Block, Julius

Julius Block was born in 1858 in the family of a German businessman in Pietermaritzburg , in the British colony Natal , now in South Africa . My father was the owner of a company engaged in the distribution in Russia of novelties of foreign technical equipment (bicycles, typewriters and sewing machines, etc.). Julius grew up in St. Petersburg , was educated in London and New York . He was going to become a musician, but at the insistence of his father he went into business, remaining a music lover and an amateur musician (according to one information, he was a “good violinist” ^[1] , according to others - a pianist ^[2] ) ^{[3] [4] [5]} .

Form of the trading company "J. Block ". 1890

In the 1880-1890s, he headed the Jules Blok family company (The J. Blok Partnership), according to historians, "contributed a lot to the scientific and technological progress in Russia" ^[6] . In 1879, the company first imported bicycles to Russia, and in 1885, Remington typewriters ^[7] . The Moscow shop of the trading house was located on Kuznetsky Most ^[2] , the Petersburg store on Bolshaya Morskaya Street ^{[8] [K 1]} .

Julius Block (in Russia he was called Julius Ivanovich) actively used technical innovations distributed by his company - being fond of cycling , he popularized it in the Russian Empire. In 1883, he became the winner in the first bicycle race in Russia at 1.5 versts ^{[K 2]} ; in 1884 - the organizer of the Moscow Society of Amateur Cyclists (MOVL) and the author of its charter ^[10] . In the early 1890s, he wrote several books on the importance of the bicycle for health, riding instruction and car care ^[3] .

In 1889, Blok visited the laboratory of Thomas Edison in New Jersey , received the permission of the inventor to distribute a phonograph in Russia. He presented the invention at the court of the Russian Emperor Alexander III ^{[K 3]} , demonstrated the apparatus in music and scientific societies - the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories , the Imperial Academy of Sciences , etc. ^{[1] [5] [12]} He arranged “phonographic evenings” in Moscow and St. Petersburg , made the first in Russia sound recordings of musical and recital performances, voices of prominent contemporaries ^{[5] [12] [K 4]} .

In 1899, Blok left Russia and moved to the German Empire . He lived in Berlin , where he also made phonographic recordings. In the 1920-1930s he lived in Switzerland , in Vevey . During these years, he wrote memoirs about prominent contemporaries and the circumstances of phonographic recordings that made up his collection ^{[1] [4] [3] [5]} .

He died in 1934 in Switzerland ^{[15] [5]} .

Blok led Edison's Album, asking contemporaries to leave their impressions of the invention. Among the reviews that left in the album were P. I. Tchaikovsky , L. N. Tolstoy , N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov , A. G. Rubinstein and others. P. I. Tchaikovsky described the device as “a most amazing, most beautiful, interesting invention.” , among all those who honor the 19th century ” ^{[1] [4]} , L. N. Tolstoy predicted that the phonograph would mark a new“ era in the history of mankind ” ^{[16] [5]} .

According to the memoirs of a contemporary, musicologist, composer and music critic L. L. Sabaneyev , the recorded people, as a rule, were dissatisfied with the recordings of their voices. S. I. Taneev , after listening to the recording, “began to laugh wildly”:

“Really, I really have such a nasty voice!” It will end with me taking a vow of silence. Such muck! <...>

-Lev Nikolaevich was also dissatisfied with his voice, ”said Yuli Ivanovich. - He told me that he did not expect that he had such a deaf and old man and, in addition, still an evil voice. Here, he says, he listened and now I know that I am an old man, and even an evil old man ^[2] .

According to the collector, many of the musicians he recorded “felt uncomfortable with the phonograph” and were disappointed with the recordings. “The most severe criticism of the performer comes from the phonograph,” said Professor I.V. Grzhimali, professor at the Moscow Conservatory . " Gare aux executant! ”- warned A. G. Rubinstein , flatly refused to record his game, not wanting“ his mistakes to be perpetuated ” ^[17] .

The Julius Blok collection contains phonographic recordings made by him from 1889 to 1927 in Russia, Germany and Switzerland. The collector recorded solo vocal and instrumental performances and musical ensembles, artistic readings, theatrical monologues and dialogues, the voices of composers, writers, artists and other famous contemporaries ^{[6] [3] [18]} .

The recordings were made on wax rollers that held up to four minutes of sound, which affected the choice of fragments of works for recording. The recordings began with a brief presentation containing the name of the performer, the title of the work, the date and place of recording, the latter often being indicated: “In the apartment of Julia Ivanovich Blok” ^{[3] [19]} .

