Berlin Phonogram Archive
The Berlin Phonogram Archive - today part of the ethnomusicology department in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin - is one of the world's most important institutions in which audio documents of traditional music from all over the world are collected and stored. In total, the archive now comprises over 150,000 recordings.
The unique historical collections ( Edison cylinders and shellac records ) from the period between 1893 and 1954 are of particular importance . The collection of Edison cylinders in the Berlin Phonogram Archive was included in the UNESCO " Memory of the World " list in 1999 as early recordings of world musical traditions .
Scope and importance
The audio documents were created between 1893 and 1954; there are a total of around 350 collections with music from Africa (30%), America (20%), Asia (20%), Australia / Oceania (12%), Europe (10.4%) as well as national and geographic collections (7.4%). The collaboration with collectors from different fields of activity ( ethnologists , colonial officials, doctors, missionaries , linguists , geographers , archaeologists , musicologists , explorers) and worldwide contacts ensured that the archive mostly had well-documented recordings from the most diverse musical cultures of the world. In addition to their general historical value, recordings in which the musical traditions of cultures are documented that no longer exist today (e.g. Tierra del Fuego ) or have changed significantly since then have attracted international attention .
The historical inventory of the phonogram archive now amounts to more than 30,000 rolls: originals (positives), negatives used for duplication (so-called galvanos ) and wax copies (also positives). A special technique was developed in America to preserve the very sensitive rollers, which was also used in Berlin. The original phonograph rollers were electroplated , and the negative rollers made of copper from them served as matrices, of which any number of copies could then be cast from hard wax. The historical holdings of the phonogram archive also include a good 2000 shellac records .
history
The beginnings of the archive date back to September 1900, when the psychologist Carl Stumpf with the Edison - phonograph a gas-tier border in Berlin Group took up Thai theater musician. Together with his student and colleague Erich Moritz von Hornbostel , he founded the phonogram archive in 1904, which was attached to the Psychological Institute of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität as “the private property of both scholars” . The State of Prussia acquired the archive in 1923, which was transferred to the administration of the Musikhochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg . Hornbostel took over the position of director and expanded it into one of the most famous sound archives of the time. After Hornbostel emigrated in 1934, the archive was attached to the Museum of Ethnology . After being relocated as a result of the chaos of war, the roll stocks were temporarily moved to Leningrad and then back to the East German Academy of Sciences in the east of Berlin .
In the meantime Kurt Reinhard had practically built up a new music-ethnological collection in the West Berlin Ethnographic Museum .
It was not until 1991 that the collections in the Völkerkundemuseum in Berlin-Dahlem could be reunited. As part of an extensive project financed by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the German Class Lottery Foundation, it has so far been possible to transfer some of the historical sound documents to digital sound carriers.
The important collection of rollers of the merchant and Edison pioneer Julius H. Block (1858–1934), which was believed to be lost and which was transferred to the phonogram archive after his death in 1934, is the rarest recordings from the years 1890–1923, including Tolstoy , Tchaikovsky and the 11-year-old Jascha Heifetz was only rediscovered a few years ago; however, it is still in St. Petersburg.
Kurt Reinhard's successor, who headed the Phonogram Archive from 1952 to 1968, which was renamed the Ethnological Music Department in the Ethnological Museum in 1963 , was Dieter Christensen from 1968 to 1972 and Artur Simon from 1972 to 2003 . Lars-Christian Koch has headed the phonogram archive since 2003 , which will be accessible in the Humboldt Forum from 2019 .
exhibition
Two multimedia installations “MusikWeltKarte” distributed in the museum give the visitor a hearing impression of the historical drum recordings and the associated technology; At the same time, they provide an overview of the various musical cultures in the world and the collectors to whom the Berlin Phonogram Archive owes the sound recordings.
Sound recordings on CD (selection)
- Robert Lehmann-Nitsche - cylinder mounts from Argentina 1905-1909 . Commentary: Miguel A. Garcia. Ed. Lars-Christian Koch, Susanne Ziegler. 2 CDs + 136 S. booklet (German / Spanish). BPhA-WA 4, National Museums in Berlin 2009.
- The Dawn of Recording: The Julius Block Cylinders . 3 CDs, Marston Records 2008.
