1.
Composer
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A composer is a person who creates or writes music, which can be vocal music, instrumental music or music which combines both instruments and voices. The core meaning of the term refers to individuals who have contributed to the tradition of Western classical music through creation of works expressed in written musical notation, many composers are also skilled performers, either as singers, instrumentalists, and/or conductors. Examples of composers who are well known for their ability as performers include J. S. Bach, Mozart. In many popular genres, such as rock and country. For a singer or instrumental performer, the process of deciding how to perform music that has previously composed and notated is termed interpretation. Different performers interpretations of the work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen. Composers and songwriters who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others, although a musical composition often has a single author, this is not always the case. A piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, in the 20th and 21st century, a culture eventually developed whereby faithfulness to the composers written intention came to be highly valued. This musical culture is almost certainly related to the esteem in which the leading classical composers are often held by performers. The movement might be considered a way of creating greater faithfulness to the original in works composed at a time that expected performers to improvise. In Classical music, the composer typically orchestrates her own compositions, in some cases, a pop songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written scores play in classical music. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music. In the development of European classical music, the function of composing music initially did not have greater importance than that of performing it. The preservation of individual compositions did not receive attention and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance. In as much as the role of the composer in western art music has seen continued solidification, for instance, in certain contexts the line between composer and performer, sound designer, arranger, producer, and other roles, can be quite blurred. The term composer is often used to refer to composers of music, such as those found in classical, jazz or other forms of art. In popular and folk music, the composer is usually called a songwriter and this is distinct from a 19th-century conception of instrumental composition, where the work was represented solely by a musical score to be interpreted by performers
2.
Kurt Weill
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Kurt Julian Weill was a German composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera. Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a useful purpose. He also wrote works for the concert hall. He became a United States citizen on August 27,1943, Weill was born on March 2,1900, the third of four children to Albert Weill and Emma Weill. He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the Sandvorstadt, the Jewish quarter in Dessau, Germany, where his father was a cantor. At the age of twelve, Weill started taking lessons and made his first attempts at writing music. In 1915, Weill started taking lessons with Albert Bing, Kapellmeister at the Herzogliches Hoftheater zu Dessau, who taught him piano, composition, music theory. Weill performed publicly on piano for the first time in 1915, koch, and also attended philosophy lectures by Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer. The same year, he wrote his first string quartet, from May to September 1920, Weill spent a couple of months in Leipzig, where his father had become the new director of a Jewish orphanage. Before he returned to Berlin, in September 1920, he composed Sulamith, a fantasy for soprano, female choir. Back in Berlin, Weill had an interview with Ferruccio Busoni in December 1920, after examining some of Weills compositions, Busoni accepted him as one of five master students in composition at the Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin. From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied music composition with him, during his first year he composed his first symphony, Sinfonie in einem Satz, as well as the lieder Die Bekehrte and two Rilkelieder for voice and piano. To support his family in Leipzig, he worked as a pianist in a Bierkeller tavern. In spring of 1922, Weill joined the November Groups music faction and that year he composed a psalm, a divertimento for orchestra, and Sinfonia Sacra, Fantasia, Passacaglia, and Hymnus for Orchestra. On November 18,1922, his childrens pantomime Die Zaubernacht premiered at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, out of financial need, Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925. Among his students were Claudio Arrau, Maurice Abravanel, Heinz Jolles, in December 1923, Weill finished his studies with Busoni
3.
Bertolt Brecht
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Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century. Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was born in February 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria, Brechts mother was a devout Protestant and his father a Catholic. The modest house where he was born is preserved as a Brecht Museum. His father worked for a mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. Thanks to his mothers influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would have an effect on his writing. From her, too, came the image of the self-denying woman that recurs in his drama. Brechts home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied, at school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership. Neher designed many of the sets for Brechts dramas and helped to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre, when Brecht was 16, the First World War broke out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates swallowed by the army and his expulsion was only prevented through the intervention of his religion teacher. On his fathers recommendation, Brecht sought a loophole by registering for a course at Munich University. There he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist, from July 1916, Brechts newspaper articles began appearing under the new name Bert Brecht. Brecht was drafted into service in the autumn of 1918, only to be posted back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military VD clinic. In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer had a son, some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin. Brechts diaries for the few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform. Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie Chaplin, for his virtually complete rejection of mimicry and he did short sketches in which he played refractory employees, orchestral musicians or photographers, who hated their employers and made them look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, Liesl Karlstadt, a popular woman comedian who used to pad herself out, anyone can be creative, he quipped, its rewriting other people thats a challenge. Brecht completed his second play, Drums in the Night. Between November 1921 and April 1922 Brecht made acquaintance with many people in the Berlin cultural scene
4.
Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
5.
