Columbia Masterworks Records

2025-03-16T03:49:46Z

2600:1700:E5D0:A9A0:31BB:8194:4A40:8589:

{{Short description|American record label}}
{{more citations needed|date=February 2010}}
{{Infobox record label 
| name = Columbia Masterworks
| parent = [[Columbia Records]]
| founded = {{Start date|1924}}
| founder =
| defunct = {{End date|1980}}
| distributor =
| genre = [[Classical music|Classical]]
| country = U.S.
| location = New York City
}}

'''Columbia Masterworks''' was a [[record label]] started in 1924 by [[Columbia Records]]. In 1980, it was separated from the Columbia label and renamed CBS Masterworks. In 1990, it was revived as [[Sony Classical]] after its sale to the [[Sony Corporation]].

==History==

When Columbia Records undertook the project of releasing great [[classical music]] for domestic sale in America, the label was still a year away from an "electrical" recording process. In November 1924, the first eight releases had been recorded acoustically. These first eight sets included five symphonic recordings—[[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]]'s [[Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven)|Seventh]] and [[Symphony No. 8 (Beethoven)|Eighth]] Symphonies, [[Antonín Dvořák|Dvorak]]'s "[[Symphony No. 9 (Dvořák)|From the New World]]", [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]'s [[Symphony No. 39 (Mozart)|E-Flat Major (No. 39)]], and [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]]'s "[[Symphony No. 6 (Tchaikovsky)|Pathetique]]". Three recordings by quartets were also part of that initial offering.<ref name="PMR 1926 Oct" /> More releases followed in March 1925, and a staggering 18 sets were added that fall. The prices of these sets varied with the number of included discs, from $4.50 to $10.50.

Under the leadership of Columbia's president [[Goddard Lieberson]], who later added the rest of the Columbia label to his portfolio, a great many notable classical artists made contributions to the Columbia Masterworks library, such as the conductors [[Leonard Bernstein]], [[Eugene Ormandy]] and [[George Szell]]; pianists [[Walter Gieseking]], [[Oscar Levant]] and [[Glenn Gould]]; and the organist [[E. Power Biggs]]. Composers [[Aaron Copland]] and [[Igor Stravinsky]] also appeared conducting their own works.

==Broadway albums==
[[File:Caesar-Columbia-M325-complete-cover.jpg|thumb|[[Mercury Theatre]] original cast recording for ''[[Caesar (Mercury Theatre)|Caesar]]'' (Columbia Masterworks M-325, 1939)]]
In addition to classical music, Columbia also issued [[cast recording]]s, [[soundtrack album]]s, and [[spoken-word]] recordings under the Masterworks name. One of the first [[spoken word album]]s of historical significance was the Masterworks release of ten scenes from the [[Mercury Theatre]]'s Broadway production of ''[[Caesar (Mercury Theatre)|Caesar]]'' (Columbia Masterworks Set No. 325), recorded in March 1938<ref name="Higham">{{cite book |last=Higham |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Higham (biographer) |title=Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius |url=https://archive.org/details/orsonwellesrisea00high |url-access=registration |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]]|location=New York |date=1985 |isbn=0-312-31280-6}}</ref>{{Rp|340}} and released in 1939.<ref name="Welles TIOW">{{cite book |last1=Welles |first1=Orson |authorlink1=Orson Welles |last2=Bogdanovich |first2=Peter |authorlink2=Peter Bogdanovich |last3=Rosenbaum |first3=Jonathan |authorlink3=Jonathan Rosenbaum |title=[[This is Orson Welles]] |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] Publishers |location=New York |date=1992 |isbn=0-06-016616-9}}</ref>{{Rp|349}} Sales were such that Columbia engaged Welles and the Mercury Theatre to produce four Shakespeare plays (''[[Twelfth Night]]'', ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'', ''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]'' and ''[[Macbeth]]'') for the phonograph in 1939 and 1940. The sets were opulently bound and included a hardcover book.<ref name="Higham"/>{{Rp|339–341}}

[[File:Columbia-Masterworks-Othello-LIFE-Ad.jpg|thumb|Advertisement for the Columbia Masterworks release of ''Othello'' starring [[Paul Robeson]] (1945)]]
The first wildly successful [[spoken word album]] was a 1948 Masterworks entry, the first ''I Can Hear It Now'' album (Columbia M-800 and ML-4095), edited by [[Edward R. Murrow]] and [[Fred W. Friendly]] and supervised by former CBS staffer J.G. Gude. The album would lead to three sequels, the ''Hear It Now'' program on the [[CBS Radio Network]] in 1950 and the CBS-TV successor, ''[[See It Now]]'', in 1951. Columbia Masterworks was also the first recording company to release an album of a nearly complete stage production—the record-breaking 1943 Broadway revival of [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Othello]]'', starring [[Paul Robeson]], [[José Ferrer]] and [[Uta Hagen]]. This was released in 1945 as a 17-record 78-RPM album in two binders (M-MM-554), and afterwards as a three-LP set (SL-153). Many years later, in 1962, Columbia Masterworks would release a four-LP album of the complete ''[[Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]'', starring its original Broadway cast: Uta Hagen, [[Arthur Hill (Canadian actor)|Arthur Hill]], [[George Grizzard]] and [[Melinda Dillon]]. And in 1964, Columbia Masterworks would release a complete album of the 1964 Broadway revival of ''[[Richard Burton's Hamlet]]'', starring [[Richard Burton]] and directed by [[John Gielgud]]—the longest-running ''Hamlet'' in Broadway history to date.

