Mozart Violinkonzerte (Musical Masterpiece Society) album art
“M as in #Midolle, #Monstre and #Mozart” — ellmer.stefan
Thanks, Stefan, for pointing me to this early cover design by Ivan Chermayeff — maybe his first? — created in his mid twenties for a recording of Mozart’s Violin Concertos No. 3 in G major (K. 216) and No. 4 in D major (K. 218), played by violinist Manoug Parikian with the Hamburg Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Walter Goehr.
The image above shows the German release by Musical Masterpiece Society (MMS-2092, no date). The giant M is an adaptation of a glyph included in Jean Midolle’s Alphabet Lapidaire Monstre from 1835. Technically, this is not a font in use, but rather lettering based on a piece of lettering (although the ALM has been made into a film font at some point). Learn more about the alphabet lithographs of Jean Midolle in Dan Reynolds’s article for the Letterform Archive.
The text appears to be in Photo-Lettering’s Roman Compressed No. 3, a narrow Modern/Scotch whose exact origins have yet to be determined. Dennis Ortiz-Lopez offers a digital version as OL Roman Compressed.
Shown below is the French version of the record, released by Guilde Internationale du Disque in 1958. It has basically the same design, but in more restrained colors. Curiously, Chermayeff’s first name here is missing from his signature.
For comparison: The M from Midolle’s original alphabet. The bottom third of each letter shows surnames of famous writers and musicians which begin with the letter: M as in Mozart and Meierbeer. Courtesy of Letterform Archive.
1 Comment on “Mozart Violinkonzerte (Musical Masterpiece Society) album art”
Here’s another, looser interpretation of Midolle’s Alphabet Lapidaire Monstre, drawn by John Alcorn (1935–1992) for Murray McCain’s Books!
Spotted on Jennifer Kennard’s fabulous Letterology.