novel type of general-purpose microphone , this hollowed-out version of the pallophotophone proved to be very problematic. In 1927, Brunswick abandoned it in favor of the ordinary carbon and condenser microphones being used by its competitors. In
598-623: The theater in March 1927, as music director of its 110-player Roxy Symphony Orchestra. (At the time this was world's largest permanent orchestra, outnumbering the New York Philharmonic by three musicians). Millions of listeners heard his symphonic concerts over the air on Sunday afternoon during The Roxy Hour radio broadcasts, and he also conducted for the General Motors Concerts . Finally, in 1932, Rapée reached
624-451: Was a photographic sound recording and playback system developed by General Electric researcher Charles A. Hoxie circa 1922. The RCA Photophone sound-on-film system for motion pictures was later derived from it. The pallophotophone was an optical sound system which could record and play back audio tracks on a strip of 35 mm black-and-white photographic film . Separate recording and playback units were employed. In recording,
650-519: Was marketed by RCA (then a GE subsidiary) as RCA Photophone . In 1929, RKO Radio Pictures became the first motion picture studio to use Photophone exclusively. Western Electric later acquired the Photophone trademark. As far as is known, none of the original pallophotophone machines built by GE have survived to the present day, but some reels of pallophotophone recordings of radio broadcasts still exist. In 2008, thirteen reels were rediscovered in
676-456: Was the first of what eventually became the Roxy's Gang programs, a two-hour weekly variety show hosted by Rothafel using Capitol and, later, Roxy Theatre artistes, broadcast every Sunday evening starting at 7:20 p.m., first from an improvised basement studio at the Capitol and later from a purpose-built studio at the Roxy. Rapée also engaged Eugene Ormandy , whom he had known in his youth as
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