Columbia Masterworks' most successful Broadway album was the original cast recording of ''[[My Fair Lady]]'' (OL-5090, 1956), starring [[Rex Harrison]], [[Julie Andrews]], [[Stanley Holloway]] and [[Robert Coote]]. This first album was issued only in [[Monaural|mono]], but the first stereo recording of ''My Fair Lady''—featuring the same four stars, this time with the London cast—followed in 1959. And in 1964, Columbia Masterworks issued the film soundtrack album of the show, starring [[Rex Harrison]] and [[Audrey Hepburn]]'s "singing voice", [[Marni Nixon]]. The most successful film soundtrack release on Columbia Masterworks was the film version of ''[[West Side Story]]'', released as OS-2070 in 1961 and being certified triple-platinum as of 2017.<ref>riaa.org searchable database</ref> Next on the list is ''[[The Graduate Original Soundtrack|The Graduate]]'', released in 1968 as OS-3180, featuring the music of [[Simon & Garfunkel|Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel]], then the best-selling pop music act on the roster of the parent Columbia label. Partly as a result of the immense popularity of this release, Columbia Masterworks also released a spoken-word recording of excerpts from the soundtrack of the Dustin Hoffman film ''[[Little Big Man (film)|Little Big Man]]''.

Columbia Masterworks was also responsible for the original cast albums of ''[[Kiss Me, Kate]]'' (1948) and ''[[South Pacific (musical)|South Pacific]]'' (1949), as well as for the original [[West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast)|stage]] album of ''[[West Side Story (musical)|West Side Story]]'' (1957), and the original cast recordings of ''[[Gypsy: A Musical Fable|Gypsy]]'' (1959), ''[[The Sound of Music]]'' (again 1959), ''[[Flower Drum Song]]'' (1958), and ''[[Camelot (musical)|Camelot]]'' (1960). In 1946, Columbia Masterworks released the first album of ''[[Show Boat]]'' featuring the cast of an actual production of the show, not just one or two singers from it as had been done before. This 1946 revival of ''Show Boat'', which starred [[Jan Clayton]], [[Charles Fredericks]], [[Carol Bruce]], [[Ralph Dumke]], and [[Kenneth Spencer (singer)|Kenneth Spencer]], was the longest-running revival of a show up to that time. They also released a long series of [[Studio recording|studio cast album]]s of Broadway shows, such as ''[[The Student Prince]]'', ''[[The Desert Song]]'', ''[[Girl Crazy]]'', ''[[Oh, Kay!]]'', and again, ''Show Boat''.

==Electronic music==

Another genre that Columbia Masterworks released some seminal albums in was electronic music. Early 1964 saw the release of ''[[Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (album)|Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center]]'', a compilation of avant-garde electronic compositions created at the famed studio by [[Bulent Arel]], [[Milton Babbitt]], [[Vladimir Ussachevsky]], and others. In 1968, [[Wendy Carlos]]'s landmark electronic-music album ''[[Switched-On Bach]]'', containing transcriptions of a number of Bach's most famous compositions for the [[Moog synthesizer]], was issued on Columbia Masterworks, which continued to release Carlos's output until the mid-1980s. [[Terry Riley]]'s ''[[A Rainbow in Curved Air]]'' was released in the summer of 1969. [[Morton Subotnick]]'s ''Sidewinder'' followed in 1971. The label also released several other classical-meets-synthesiser albums in the wake of the ''Switched-On Bach'' success.

==1980 and later==
Columbia Masterworks was renamed [[CBS Masterworks]] in 1980 and separated from the Columbia label. In 1990, it was renamed [[Sony Classical]] because of the sale of CBS Records to the [[Sony Corporation]].

The Masterworks name lives on in the label's Broadway album label, [[Masterworks Broadway]] as well as the name of the label's parent [[Sony Masterworks]].

==See also==
* [[List of record labels]]

==References==
{{reflist|30em|refs=
<ref name="PMR 1926 Oct">{{cite magazine |ref={{SfnRef|Jell, October|1926|pp=11–12}} |last1=Jell |first1=George Clarence "Clare" (1881–1955) |date=October 1926 |title=The Columbia Library of Masterworks |magazine=[[Phonograph Monthly Review]] |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=11–12 }} Retrieved February 10, 2018.
<ol type="i" start="1">
<li> {{cite book |date=October 1926 |title=''Via Internet Archive'' |url=https://archive.org/stream/PMR_1_1/1_1#page/n12/mode/1up |series=([[National Recording Preservation Board]]) }} {{free access}}</li>
<li> {{cite book |date=October 1926 |title=''Via Google Books'' |url={{GBurl|8Cw5AAAAIAAJ|p=11}} |series=([[Stanford University Libraries]]) }} {{free access}}</li></ol></ref>
}}
==External links==
{{Commons category|Columbia Masterworks Records}}
* [http://www.78rpmcommunity.com/colmasterworks/ The Columbia Masterworks 78rpm Album Discography]

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Columbia Records]]
[[Category:American record labels]]
[[Category:Record labels established in 1924]]
[[Category:Record labels disestablished in 1980]]
[[Category:Classical music record labels]]
[[Category:Soundtrack record labels]]
[[Category:Spoken word record labels]]

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Columbia Masterworks Records