''The Record Guide'' was an English reference work that listed, described, and evaluated

gramophone A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

recordings of classical music in the 1950s. It was a precursor to modern guides such as ''

The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

''.

Publication history

The guide was conceived and written by

Edward Sackville-West Edward Charles Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville (13 November 1901 – 4 July 1965) was a British music critic, novelist and, in his last years, a member of the House of Lords. Musically gifted as a boy, he was attracted as a young man to a lit ...

and the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor. Their aim, as set out in the preface to the first edition in 1951, was "to try to supply a guide-book to the vast available repertory of the gramophone". The book ran to 763 pages, but nevertheless confined its coverage to records available in Britain in the domestic catalogues up to and including December, 1950. A reviewer wrote of the first edition: "It is not an encyclopaedia … for the principle of it is selective rather than comprehensive. We cannot, therefore, fairly charge the authors with omissions other than those which are inadvertent. The point is made with subtlety in the introduction. 'Inadvertent omissions there are bound to be, in spite of every effort to avoid them but it should not be assumed by the reader that an unquoted record has been simply overlooked. It is much more likely to have been excluded deliberately.'" The book considers recordings in alphabetical order of composer. Each composer section begins with an introduction assessing and describing the composer's works, after which the recordings are described and evaluated, using a star system, with two stars as the top rating. Of the introductions, the reviewer of ''

The Gramophone ''Gramophone'' is a magazine published monthly in London, devoted to classical music, particularly to reviews of recordings. It was founded in 1923 by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie who continued to edit the magazine until 1961. It was a ...

'' wrote, "these paragraphs vary from a few lines to a couple of pages (the length being unrelated to the importance of the composer) and anyone unfamiliar with the authors would not have to read far before realising that two exceptionally intelligent musical minds had been at work."Robertson, Alec,
Review of The Record Guide
''The Gramophone'', September 1951, p. 11 To the keep the guide current, Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor produced interim updates, ''The Record Year'' in 1952 and 1953. At this time the

long playing record The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and ...

was being introduced, but records were also being issued in the old 78 r.p.m. format. By 1955 the number of new releases threatened to overwhelm the authors, who recruited two younger colleagues to help them, Andrew Porter and William Mann. Between them they produced a full new edition of ''The Record Guide'' in 1955, running to 957 pages,Robertson, Alec,
Review
''The Gramophone'', January 1956, p. 23 and a final supplement in 1956. Four years after the last in the series of ''The Record Guide'' was published, three young musical writers emulated its layout and ''modus operandi'' in ''The Stereo Record Guide'', which has evolved into ''

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Record Guide, The English non-fiction books Music guides Classical music discographies