Archival Sounds

Hundreds of rare tracks added to Archival Sound Recordings

World music – 13 new collections including unique field recordings from Botswana, Senegal, Zambia, Mozambique, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, China and Fiji.

Early Record Catalogues – 170 scanned images of record catalogues marketing early commercial recordings from 1898 to 1926.  All fully text searchable, these are an invaluable resource for studying recording history.

Case studies page - view our new videos showing how other people have been using primary source audio materials in teaching and research. If you’d like to be featured on this page yourself, tell us how Archival Sound Recordings has supported your work.

Recording of the Week: Any idea what a fogger is?

Any idea what a fogger is? Listen to this recording of a farm worker from Wiltshire to find out: http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0908X0022XX-0300V0.xml

A new series highlighting recordings selected by British Library experts or recommended by listeners This week, BL’s Jonnie Robinson, specialist in sociolinguistics & education, selects a recording from the Survey of English Dialects.

Living out fiction with Huxley and Beethoven

An interesting anecdote came in from one of our users:

“I'm a DH Lawrence expert, and was fascinated to find that you had, on the site, the recording of Beethoven's Op. 132 quartet, in A minor, which Aldous Huxley uses and describes in detail towards the end of his 1928 novel Point Counter Point - in which an influential recreation of Lawrence appears.

"In the novel, the character Spandrell is excited to discover that there has been a release, for the first time, of the quartet in question, played by Hungarian musicians: he tells the Lawrence character about it.

"The recording must be that by the Lâener quartet, issued commercially in 1927 or 1928. Rampion listens to the quartet with him; and they discuss the music of the third movement after each side has been played.

"On commercial LP or CD releases of archive music material, of course, such side breaks are disguised as far as possible. But the Archival Sound Recordings version contains these breaks, making it possible to sit with a copy of the 1928 novel and read it in exactly the way described.

"I don't think Huxley actually plays quite fair, in fact, as there are breaks he does not allow for! But I have never been able to access the Lâener Quartet actually 'on' 78, as it were, and it was a joy to find it on your site.”

Ginevra House, ASR Engagement Officer

Decca West Africa Recordings

900 recordings from the British Library’s holdings of the Decca West Africa yellow label series have recently been added to Archival Sound Recordings.  Issued on shellac disc between circa 1948 – 1961, the collection includes music recorded in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and possibly Togo. It encompasses a wide range of popular genres of the time including Highlife, Rumba, Calypso and early Nigerian jùjú as well as some more traditional performances.

Recording African music for an African market had only really begun in the late 1920s and was dominated by the various labels of the Gramophone Company, later EMI. Output was greatly reduced during World War 2 staff and other resources were employed for the war effort. Just as African musicians were beginning to formulate new styles, many bringing influences gained in service abroad, and often using new technologies that allowed them to plug into mains supplies, recording activity dried up. Decca Records, having the technological edge as a result of their “Full Frequency Range Recording” system (FFRR) launched their activities in the African market and quickly gained the upper hand with this series of yellow label discs. The collection therefore documents a period of intense competition between music industry majors that only came to an end as countries in the region began to obtain independence and opportunities for musicians broadened beyond colonial hold.

While the collection features recordings by some more well known artists, such as Kwaa Mensah, Kwashi Gatse, Famous Scrubbs and Spike Anyankor, it importantly also includes many more obscure artists – many of whom have long since passed away - thus providing a detailed picture of the musical scene in West Africa in this post-war, “end of empire” period.

Ginevra House, ASR Engagement Officer

Early Spoken Word Recordings

The newest spoken word collection on Archival Sound Recordings provides a journey back through some of the oldest commercial recordings held in the Sound Archive.

The Early Spoken Word collection features literary readings digitised from 78 rpm Linguaphone discs. The Linguaphone company, which is still going strong today, was founded in 1901 by translator and language teacher Jacques Roston. He was quick to recognise the educational opportunities offered by the invention of sound recording, and pioneered the production of study materials that combined texts with sound recordings, initially on wax cylinders and later on flat discs.
 
Celebrity speakers include Bernard Shaw, whose two-disc set ‘Spoken English & Broken English’, issued in 1927, features the writer’s own signature reproduced in the run-out grooves of each side of each disc. This unusual feature can be seen in the image that accompanies the sound file.
 
There are also many well-known actors of the past reciting famous works.  These recordings, such as John Gielgud’s rendering of scenes from Richard II  recorded in 1931, highlight how declamatory theatrical styles have changed since the early 20th century.

Over the coming months, the Early Spoken Word collection will continue to grow as copyright is cleared for many more recordings.  Check back in the early summer for additional material drawn from the worlds of literature, politics, sport and the monarchy.

Sound in Space

In a recent web usability test for Archival Sound Recordings, one of the participants – a soundscape artist – commented on the limitations of having to search through sounds using words.  Should an archive organise itself solely through the words used to describe audio (music, environmental sound, oral history etc.) or are there potentially other ways to discover and explore collections of sound?

Since a lot of audio collections are dependent on geographical location – e.g. wildlife, field recordings, accents and dialects – the Archival Sound Recordings service has recently added a map-searching function, providing a different way to explore such collections.

Based on the familiar Google map technology, users can see the distribution of recordings on either a road map or a satellite image where they are represented by ‘pins’.  Clicking on a pin opens a bubble listing all the recordings made in that location.

A map-based visualisation of recordings makes research into location-based change far easier.  For example Klaus Wachsmann’s Ugandan field recordings cover a range of different ethnic groups who live in the region.  By visualising where a recording was made, researchers can more easily analyse the effect these neighbouring tribes have had on each others’ music and identify the spread musical ideas and techniques across  cultural boundaries.

