Deutsche Grammophon

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The German Grammophon is the oldest classical label in the world and goes to the December 6, 1898 in Hanover from Berlin Emil and others founded German gramophone company back. This recording company was considered a quality leader in the field of art music - long-playing records in the 20th century and was known for its high standards. It produced numerous famous recordings by world-famous orchestras and musicians. In 1972 it merged to form PolyGram , which in turn became part of the Universal Music Group in 1998 . The label has been continued by these companies to this day.

history

Foundation and development

First record factory in the world in Hanover
Second plant, today Grammophon Büropark , in Hanover

The Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft was founded on December 6, 1898 by the German-American Emil Berliner and his brother Josef in their native Hanover . From here the company opened up the European market for the gramophone invented by the brothers . The parent company was the Gramophone Company, based in Hayes ( Middlesex , Great Britain) . Production began next to the J. Berliner Telephon-Fabrik on Kniestraße in the northern part of Hanover. Due to the increasing confinement - until 1903 the brothers sold the Hackethal wire here at the same time - a large work was created in 1904 on still vacant areas along Podbielskistraße in the Klein-Buchholz district .

The production immediately took on enormous proportions. In the first year around 25,000 records were pressed every day.

On January 1, 1900, the company was converted into a public limited company. 40% of the shares in Hanover remained with Deutsche Grammophon AG , the remaining shares went to the Gramophone Company in Hayes. During the First World War, this led to Deutsche Grammophon AG and Grammophon-Spezialhaus GmbH , the majority of which were in foreign ownership, being confiscated by the German Reich and the British Gramophone Company expropriated . In 1917 Deutsche Grammophon AG was sold to the Leipziger Polyphon Musikwerke AG and the company headquarters moved from Hanover to Berlin (Markgrafenstrasse 76).

Record from 1910
Gramophone record (" The voice of his master "), made by Deutsche Grammophon-AG Berlin;
Paul Godwin Dance Orchestra

In the first few years, the angel describing a record was the trademark for the products of the Berliner Brothers' companies. This was replaced by the now world-famous dog called Nipper sitting in front of the gramophone . The His Master's Voice trademark was created in the British parent company after a painting by the artist Francis Barraud . First, the dog sat in front of a phonograph by Thomas Alva Edison . After the Edisons company refused to buy the picture, Berliner painted over the phonograph with a gramophone and the picture was then offered for sale to the Berliner brothers. They liked it so much that they bought it and ordered more copies of it.

Due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty negotiated at the end of the First World War, Deutsche Grammophon AG , which has meanwhile been independent of the parent company, was no longer allowed to use its trademark and the name “Grammophon” outside of the German Reich. The Polydor label was therefore founded for export . In return , the former parent company, the British Gramophone Company , was not allowed to use its trademarks and names in Germany, which is why they founded the Electrola company in Nowawes in 1924 . In 1933 the company fell victim to Aryanization . The subsequent emigration , to which the owners and many of the contracted artists were forced, led to losses in the artistic quality and the breadth of the record repertoire . 1937 took Telefunken the DG , the shares but was enough 1941 Siemens & Halske on.

During the Second World War , the Nazi regime wanted to keep the record industry alive by recycling old records with the required materials. Nevertheless, record production largely collapsed around 1943; Until the end of the war, records were only made for the needs of broadcasters.

After the Second World War

In the post-war period , Deutsche Grammophon developed into the most important German recording company, which had a large number of the most popular German and also many foreign artists under contract. The music lover Ernst von Siemens developed the company into the unrestricted German industry leader in the 1940s and 1950s. His successes also earned international recognition. Werner von Siemens ' grandson devoted himself passionately to building up a demanding repertoire of classical music , supported the still young conductor Herbert von Karajan and financed the costly recordings through the production of pop and dance music, of which large numbers were already produced during the war years and were also exported to other European countries. In 1962 Philips and Siemens & Halske exchanged half of their shares in the Philips and Deutsche Grammophon labels , and in 1972 the PolyGram group emerged from this .

For several years from 1968 onwards, Deutsche Grammophon published the customer magazine Musik-Boutique , which was available free of charge in record stores and discos . With ten issues per year and a circulation of 500,000 copies, the magazine was at the time the second largest music magazine after the weekly Bravo .

After a restructuring of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft and the Philips Phonographische Industrie in 1971, PolyGram was founded with headquarters in Baarn (Netherlands) and Hamburg. The 75th company anniversary was celebrated in 1973 in the city ​​hall of Hanover . In addition to James Last and his big band, many well-known artists from all labels appeared.

Compact disc production began on August 17, 1982 on the factory site in Langenhagen , which was primarily used as a central warehouse . In 1986 the production facilities in Hanover and Langenhagen - the first and largest producers of CDs - were transferred from PolyGram to Philips as part of a joint venture with the DuPont chemical group ; However, Hanover remained the label's most important supplier. Until its closure in 1990, the plant on Podbielskistraße in Hanover primarily pressed vinyl records . In four press shops 30 cm long-playing records were produced , in the cassette production from 1965 compact cassettes , and in an injection molding production 17 cm single records. From 1970 on the development of the optical disc - in the version of a video disc - was worked on here. From 1981, the gradual conversion to CD production and relocation to the Langenhagen production facility followed. In 1991, the plant on Podbielskistraße was largely demolished and the site was converted into an office park.