Street organ
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A street organ is an automatic mechanical pneumatic organ designed to be mobile enough to play its music in the street. The two most commonly seen types are the smaller German and the larger Dutch street organ, many were built by Italian organ builders who had settled in France and Germany, creating companies such as Frati, Gavioli, Gasparini and Fassano. These early organs had more pipes than the serinette, could more than one tune. Wooden bass pipes were placed underneath the organ and on the front were often mounted a set of pan-flutes or piccolo pipes, with decorative finishes. In New York City, the influx of Italian immigrants led to a situation where by 1880 nearly one in 20 Italian men in certain areas were organ grinders. An unfortunate consequence was the destruction of hundreds of organs, the barrels of which contained a record of the music of the day. Before the invention of the record player, this was the only permanent recording of these tunes. The law that banned barrel organs in New York was repealed in 1975, many cities in the United Kingdom also had ordinances prohibiting organ grinders. The authorities often encouraged policemen to treat the grinders as beggars or public nuisances, in Paris there were a limited number of permits for organ grinders, and entry in that reserved circle was based on a waiting list or seniority system. According to Ord-Hume the disappearance of organ grinders from European streets was in part due to the early application of national and international copyright laws. The organ grinder was a musical novelty street performer of the 19th century and the part of the 20th century. Period literature often represents the grinder as a gentleman of ill repute or as a representative of the lower classes. Newspaper reporters would sometimes describe them cynically or jocularly as minor extortionists who were paid to keep silent, later depictions would stress the romantic or picturesque aspects of the activity. Whereas some organ grinders were very likely itinerants or vagabonds, many, the strap around his neck would balance the organ, leaving one hand free to turn the crank and the other to steady the organ. A tin cup on top of the organ or in the hand of a companion, was used to solicit payments for his performance. The largest organs were usually mounted on a cart, and required a team of operators to move, the most elaborate organs would have mechanical figures or automata mounted on top of or in the front of the case, along with percussion instruments. Their dreadful music is the result of a purely mechanical gesture, there are in London around a dozen firms specialising in the manufacture of piano organs, which they hire out for 15 shillings a week. As a result, the beggars of London live mainly on the poor, Music lovers usually hated the organ grinders, since most grinders seemed to be tone-deaf and lacking any sense of rhythm
6.
Jack Sheppard
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Jack Sheppard was a notorious English thief and gaol-breaker of early 18th-century London. Born into a family, he was apprenticed as a carpenter but took to theft and burglary in 1723. He was arrested and imprisoned five times in 1724 but escaped four times from prison, making him a public figure. Ultimately, he was caught, convicted, and hanged at Tyburn, the inability of the notorious Thief-Taker General Jonathan Wild to control Sheppard, and injuries suffered by Wild at the hands of Sheppards colleague, Joseph Blueskin Blake, led to Wilds downfall. Sheppard was as renowned for his attempts to escape from prison as he was for his crimes, an autobiographical Narrative, thought to have been ghostwritten by Daniel Defoe, was sold at his execution, quickly followed by popular plays. The character of Macheath in John Gays The Beggars Opera was based on Sheppard and he returned to the public consciousness around 1840, when William Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel entitled Jack Sheppard, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. Sheppard was born in Whites Row, in Londons Spitalfields and he was baptised on 5 March, the day after he was born, at St Dunstans, Stepney, suggesting a fear of infant mortality by his parents, perhaps because the newborn was weak or sickly. His parents named him after a brother, John, who had died before his birth. In life, he was known as Jack, or even Gentleman Jack or Jack the Lad. He had a brother, Thomas, and a younger sister. Their father, a carpenter, died while Sheppard was young, unable to support her family without her husbands income, Jacks mother sent him to Mr Garretts School, a workhouse near St Helens Bishopsgate, when he was six years old. Sheppard was sent out as an apprentice to a cane-chair maker, taking a settlement of 20 shillings. He was sent out to a second cane-chair maker, but Sheppard was treated badly, finally, when Sheppard was 10, he went to work as a shop-boy for William Kneebone, a wool draper with a shop on the Strand. Sheppards mother had been working for Kneebone since her husbands death, Kneebone taught Sheppard to read and write and apprenticed him to a carpenter, Owen Wood, in Wych Street, off Drury Lane in Covent Garden. Sheppard signed his seven-year indenture on 2 April 1717, by 1722, Sheppard was showing great promise as a carpenter. Aged 20, he was a man, only 54 and lightly built. He had a face with large, dark eyes, a wide mouth. Despite a slight stutter, his wit made him popular in the taverns of Drury Lane and he served five unblemished years of his apprenticeship but then began to be led into crime
7.
