Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv
Encyclopedia
- A collection of ethnomusicologicalEthnomusicologyEthnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
recordings or world music, mostly on phonographs (cylinder records) assembled since 1900 in BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and - The institution that assembled these recordings.
The collection
The project was initiated in September 1900 by the psychology professor Carl StumpfCarl Stumpf
Carl Stumpf was a German philosopher and psychologist.Born in Wiesentheid, he studied with Franz Brentano and Hermann Lotze...
, after the visit to Germany of a music theater group from Siam
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, which Stumpf recorded on Edison cylinder
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
s with the assistance of the Berlin physician Otto Abraham. The archive's first director was Erich von Hornbostel
Erich von Hornbostel
Erich Moritz von Hornbostel was an Austrian ethnomusicologist and scholar of music. He is remembered for his pioneering work in the field of ethnomusicology, and for the Sachs–Hornbostel system of musical instrument classification which he co-authored with Curt Sachs.-Life:Hornbostel was born in...
, serving from 1905 to 1933. Its recordings, which comprise Edison cylinders and 78-rpm records
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
of the traditional musics of the world, were first used for studies in comparative musicology, and now used for studies in ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
. The archive comprises approximately 350 collections, containing music from Africa (30%), North America (20%), Asia (20%), Australia and Oceania (12%), and Europe (10.4%), as well as multiregional collections (7.4%), which contain material from several continents.
The last cylinder field recording
Field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...
in the collection was made in 1953.
The historical collections include approximately 30,000 cylinders (original recordings and copies, positives and negatives) on which more than 16,000 distinct recordings are stored.
In 1999, the cylinder recordings of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv were inscribed on UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
’s Memory of the World Register.
The institution
Initially, the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv belonged to the institute for psychology at the Friedrich Wilhem University in Berlin. Later it was relocated to become part of the conservatory in Berlin (in the 1920s) and then (in the 1930s) the Museum for Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde) with which the Phonogramm-Archiv had earlier cooperated.After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the collections were divided. Most of the recordings were in East Germany, while the bulk of the corresponding documentation remained in the West. Both sides viewed the collection to be mainly lost. In the West, at the museum for ethnography Kurt Reinhard
Kurt Reinhard
Kurt Reinhard was a German musicologist and ethnomusicologist. Specialist in Turkish music.Born in Gießen, Germany, he studied musicology and composition at the University of Cologne from 1933–1935, and ethnology at the Universities of Leipzig and Munich from 1935-1936...
rebuilt the archive. New recordings were made, mostly on tape. Due to this fact and the fact that by this time the archive had also assembled an important collection of musical instruments, it was renamed to "department for ethnomusicology" (musikethnologische Abteilung) in the 1960s.
The department for ethnomusicology continued to collect music (mainly traditional music) from all areas of the world so that according to its 100h anniversy it housed an estimated 150,000 recordings
An international conference called "100 Years Berlin Phonogramm-Archive: Retrospective, Perspective and Interdisciplinary Approaches of the Sound Archives of the World" was held from September 27 to October 1, 2000 at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin.
Today the ethnological museum is a part of the Musikethnologie department of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin
Ethnological Museum of Berlin
The Ethnological Museum in Berlin is one of the largest ethnological museums in the world. It houses half a million pre-industrial objects, acquired primarily from the German voyages of exploration and colonialization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...
of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation , headquartered in Berlin, Germany, is one of the largest cultural institutions in the world. It was founded by a West German federal law passed on 25 July 1957, with the mission to acquire and protect the cultural legacy of the former state of Prussia...
.
Discography
- 2001 - Music! The Berlin Phonogramm-Archive, 1900-2000. 4-CD set. Mainz, Germany: WergoWERGOWERGO is a German record label focusing on contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1962 by the art historian Werner Goldschmidt and the musicologist Helmut Kirchmayer and is currently based in Mainz, Germany....
.
External links
- UNESCO page
- Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv page (German)
- Experimental cylinders of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv in the Virtual LaboratoryVirtual LaboratoryThe online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life...
of the Max Planck Institute for the History of ScienceMax Planck Institute for the History of ScienceThe Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from... - Article on Archive collections and publications