What is a record producer? There is a degree of mystery and uncertainty about just what goes on behind the studio door. Some producers are seen as Svengali-like figures manipulating artists into mass consumer product. Producers are sometimes seen as mere technicians whose job is simply to set up a few microphones and press the record button. Close examination of the recording process will show how far this is from a complete picture. Artists are special—they come with an inspiration, and a talent, but also with a variety of complications, and in many ways a recording studio can seem the least likely place for creative expression and for an affective performance to happen. The task of the record producer is to engage with these artists and their songs and turn these potentials into form through the technology of the recording studio. The purpose of the exercise is to disseminate this fixed form to an imagined audience—generally in the hope that this audience will prove to be real. Finding an audience is the role of the record company. A record producer must also engage with the commercial expectations of the interests that underwrite a recording. This dissertation considers three fields of interest in the recording process: the performer and the song; the technology of the recording context; and the commercial ambitions of the record company—and positions the record producer as a nexus at the interface of all three. The author reports his structured recollection of five recordings, with three different artists, that all achieved substantial commercial success. The processes are considered from the author‘s perspective as the record producer, and from inception of the project to completion of the recorded work. What were the processes of engagement? Do the actions reported conform to the template of nexus? This dissertation proposes that in all recordings the function of producer/nexus is present and necessary—it exists in the interaction of the artistry and the technology. The art of record production is to engage with these artists and the songs they bring and turn these potentials into form.

During the 1950s the experience of recording was transformed by a series of technical innovations including tape recording, editing, the LP record, and stereo sound. Within a decade recording had evolved into an art form in which multiple takes and editing were essential components in the creation of an illusory ideal performance. The British recording industry was at the forefront of development, and the rapid growth in recording activity throughout the 1950s as companies built catalogues of LP records, at first in mono but later in stereo, had a profound impact on the music profession in Britain. Despite this, there are few documented accounts of working practices, or of the experiences of those involved in recording at this time, and the subject has received sparse coverage in academic publications. This thesis studies the development of the recording of classical music in Britain in the long 1950s, the core period under discussion being 1948 to 1964. It begins by considering the current literature on recording, the cultural history of the period in relation to classical music, and the development of recording in the 1950s. Oral history informs the central part of the thesis, based on the analysis of 89 interviews with musicians, producers, engineers and others involved in recording during the 1950s and 1960s. The thesis concludes with five case studies, four of significant recordings - Tristan und Isolde (1952), Peter Grimes (1958), Elektra (1966-67), and Scheherazade (1964) - and one of a television programme, The Anatomy of a Record (1975), examining aspects of the recording process. The thesis reveals the ways in which musicians, producers, and engineers responded to the challenges and opportunities created by advances in technology, changing attitudes towards the aesthetics of performance on record, and the evolving nature of practices and relationships in the studio. It also highlights the wider impact of recording on musical practice and its central role in helping to raise standards of musical performance, develop audiences for classical music, and expand the repertoire in concert and on record.