The philophonist recorded the voices of composers P.I. Tchaikovsky , N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov , A.G. Rubinshtein , S.I. Taneyev , A.S. Arensky , conductor A. Nikish , artists of the Maly Theater A. I. Yuzhin -Sumbatov , A.P. Lensky , writer L. N. Tolstoy , folk storytellers I. T. Ryabinin , I. A. Fedosova , singers E. A. Lavrovskaya , V. M. Samus , L. D. Donskoy , N.N. Figner , E. Gerhardt and musicians I.V. Grzhimali , A.A. Brandukov , A.N. Esipova , P.A. Pabst , L.D. Kreutzer , J. Heifetz , I. Hoffmann , E. Petri et al. ^{[6] [19] [3] [20] [18]}

Understanding the value of the collection he collected, in 1910 Blok sent Edison several wax rollers with notes, hoping for the inventor to make reliable copies, but later these rollers died in a laboratory fire ^{[15] [5] [21]} .

According to the testimony of the collector’s son, the collection of recordings of Julius Block was divided into three parts, one was sent by Blok to the University of Bern in Switzerland after the First World War , and the other to Warsaw . The third part later came to Berlin . Blok collectors and publishers John Maltese and his son John Anthony Maltese indicate that in 1930 Yu. Blok began negotiations with the phonogram archive of the Berlin Ethnological Museum about transferring the collection, transferred for trial to the museum has three wax rollers for making copies using the galvanization method. The company did not materialize due to financial difficulties and the ensuing death of a collector ^{[5] [22]} .

After the death of Blok in 1934, his daughter passed wax rolls with records to the phonogram archive of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. The collection was accompanied by an inventory called “Phonogrammothek” ( German: “Phonogrammothek” ), containing annotations of records and an indication of the number of boxes where the corresponding rollers were. This part of the collection (359 wax and 3 copper galvanic cylinders (matrices)) was stored in the Berlin phonogram archive until 1944, when due to the bombing of German cities by the allied aviation, it was evacuated to Silesia , in salt mines. The accompanying documentation remained in Berlin ^{[5] [23]} .

At the end of World War II, the Blok collection, among other “ trophy ” cultural values, fell into the Soviet Union , was in Moscow , then in Leningrad , in the Pushkin House . According to an inventory of a specially created commission led by musicologist V.E. Gippius, for 1949 the collection consisted of 14,478 units of storage ( 2273 original wax rollers, 5006 wax copies and 7199 copper plating cylinders), some of the wax rollers and copies were damaged ^[23] .

The contents of 2,000 wax rolls were copied onto magnetic films without being correlated with the inventory remaining in Berlin. In 1958, after the order to return the “trophy” cultural values, the materials of the Berlin phonogram archive were returned to the GDR . Some of the originals with voice recordings of figures of Russian culture remained in the Pushkin House ^[24] .

Foreign researchers and the family of J. Blok for a long time believed that the Berlin and Warsaw parts of the collection died in World War II , in the preface to the publication of Blok's memoirs, the son of the collector indicated that only the Swiss part of the collection was preserved in the museum of the University of Bern under the name “Musical and historical collection rare works and manuscripts of Tchaikovsky, Taneyev, Yuon, etc. Blok's library. Music workshop. University of Berlin ” ^{[19] [5] [25]} .

In the early 1990s, 24 phonographs with accompanying materials from the Block collection appeared at an auction in London, were acquired by New York collector Allen Koenigsberg ^{[4] [5] [26]} .

American publishers of sound recordings J. and J. A. Maltiza consider the fate of the roller containing the only surviving voice recording of P. I. Tchaikovsky to be the most interesting ^[5] . The history of its identification and attribution in 1997 was the subject of several works ^{[19] [29]} . The recording served as the basis for the short film “ Phonograph ” (2016; director Kirill Serebrennikov , the role of Yu. Blok was played by Ye. B. Kamenkovich ) ^[30] .

Some of the entries mentioned by the Block in the memoirs are absent in his inventory “Phonogram library” and were not found by the researchers ^[5] .

Blokovsky's “Edison's Album” is kept in the New York Public Library ^[31] , Blok’s correspondence with T. Edison is in the archives of the inventor in New Jersey ^[4] , and the letter of the philophonist to P. I. Tchaikovsky is in the composer's House Museum in Klin ^[1] .

Memoirs of Julius Blok about the history and circumstances of the creation of the collection and famous contemporaries were published in a small print run in the 1960s ^{[4] [6]} . In 1965, the manuscript was transferred by the son of a collector to Yale University ^[5] . In 1992, memoirs were published by Kabel Publishers ^[32] . In the 1990s – 2010s, translations of fragments of memoirs into Russian were published in Russian journals and collections ^{[33] [34] [35]} .

In 1985, the recordings made by Blok in 1894 by the narrator I.T. Ryabinin became part of the record “Epics of the Russian North. Narrators Ryabinin. Historical records of 1894, 1921, 1926. "firm" Melody "(MONO, M2046391007) ^[3] .