- Theodor Koch-Grünberg - cylinder recordings from Brazil 1911–1913 . Comments: Michael Kraus u. Julio Mendívil. Ed. Lars-Christian Koch, Susanne Ziegler. CD + 104 S. booklet (German / Portuguese.). BPhA-WA 3, National Museums in Berlin 2006.
- Roller mounts from Peru 1910–1925 . Comments: Virginia Yep, Bernd Schmelz. Edited by Susanne Ziegler. CD + 80 S. booklet (German / Spanish). BPhA-WA 2, National Museums in Berlin 2003.
- Drum recordings of Japanese music (1901–1913) . Comment: Ingrid Fritsch. Edited by Artur Simon + Susanne Ziegler. CD + 96 S. booklet (German / English). BPhA-WA 1, National Museums in Berlin 2003.
- Music! 100 Years of the Berlin Phonogram Archive . Museum Collection Berlin / Wergo, 4 CDs plus booklet (284 pages), SM 1701 2, Mainz 2000.
Multimedia with sound recordings
- Ulrich Wegner (Ed.): MusikWeltKarte. The Edison Phonograph and the Musical Cartography of the World . CD-ROM. State Museums in Berlin 2007.
literature
- Lars-Christian Koch , Albrecht Wiedmann, Susanne Ziegler: The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv: A treasury of sound recordings . (PDF) In: Acoustical science and technology , 25, Heft 4, 2004, pp. 227-231, doi: 10.1250 / ast.25.227 , ISSN 1346-3969
- Artur Simon (Ed.): The Berlin Phonogram Archive 1900–2000. Collections of the world's traditional music . VWB, Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-86135-680-5
- Carl Stumpf : The Berlin Phonogram Archive . In: Internationale Wochenschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik , Vol. 2, Issue 8, 1908, pp. 225–246
- Susanne Ziegler: The wax cylinders of the Berlin phonogram archive. Ethnological Museum Berlin. Volume NF 73. Dept. of Ethnic Music, Media Technology and the Berlin Phonogram Archive, Volume XII. Staatliche Museen, Berlin 2006. ISBN 3-88609-527-4
Web links
- Kurt Reinhard : The Berlin Phonogram Archive. In: The Folklore and Folk Music Archivist , 5 (2), Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music 1962, pp. 1-4
- Search for the Berlin Phonogram Archive in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
- 1,900 objects from the Berlin phonogram archive online including sound recordings from all over the world
- Sound recordings from the phonogram archive on DISMARC, the Europeana music archive database
- The Berlin Phonogram Archive on the UNESCO website
- Experimental rolls of the Berlin Phonogram Archive in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (audio)
- The Ethnological Museum Berlin with some sound recordings
- Sound samples. FAZ.net
Individual evidence
- ^ Edison cylinder. Retrieved August 31, 2017 .
- ↑ Article: “The Phonogram Archive in the University of Music”. In: Vossische Zeitung, No. 240 May 23, 1923
- ^ Daniel J. Wakin: Classical Ghosts, Audible Once Again. In: The New York Times . October 24, 2008, accessed August 28, 2008 .
- ↑ Publications (as of July 2, 2012). ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 49 kB) Department of Ethnic Music, Media Technology and the Berlin Phonogram Archive. Ethnological Museum.
Edison rolls of the Berlin Phonogram Archive (1999) | Beethoven's 9th Symphony (2001) | Goethe's literary estate (2001) | Gutenberg Bible (2001) | Metropolis (2001) | Reichenauer Manuscripts (2003) | Bibliotheca Corviniana (2005) | Children's and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm (2005) | Waldseemüller map from 1507 (2005) | Correspondence from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2007) | Song of the Nibelungs (2009) | Benz patent from 1886 (2011) | Documents on the construction and fall of the Berlin Wall and the Two-Plus-Four Treaty (2011) | Golden Bull (2013) | Nebra Sky Disc (2013) | Lorscher Pharmacopoeia (2013) | Writings of Karl Marx ( Manifesto of the Communist Party , Das Kapital. Volume One ) (2013) | Autograph of the B minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach (2015) | Digital collections on linguistic diversity (2015) | Early Writings of the Reformation Movement (2015) | Golden Letter (2015) | Kitab al-Masalik wa-l-mamalik (2015) | Constitutio Antoniniana (2017) | Documents from the first Auschwitz trial (2017)
Coordinates: 52 ° 27 ′ 24 ″ N , 13 ° 17 ′ 31 ″ E