One of the vicarious pleasures of enjoying phono discs is appreciating the record label design. Throughout the history of recorded sound, the companies that release records have created trademarked identities for their products. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be reference book that thoroughly documents this practice. The Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound does include several black and white examples.
We still maintain a collection of several thousand long playing records. Recordings of music by François Couperin, a French baroque composer and keyboard player, show us some striking examples of this artwork. Baroque classical music is regarded as a refined art form and it has been released by some of the finer classical record labels.
The L'oiseau lyre logo features the distinctive lyre birds in profile as bookends. The word Telefunken is of German coinage and is made up of the prefix "tele" (far-off) and "funken" meaning sparks. Their logo features multiply symmetrical electrical bolts surrounding the brand name broken into three syllables inside a diamond. Titanic is an American label that has specialized in baroque music. The feature the eponymous ocean liner on their label art.
Our collection of long playing records is available to borrow from the Library.
Chamber Music of François Couperin (Titanic Records, p1978).
Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound by Frank Hoffmann, editor (Routledge, 2005).
Les nations / François Couperin (Oiseau-Lyre, 1960)
Les Nations: 1726 / François Couperin (Telefunken, 1969).
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