In 2008, the restored recordings from the Julius Block collection were released by the American company “HW Marston & Co” on the triple CD “At the dawn of sound recording: The Rollers of Julius Block” ( English “The dawn of recording: The Julius Block cylinders” ) ^{[4 ] [36] [12] [18]} .

In Russian

• Blok Yu. Manual on teaching riding a safe two-wheeled bicycle / Julius Blok. - M .: Tipo-lit. t-va I.N. Kushneryov and Co. °, 1891. - 8 p.
• Block Yu. Bicycle. Its importance for health, practical use, car care, etc. / Julius Blok. - M .: Tipo-lit. t.V. I.N. Kushnev and Co. °, 1892 .-- 249 p. - 2nd ed .: M .: Tipolithography of D. A. Bonch-Bruevich, 1897. - 225 p.
• Blok Yu. [Memoirs of P. I. Tchaikovsky] / trans. from English O. M. Smirnova, publ. L.Z. Korabelnikova // P.I. Tchaikovsky. Forgotten and new: Memoirs of contemporaries, new materials and documents. - M .: IIF "Peace and Culture", 1995. - Issue. 1 .-- S. 103-116.
• Blok Yu. I. Real Tolstoy // Tolstoy Collection - 2008: Materials of the XXXI International Tolstoy Readings dedicated to the 180th birthday of Leo Tolstoy: at 2 o’clock - Tula: Publishing House of the Tula State. pedagogical University of them. L.N. Tolstoy, 2008. - T. 2. - S. 13-19.
• Blok Yu. An assistant to music: [chapter from memoirs ] / Julius Blok; per. from English V.V. Zolotukhina // Theater: literary artist. journal - M. , 2015. - No. 18. - S. 232—237.

In English

• Block JH Mortals and immortals. Edison, Nikish, Tchaikofsky, Tolstoy. Episodes under three Tzars. - [ S. l. ], [[ S. a. ]].
• Block J. Mortals and Immortals: Edison, Nikisch, Tchaikofsky, Tolstoy. Episodes Under Three Tzars: [Unpublished manuscript] / Julius Block; with the compliments of Walter E. Block, 1965. - Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut. - HSR, ML300.4 B651 M84.
• Block J. Mortals and immortals. Edison, Nikisch, Tchaikofsky, Tolstoy. Episodes under three Tzars / Julius Block; Walter C. Block. - Rockville, Maryland: Kabel Publishers, 1992 .-- 257 p. - ISBN 978-0-930-32957-0 .

Articles

In Russian

• Aybinder A.G. Yu. I. Block. The present Tolstoy // Tolstoy collection - 2008: Materials of the XXXI International Tolstoy readings dedicated to the 180th birthday of Leo Tolstoy: at 2 o’clock - Tula: Publishing house of the Tula state. pedagogical University of them. L.N. Tolstoy, 2008 .-- V. 2. - P. 12-13.
• Weidman P. E. "We heard the voice of Tchaikovsky ..." // P. I. Tchaikovsky. Forgotten and new: almanac / Ministry of Culture Mosk. region., State. house-museum of P.I. Tchaikovsky in Klin. - Wedge, 2003. - Vol. 2. - S. 393—398.
• Zolotukhin V.V. Yuzhin and Lensky: early recordings of Russian actors // Theater: literary artist. journal - M. , 2015. - No. 18 (November) . - S. 229-231 .
• Kopytova G.V. Phonographic collection of Julia Blok: an anthology of musical performance of the late XIX - early XX centuries // Musicus: Bulletin of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory named after N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. - SPb. , 2009. - No. 3 . - S. 63-65 .
• Denisov V.N. On the phonographic recording of the voice of P.I. Tchaikovsky from the collection of the collector Julius Blok . - Bulletin of the Udmurt University. - 2016 .-- T. 26, no. 4. - S. 135-140. - (History and Philology).

In English

• Koenigsberg A. The Russian connection: Julius H. Block meets the Czar (Eng.) // Antique phonograph monthly. - 1992. - Vol. 10 , iss. 88 , no. 4 . - P. 3-9 .
• Wakin DJ Classical Ghosts, Audible Once Again // New York Times. - N. Y. , 2008. - Iss. October 24 .

Memoirs

• Sabaneev L. L. The first phonograph // Memory of Russia / Leonid Sabaneev. - M. , 2005.

• Weidman P.E. Tchaikovsky in the memoirs of his contemporaries (English) . Tchaikovsky: Life and work of a Russian composer. Date of treatment June 25, 2017.
• The dawn of recording: The Julius Block cylinders (neopr.) . Marston records. Date of treatment June 26, 2017.
• Maltese J., Maltese JA History of the Block cylinders . Marston records (2008). Date of treatment June 26, 2017.