From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Deutsche Grammophon increasingly relied on digital production processes - also at Karajans' request. The company made its first digital sound recording in 1979 . From around 1990, for example, cracking noises were digitally removed in audio mastering . In the same year, Deutsche Grammophon introduced high-resolution bit rates for multi-channel sound recordings . In September 1991 a so-called 4D audio recording was recorded for the first time . According to the company, the name of this technology developed in the Hanover Recording Center is based on four technical dimensions or further developments: a remote-controlled preamplifier for the microphone, which prevents interference signals from previously long transmission paths; two 21-bit analog-to-digital converters (from 1994 then 23 bit) for the most precise possible signal transfer of the audio data; the installation of the aforementioned equipment in a stage box and its connection to a network for digital data transmission; and a mixing console from Yamaha with the possibility of synchronizing microphone tracks as well as the final Authentic Bit Imaging , a quantization process for converting the data that was previously processed with a sampling rate of 96 kHz and a sampling depth of 24 bits into 44.1 kHz and 16 bits of an audio CD . From January 1993, all recordings in the Deutsche Grammophon Recording Center were only made as 4D audio recordings before the technology was made public in the course of the year.

The company also completed its remastering process called Original Image Bit Processing in 1993, which was used to rework earlier analog and digital recordings. On the electronic adding reverb and additional audio channels to simulate surround the waived engineers of Deutsche Grammophon aware of this, to stay as close as possible to the original recordings. Instead, as with 4D Audio Recording , a fully digital mix was used, which again avoided sound impairments due to signal conversions in the mixing process. In addition, psychoacoustic findings were used to minimize transit time delays: When Deutsche Grammophon recorded multi-channel sound, there were sound differences between the 14 support microphones near the instruments and the two main microphones for stereo recording of the entire orchestra, which resulted in a blurred sound. Using the positions of the recording devices recorded in old recording protocols, the distances between the microphones at that time were measured on site and the time delays in the millisecond range were calculated in order to then re-coordinate the 16 audio channels on the mixer. The resulting gain in spatial precision, depth of field and brilliance in height in Deutsche Grammophon's new releases was praised by the press. The company's series that use this remastering technology include Karajan Gold from 1993 and The Originals from 1995.

The German Grammophon is now present even as record label, but as part of the Universal Music Group , in which the PolyGram opened 1998th The production studio in Hanover-Langenhagen, named after the founder Emil Berliner Studios , was closed in the course of a restructuring in 2008, and various independent companies emerged from the individual departments. The recording area kept the name Emil Berliner Studios and is now an independent company in Berlin.

In 2015 the Deutsche Grammophon label was awarded a Grammy for an album by US violinist Hilary Hahn for the best chamber music performance . In the same year, Deutsche Grammophon received an ECHO Klassik in the Music DVD Production of the Year category for the recording of Gaetano Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore .

Contemporary composers who have been published on Deutsche Grammophon are Sofia Gubaidulina , Oliver Knussen , Mark-Anthony Turnage , Mohammed Fairouz, Peter Eötvös , Luigi Nono , Sven Helbig and Philip Glass .

Previous labels

Traditional labels that Deutsche Grammophon ran alongside the well-known classic label were, for example:

literature

Web links

Commons : Deutsche Grammophon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Deutsche Grammophon (DG), the world's oldest and most renowned classical music label, will celebrate its 120th anniversary this year (in English). Deutsche Grammophon, June 11, 2018, accessed January 22, 2019 .
  2. Andreas Hartmann: Interview 120 years of Deutsche Grammophon: “Shift in rhythm, do you hear?” In: Die Tageszeitung: taz . December 29, 2018, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed February 24, 2019]).
  3. ^ Deutsche Grammophon . Limited preview of Google Books
  4. emil-berliner-studios.com Accessed on March 9, 2012.
  5. Fantastic figures: The compact record, introduced two years ago, helps manufacturers achieve splendid sales . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1985 ( online ).
  6. ^ Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Stadtlexikon Hannover. From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2010, ISBN 3-8426-8207-7 , p. 127.
  7. a b c d e Chris Hamilton: 100 Years of Deutsche Grammophon . In: Hillandale News . 221 (spring). City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society, 1998, pp. 42-44 ( archive.org ).
  8. a b c d e f g Sören Meyer-Eller: Stress-free hearing . In: FonoForum . Spezial-Zeitschriften-Gesellschaft, July 1993 ( fonoforum.de ).
  9. a b c d e Johannes Saltzwedel: Looking back through the Horn. In: Der Spiegel . Spiegel-Verlag Rudolf Augstein, December 13, 1993, accessed on March 30, 2020 .
  10. a b Debussy · La Mer · Nocturnes · Jeux · Rhapsodie pour clarinette et orchester · The Cleveland Orchestra · Pierre Boulez Booklet . Deutsche Grammophon, January 6, 1995, 439 896-2 ( archive.org [PDF]).
  11. ^ Richard Strauss · Also Spoke Zarathustra · Till Eulenspiegel · Don Juan · Berlin Philharmonic · Herbert von Karajan Booklet . PolyGram Records , July 14, 1995, 447 441-2 ( archive.org [PDF]).
  12. ^ Barry Fox: Technology: Clearer recordings make up for lost time. In: New Scientist . March 20, 1993, accessed March 31, 2020 .
  13. Medien-Magier remains present - New edition: "Karajan Gold" . In: Nürnberger Nachrichten . 1 (December 30, 1993). Verlag Nürnberger Presse Druckhaus Nürnberg , May 17, 1995.
  14. ^ Dan Altman, Brian D. Koh: War Horse Beaten Back to Life on DG. In: The Harvard Crimson. October 5, 1995, accessed March 30, 2020 .
  15. The Deutsche Grammophon label wins a Grammy in Los Angeles. Osnabrück newspaper
  16. Prize winners 2015. ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. echoklassik.de; Retrieved October 19, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.echoklassik.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 52.26 "  N , 13 ° 27 ′ 42.84"  E