Barrel organ
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A barrel organ is a mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated. The pieces of music are encoded onto wooden barrels, which are analogous to the keyboard of the pipe organ. There are many names for the organ, such as hand organ, cylinder organ, box organ, street organ, grinder organ. While many of these refer to the physical operation of the crank. The term hurdy-gurdy is sometimes applied to a small, portable barrel organ that was frequently played by organ grinders and buskers. Although the hurdy-gurdy is also powered by a crank and often used by street performers, another key difference is that the hurdy-gurdy player is free to play any tune he or she desires, while the barrel organist is generally confined to pre-programmed tunes. Some also confuse the barrel organ with the organ or calliope. In the United Kingdom barrel pianos, particularly those played in the streets, are frequently called barrel organs, the pieces of music are encoded onto the barrel using metal pins and staples. Pins are used for notes, and staples of varying lengths for longer notes. Each barrel usually carried several different tunes, pinning such barrels was something of an art form, and the quality of the music produced by a barrel organ is largely a function of the quality of its pinning. The organ barrels must be sturdy to maintain precise alignment over time, damage to the barrel, such as warpage, would have a direct effect on the music produced. The size of the barrel will depend on the number of notes in the organ, the more notes, the longer the barrel. The longer the tune, the greater the diameter, since the music is hard-coded onto the barrel, the only way for a barrel organ to play a different set of tunes is to replace the barrel with another one. While not an operation, barrels are unwieldy and expensive. A set of levers called keys is positioned just above the surface of the barrel, each key corresponds to one pitch. A rod is connected to the rear of each key, the other end of the rod is a metal pin which operates a valve within the wind chest. When the instrument is played, offsets on the crank shaft cause bellows to open, a reservoir/regulator maintains a constant pressure. A worm gear on the crank shaft causes the barrel to rotate slowly and its pins and staples lift the fronts of the keys
8.
Franz Schubert
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Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. Schubert died before his 32nd birthday, but was prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of six hundred secular vocal works, seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music. Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a small circle of admirers in Vienna. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century. Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund, Vienna, Archduchy of Austria on 31 January 1797, of Franz Theodors fourteen children, nine died in infancy. Their father was a teacher, and his school in Lichtental had numerous students in attendance. Though he was not recognised or even trained as a musician. At age six, Franz began to receive instruction from his father. His formal musical education started around the same time and his father taught him basic violin technique, and his brother Ignaz gave him piano lessons. The boy seemed to more from an acquaintance with a friendly joiners apprentice who took him to a neighbouring pianoforte warehouse where Franz could practice on better instruments. He also played viola in the string quartet, with brothers Ferdinand and Ignaz on first and second violin. Franz wrote his earliest string quartets for this ensemble, young Schubert first came to the attention of Antonio Salieri, then Viennas leading musical authority, in 1804, when his vocal talent was recognized. In October 1808, he became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt through a choir scholarship, at the Stadtkonvikt, he was introduced to the overtures and symphonies of Mozart, and the symphonies of Joseph Haydn and his younger brother Michael. His exposure to these and lesser works, combined with occasional visits to the opera, one important musical influence came from the songs by Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg, an important Lieder composer of the time. The precocious young student wanted to modernize them, as reported by Joseph von Spaun, Schuberts friendship with Spaun began at the Stadtkonvikt and lasted throughout his short life. In those early days, the financially well-off Spaun furnished the impoverished Schubert with much of his manuscript paper, in the meantime, his genius began to show in his compositions. Schubert was occasionally permitted to lead the Stadtkonvikts orchestra, and Salieri decided to start training him privately in music theory, for male voices and orchestra, and his first symphony
9.
Louis Armstrong
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Louis Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo or Satch, was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s and he was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to cross over and he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society which were restricted for black men of his era. Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4,1900, although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date, August 4,1901, was discovered by the researcher Tad Jones through the examination of baptismal records. Armstrong was born into a family in New Orleans, Louisiana. He spent his youth in poverty, in a neighborhood known as the Battlefield. His father, William Armstrong, abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and his mother, Mary Mayann Albert, then left Louis and his younger sister, Beatrice Armstrong Collins, in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong, and at times his uncle Isaac. At five, he moved back to live with his mother, her relatives and he attended the Fisk School for Boys, where he most likely had early exposure to music. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille, after dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also started to get into trouble, Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong to play by ear at Dago Tonys Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. It has given me something to live for and he also worked for a Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys, who had a junk-hauling business and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him like family, knowing he lived without a father and he later wrote a memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La. the Year of 1907. Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them, how to live—real life, professor Peter Davis instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Eventually, Davis made Armstrong the band leader, the home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen-year-old Louis began to draw attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he was released from the home, living again with his father and new stepmother, Gertrude, Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponces, where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night, later, he played in brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and began traveling with the well-regarded band of Fate Marable, which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as going to the University, in 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Orys band, Armstrong replaced him
10.
Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
11.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
12.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
