NYPR Archives & Preservation
Edward Tatnall Canby: Reviewer, Critic, Audiophile, Conductor, Teacher & Host
WNYC music critic, reviewer, audiophile, and host Edward Tatnall Canby (1912-1998) began his 25-year stint at WNYC in 1946. His show, The New Recordings, was described that first year as "a program of wide-ranging comment on music in general and the new records in particular." It was based on his weekly column in The Saturday Review. The name of the program was changed and is probably best recalled as Recordings, E.T.C.
The Saturday Review column was also the basis of a 1952 book: The Saturday Review Home Book of Recorded Music and Sound Reproduction. It was written by Canby with C.G. Burke and Irving Kolodin. In it Canby writes:
There are ways of listening to recorded music that involve quite different values from "live" listening. Never, then, confuse recorded performance with "live." Open your mental ears to a recording's own values, without prejudice. Search, not for a "concert hall" sound, not to convert your living room into a spacious auditorium such as it obviously can never be; but knowing that the recording is basically an ingenious trompe-l'oreille, a fooling-of-the-ear, give it aid in its own terms.
Canby was an early exponent of electronic music who brought many WNYC listeners their first earfuls of Stockhausen, Dockstader, and Moog. The above program is one such example from November 25th, 1962, where he features Dockstader's, Luna Park. In the September 1955 edition of Audio magazine, Canby wrote of his early years at WNYC:
I soon found that the politic way to get along, with my crotchety ideas, was to bring along my own assistant from outside to do the real dirty work --the mixing and fading -- and this system proved fine for all concerned, especially the WNYC engineers who, after all, had very few trained musical minds between them, nor was there any reason why they should.
By the early 1950s, Canby shifted production to his own home studio. He continued to use acetate tape for his show long after mylar and polyester had been on the market, probably because it always snapped clean and did not stretch if there were any mishaps during rewinding.
The recording critic also wrote reviews for Harper's Magazine (1952-1959) and album notes for Nonesuch. Absorbed by the relationship between music and audio equipment, he contributed a regular column to Audio magazine from 1948-1996. An audiophile, he engineered and produced all his WNYC programs favoring acetate-based tape over polyester. Canby was also a well-known choral director and founded the Canby Singers in 1957. He taught at Princeton University and Finch College. After leaving WNYC's air, he continued to broadcast over WNCN in New York.
