and the sigh of melancholia . . . the ring of whooping cough and 
the hack of the consumptive. It will be an expert in insanity, 
distinguishing between the laugh of the maniac and drivel of 
the idiot. . . . It will accomplish this feat in the anteroom, while 
the physician is busying himself with his last patient.” In 
practice, however, the phonograph stayed with the voices of 
the Signori Foghornis, the basso-tenores, robusto-profundos.

     Recording facilities did not presume to touch anything so 
subtle as an orchestra until after the First War. Long before 
this, one enthusiast looked to the record to rival the 
photograph album and to hasten the happy day when “future 
generations will be able to condense within the space of twenty 
minutes a tone-picture of a single lifetime: five minutes of a 
child’s prattle, five of the boy’s exultations, five of the man’s 
reflections, and five from the feeble utterances of the