A BRIEF NOTE ON ARCHIVES OF SOUND RECORDINGS
| Date | 01 March 1948 |
| Published date | 01 March 1948 |
| Pages | 87-89 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026128 |
| Author | PATRICK SAUL |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
A BRIEF NOTE ON ARCHIVES OF SOUND
RECORDINGS
by PATRICK SAUL
AT
a conference held in London in March of this year, under the chairman-
ship of Mr. Frank Howes, President of the Royal Musical Association, it was
proposed that an Institute of Recorded Sound should be set up, which would
have as its main function the preservation of sound recordings of all types
for posterity and for the current use of students.
This announcement has aroused widespread interest, since no institution
primarily concerned with the
preservation
of records—as distinct from their
circulation or everyday use for broadcasting, commercial, or teaching pur-
poses—has ever existed in Great Britain. Their chances of survival depend
chiefly on their finding a place in private collections—which are always
subject to dispersal—though since 1908 the Gramophone Company (His
Master's Voice) have aimed to retain a copy of every record they publish.
This library is used for business purposes only and is not accessible to the
public. Since the His Master's Voice, Columbia, and Parlophone interests
were amalgamated in 1931, copies of all records made by the subsidiaries of
the joint organization (E.M.I. Ltd.) are said to be deposited in it, but it
appears that before that date Columbia and Parlophone had no central
libraries. E.M.I. retain some matrices of 'out of print' records and have
deposited a few in the British Museum and elsewhere. There is no question
of every matrix being preserved, however, and the temptation to dispose of
those which seem to have no immediate commercial value must be consider-
able.
It should also be remembered that records of historical value published
by the many other producers which have existed in the past are nowhere
preserved on an organized
basis.
So far as countries other than Great Britain
are concerned the position is different, for public institutions and learned
societies on the Continent and in North America have been engaged in the
preservation of records of scientific interest for many years. Following the
invention of the Edison phonograph in 1877, ethnologists soon realized its
possibilities as a means of recording dialects and exotic music which had
hitherto defeated attempts at accurate registration by our conventional nota-
tion. In 1889 Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, later chief of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, undertook the systematic recording of Red Indian prayers, tales,
and songs, some of the latter being transcribed by Dr. Benjamin Ives Gilman
of Harvard. The records were deposited in the Peabody Museum.1 In 1898
the recording of folk-songs in Hungary was begun by Béla Vikar, and he
was followed from 1904 onwards by other workers, notably Béla Bartók,
Zóltan Kodály, and László Lajdia, thousands of whose recordings were
1
Journal
of
American
Folklore,
vol. iii, no. x (1890), article by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes; Journal
of
American
Ethnology and
Archaeology,
vol. i (1891) and vol. v (1908), articles by Dr. B. I.
Gilman.
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