The mapping function is currently in its beta-testing phase.  Any feedback is gratefully received at asr@bl.uk

Traditional music in England

The Archival Sound Recordings website has just added 3000 field recordings of traditional music from England. 

Recordings include:
• Ballades
• Childrens’ skipping songs
• Soldiers’ songs
• Music hall tunes
• Soldiers’ songs
• Instrumental jam sessions
• Folk tales
• Poetry
• Interviews

Ranging from slickly produced professional recordings to rowdy pub sessions to intimate settings in artists’ homes, the collection provides unique insight into the folk scene of England.

Sound archiving internships 2009-2010

The British Library is pleased to announce the first round of recruitment for its third year of funded internships in sound archiving,

These two internships are aimed at those wanting to develop a comprehensive understanding of technical skills and are open to individuals who wish to improve their practical skills and who work in an institution that has the responsibility for the archiving of audiovisual materials.  Successful candidates will be selected in part on the basis of their ability to demonstrate the benefits of the internship to their professional development.

The internships are funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Haymills Charitable Trust and will take place in the Centre for Conservation at the British Library’s flagship site in London.  Each internship runs for a period of ten weeks between 5 October and 11 December 2009, and is supported with a bursary of £2,500.  Internships are open to those who have the right to live and work in the UK.

The internships combine training along with project work.  A series of training modules will be offered on working with different audio carriers, and will include an introduction to the basics of audio theory, archiving standards and protocols and documentation.  The project work is based upon existing audio collections held in the British Library. Please note that each intern will be supervised by a British Library archivist throughout their internship and work will be monitored on a regular basis.

Dien Luu, Luton Voices Coordinator at Wardown Park Museum, Luton, who completed her sound archiving internship in 2007 said: “My two month internship at the British Library Sound Archives has been an invaluable experience. I was able to gain first hand experience on a variety of formats: shellac, vinyl, and even wax cylinders!  The one to one support from the tutor was extremely helpful. Most impressive was how the internship was tailored to my individual needs.” 

How to Apply

For further information please contact Alison Faraday, Sound Archiving Internships, The British Library, Centre for Conservation, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, email alison.faraday@bl.uk or phone +44 (0)20 7412 7776.

The closing date for applications is 5 June 2009 and interviews will be held week commencing 13 July 2009. 

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/soundarch/intern/internships.html

Music from India – new online resource at the British Library

A new online resource has been added to the ever growing Archival Sound Recordings website at the British Library.

The recordings featured in Music from India were all recorded by the recordist and ethnomusicologist, Rolf Killius, as part of a collaborative project between Rolf, The British Library and the Horniman Museum. The aim of the project – entitled Traditional Music in India and set up in 2000 – has been to record, document and research folk, devotional and ritual music of India, and to collect and document relevant musical instruments. A number of these instruments were specially commissioned for the Horniman Museum and were displayed in their recent Utsavam – Music from India exhibition. The instruments now form part of theHorniman Museum’s permanent collection. All the recordings are deposited at the British Library and can be accessed via the Listening & Viewing Service.

Historically, little work has been done to document and research performance traditions in the remote rural areas of India. In many of these communities, music and dance could be regarded as ‘endangered’, the main reasons being the extremely fast changing socio-economic fabric and the traditionally high stratification in Indian society. This collection and documentation project has, thus, concentrated on the oral culture of distinct communities living in some of these more remote rural areas, where music and dance still play an important part in everyday life. Recordings have been made among a range of communities mainly within the Indian states of Kerala, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Assam (Majuli Island), Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat (Kachchh) and Mizoram.

Rolf Killius is a consultant (museums, exhibitions, and media), ethnomusicologist (MMus SOAS, London University), sound recordist, film producer/editor and radio journalist whose work appears in a variety of contexts. He works in academic research, music and sound production, film editing, exhibition curating and the delivery of music and arts events especially related to the Indian subcontinent.   
     
Janet Topp Fargion, Curator World and Traditional Music, the British Library 

New Classical Music section!

Learn from the interpretations of the great performers of the past and explore how performance styles evolved through the early twentieth century with the new Classical Music section. You can now explore 1,200 historical performances of works by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms dating from 1915 to 1958. A further collection of Chopin piano works is due to be launched shortly.

The vast majority of these recordings are now out of print, making this a vital resource for understanding Western classical music heritage. Today orchestras are made up of personnel from all over the world, but in the first half of the twentieth century they were made up of local musicians and certain orchestras and associated conductors had their own recognisable sound and identity.  The broad scope of recordings in the Classical Music section allows listeners to compare performance styles from the USA to Denmark to Russia. 

The collection also highlights how musical tastes have changed over the years.  With 2009 marking Haydn’s 200th anniversary, the massive output this composer generated is being celebrated with countless performances on radio and in concert halls.  But Haydn recordings held in the Sound Archive show that until around 55 years ago, the majority of his works were unknown or neglected. Less than 30% of recordings available on Archival Sound Recordings were recorded before 1950.  The sudden upsurge in Haydn’s popularity was thanks to American conductor Jonathan Sternberg, the Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon, and a body of very hungry musicians in post-war Vienna. 

Sternberg, who came to Vienna in 1947 as conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, worked with Landon, scouring the libraries, monasteries and churches for ‘lost’ Haydn manuscripts.  Together they established the Haydn Society, for which Sternberg made a series of pioneering Haydn recordings. Most of Haydn’s works, beyond a handful of late symphonies, would at that time have been considered ‘obscure’. The Haydn Society ensured that as many of his works were recorded, paving the way for subsequent complete recorded editions.

Ginevra House, ASR2 Engagement Officer