Gramophone (magazine)

Gramophone is a magazine published monthly[1] in London, devoted to classical music, particularly to reviews of recordings. It was founded in 1923 by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie[2] who continued to edit the magazine until 1961.[3] It was acquired by Haymarket in 1999.[4] In 2013 the Mark Allen Group became the publisher.[5]

Gramophone
EditorMartin Cullingford
CategoriesClassical music
FrequencyMonthly
PublisherMark Allen Group
First issue1923
CountryUnited Kingdom
Based inLondon, England
LanguageEnglish
Websitewww.gramophone.co.uk
ISSN0017-310X

The magazine presents the Gramophone Awards each year to the classical recordings which it considers the finest in a variety of categories.

On its website Gramophone claims to be: "The world's authority on classical music since 1923." This used to appear on the front cover of every issue; recent editions have changed the wording to "The world's best classical music reviews."

Its circulation, including digital subscribers, was 24,380 in 2014.[6]

Listings and the Gramophone Hall of Fame

Apart from the annual Gramophone Classical Music Awards, each month features a dozen recordings as Gramophone Editor's Choice (now Gramophone Choice). Then, in the annual Christmas edition, there is a review of the year's recordings where each critic selects four or five recordings, and these selections make up the Gramophone Critics' Choice. In April 2012, Gramophone launched its Hall of Fame, an annual listing of the men and women (artists, producers, engineers, A&R directors and label founders) who have contributed to the classical records industry. The first 50 were revealed in the May 2012 issue and on Gramophone’s website, and each year will see another intake into the Hall of Fame.[7]

Parody

The liner notes to Glenn Gould's 1968 recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony transcribed for solo piano by Liszt included "four imaginary reviews" of that record. One of these reviews, which purports to be from "the English magazine The Phonograph", includes this passage:

Unusual recordings of the Beethoven Fifth are, of course, no novelty to the British collector. One calls to mind that elegiac statement Sir Joshua committed to the gramophone in his last years as well as that splendidly spirited rendition transcribed under actual concert conditions by the Newcastle-on-Tyne Light Orchestra upon the occasion of the inadvertent air-alarm of 27 August 1939 [...] The entire undertaking smacks of that incorrigible American pre-occupation with exuberant gesture and is quite lacking in those qualities of autumnal repose which a carefully judged interpretation of this work should offer.[8]

Archive

In late 2012, Gramophone announced the launch of a new archive service.[9] Subscribers to the digital edition are now able to read complete PDFs of every issue of the magazine dating back to its launch in 1923; previously only OCR text versions of archive magazine articles were provided.

References
  1. Howard Cox; Simon Mowatt (2007). "Technological change and innovation in consumer magazine publishing" (PDF). Technology Analysis and Strategic Management. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
  2. "Compton Mackenzie". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  3. "Compton Mackenzie". Pengion Books. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  4. Gramophone September 1999, page 2
  5. "Mark Allen Group acquires Gramophone". inpublishing.co.uk. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
  6. Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK), 31 December 2014.
  7. "Gramophone Hall of Fame". Gramophone. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
  8. Gould, Glenn (1990). Page, Tim (ed.). The Glenn Gould Reader. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 57–58. ISBN 0-679-73135-0.
  9. "Gramophone launches new digital archive app". Gramophone. Haymarket Consumer Media. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
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