Hear Tchaikovsky’s real voice, captured in rare 1890 recording on Edison cylinder

15 August 2025, 13:11 | Updated: 20 August 2025, 15:08

Transport yourself back to 1890 with this piece of extraordinary archive audio...

We know the melodies that soared through his mind, but did you ever think you would be able to hear Tchaikovsky’s actual voice?

Well, it turns out you can.

Take a listen to Tchaikovsky talking to some fellow musicians on the phonograph cylinder in 1890, which had been invented by Thomas Edison in 1877.

In the recording, he speaks with composers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein, pianist and conductor Vasily Safonov and music-loving businessman Julius H Block. And between them, they make silly noises and chat.

Read more: Hear the ‘first’ recording of classical music

(RARE!) Voice of Tchaikowsky & Anton Rubinstein On Edison Cylinder ! (1890)

Take a look at the translated transcription of their funny conversation:

Rubinstein: What a wonderful thing [the phonograph].
Block: Finally.
Lawrowskaja: A disgusting…how he dares slyly to name me.
Safonov: (Sings a scale incorrectly).
Tchaikovsky: This trill could be better.
Lawrowskaja: (sings).
Tchaikovsky: Block is good, but Edison is even better.
Lawrowskaja: (sings) A‑o, a‑o.
Safonow: (In German) Peter Jurgenson in Moskau.
Tchaikovsky: Who just spoke?

The recording is held at the Tchaikovsky House in Russia.

Read more: Listen to one of the earliest musical recordings known to exist

Edison’s cylinder worked by etching audio recordings onto wax cylinders which could then be reproduced when played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph.

This is not the first way that the human voice was recorded, however: it was first recorded in smoke.

Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville created a device called a phonautograph, which etched visual sound waves onto paper covered in soot and smoke from a burning oil lamp.