On this date in 1888, one of the first phonograph recordings ever made, Sir Arthur Sullivan‘s “The Lost Chord,” was revealed to the press in London.

You can hear it here. It starts out a little rough but gets better: it’s a really remarkable experience to listen to a 122 year old recording.

Frye notes of the “lost chord” in “Music and the Visual Arts,” “Like Sullivan, [Mendelsohn] thought the diminished seventh was the lost chord.”

Diminished seventh on C here.