Ramiro Arguello wrote:

>I just read about J. Brahms and I quote:
>
> He also may have enjoyed the distinction of being the first of
> the great composers to have his voice recorded, as well as his
> work, using the wax cylinders of contemporary Thomas Alva Edison.
>
>Does any of the listers heard of knows about this?

Try the URL http://www.measure.demon.co.uk/sounds/Brahms.html and you
find this (with mp3s!):

   "Acoustic Recording of Brahms

   Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was the first great musician
   to have his voice recorded.  Edison invented the phonograph
   twenty years before Brahms's death and fortunately his invention
   was used to record famous people of the time.  The recordings
   were made on cylinders and were of poor sound quality.  For
   the last 20 seconds of this half minute extract Brahms can
   be heard playing part of his Hungarian Dance #1.

   Note: The cylinder music recording has been analyzed - see
   for example the technical article "Brahms at the Piano: An
   Analysis of Data from the Brahms Cylinder" by Jonathan Berger
   and Charles Nichols, Leonardo Music Journal, vol 4 pp23-30,
   1994.  Some people doubt that the speaker is Brahms."

Robert