Diskografentag: International Conference on Recorded Music

Die Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger (GHT) is a non-profit association that was founded in Vienna in November 2002 and is open to members from all over the world. The aim is to preserve sound documents from the early era of sound recording (reels, shellac and vinyl records), and to document, archive and make accessible their data, content and findings synergistically under scientific standards. GHT wants to raise general awareness of this topic in society, and initiate and promote corresponding activities. Diskografentag 2024 is to be hosted by the University of Surrey and the newly founded Early Recordings Association (ERA). 

Diskografentag: International Conference on Recorded Music

Programme

Monday, 10 June

9:30 – 10:30   GHT General Assembly

10:30 – 11:00  Coffee/tea break

11:00 – 12:30 Session 1: Gramophone Company 

12:30 – 14:00  Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Session 2: Discographies

15:30 – 16:00 Coffee/tea break

16:00 – 17:30 Session 3: Instrumental recordings

17:30 – 18:00  Coffee/tea break

18:00 – 19:00 Workshop and concert 

Tuesday, 11 June

9:30 – 11:00   Session 1: Online presentations

11:00 – 11:30  Coffee/tea break

11:30 – 13:00 Session 2: Case studies

13:00 – 14:00  Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Session 3: Research projects

15:30 – 16:00  Coffee/tea break

16:00 – 17:30 Session 4: African recordings

MONDAY SESSIONS

GHT General Assembly (9:30 – 10:30)

Separate programme

Session 1: Gramophone Company (11:00 – 12:30) Chair: Inja Stanovic

1. Ferenc János Szabó: The 1928 HMV Gramophone Record Series of Hungarian Music
2. Will Prentice: We cannot feed the whole of Russia with Chaliapine: The Gramophone Company in Pre-Revolutionary Caucasia & Central Asia 
3. Simon Heighes: Hallelujah! The Pioneering G&T Messiah of 1906

Session 2: Discographies (14:00 – 15:30) Chair: Will Prentice

1. Nikos Ordoulidis: Shared tunes and musical networks in historical discography
2. Christian Liebl: Round the Horn (of the Phonograph): The Vienna Phonogrammarchiv and its Historical Recordings
3. Hermann Gottschewski: The discovery of different versions of the same recordings on Welte-Mignon piano rolls: Implications for discography and cataloguing 

Session 3: Instrumental recordings (16:00 – 17:30) Chair Ferenc János Szabó

1. Lourdes Rebollo: The recordings of Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 7 “Valenciana” made by teachers and pupils: Granados (1912) Marshall (1925) and Larrocha (1954)
2. Inja Stanović: Austro-German Revivals: (Re)constructing acoustic recordings
3. Aleksander Kolkowski: Stroh violins and horn amplified strings

Concert (18:00 - 19:00)

Concert with Duncan Miller, Barbara Gentili (voice), Inja Stanovic (piano), Damir Imamovic (voice), Aourel Kyrio (violin) and Aleksander Kolkowski (violin and Stroh violin).

Separate programme.

Session 1: Gramophone Company, 11:00 – 12:30. Chair: Inja Stanovic

Dr. Ferenc János Szabó (Institute for Musicology, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest)

The 1928 HMV Gramophone Record Series of Hungarian Music

In 1928, for the first time, the Hungarian government commissioned an international record company to make a series of gramophone records. The ideological aim of the series was the preservation of Hungarian folk music on gramophone discs. The recordings, made by His Master’s Voice in Budapest in December 1928, were released in 1929. The discs were presented to the Budapest audience at public concerts, where not only the discs were played, but the recorded pieces were also performed live by the artists. Original copies of the discs can still be found in public and private collections, and many people still refer to these recordings as one of the most important Hungarian record series. However, only a part of the series has become really well-known: on the occasion of the Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály Centenaries in 1981 and 1982, some of the recordings were released on LP. The rest of the recordings are not only less well-known, but, until recently, we did not really know the content of the whole series. These discs as a series in their own right have so far not been the subject of research in either discography or musicology. In my presentation, I intend to give an overview of the history of the series and examine its content and reception history in the context of contemporary Hungarian cultural politics, ethnomusicology and Hungarian and international record history.

Will Prentice (Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

We cannot feed the whole of Russia with Chaliapine: The Gramophone Company in Pre-Revolutionary Caucasia & Central Asia

Between 1902 and 1918, the Gramophone Company of London instigated an ambitious commercial recording programme in the Caucasus and Central Asia, making and selling discs of indigenous music throughout the region. Several recording trips were made producing over 4,000 recordings, of which over 3,500 were commercially released at the time. Although several other companies gained a foothold, the Gramophone Company comfortably held the lion’s share of the market there. Using internal company documentation, this paper will present current progress in ongoing research into the intentions and actions that resulted in such a large and important body of work. It will explore the rationale in selecting artists and repertoire, the relationships between the company and their artists, and what the surviving documentation can tell us about the impact such recordings had on local audiences.

Dr. Simon Heighes (BBC, CLPGS)

Hallelujah! The Pioneering Gramophone & Typewriter company Messiah of 1906

The first attempt to record a representative selection of movements from Handel’s Messiah was made by the Gramophone & Typewriter company during the summer of 1906. Their 1907 catalogue offered an unprecedented 25 solos and choruses spread over twelve 10-inch and thirteen 12-inch records. Perhaps because of the limitations of acoustic recording, and the subsequent rarity of these records, this milestone in Messiah’s history has long been overlooked. Inspired by the fortuitous acquisition of a complete set of the 1906 Messiah, this paper reassesses its historical importance, focussing on the groundbreaking recording of the choruses, adaptations of the score necessitated by the acoustic studio, as well as examining matters of performance practice – which echo 18^th-century traditions as well as anticipating developments of the later twentieth century.

Session 2: Discographies, 14:00 – 15:30. Chair: Will Prentice

Dr. Nikos Ordoulidis (University of Ioannina)

Shared tunes and musical networks in historical discography

For the last few years, I have been working for the Kounadis Archive Virtual Museum in Greece, a newly established institute that has already digitized more than 3,000 78 rpm records, out of approximately 7,000 it owns. From the research we have been doing for three years, hundreds of identical musical tunes that were recorded in different parts of the world have emerged. This shared repertoire appears in discography from the period of the early recording expeditions and it includes implementations that took place literally on all continents. For instance, we encountered shared tunes appearing in regions of Europe, the United States of America, and even the Indian subcontinent. Documenting and analyzing these recordings help to rethink the history of places and societies, and their interactions. They offer a unique tool for decoding the processes involved in the transition from the world of empires to that of nation-states. In my presentation, I will discuss some of the most critical points that emerged from the examination of this material. In addition to the exceptional musical interest that this repertoire presents, it also allows us to re-examine a series of issues, such as the parallel paths that several ethnic repertoires followed in the USA, immigration, the relation between political and cultural borders, music economy etc. Moreover, the comparison of the performances opens up a capital issue concerning the adoption on the part of the musicians, and (inter)ethnic aesthetics. Finally, the role that the recording industry itself played in these relationships is vital, “re-tuning” these relationships when they entered its domain.

Christian Liebl (Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Round the Horn (of the Phonograph): The Vienna Phonogrammarchiv and its Historical Recordings

Founded in 1899 as the world’s first sound archive, the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna is this year celebrating its 125^th anniversary. Moreover, 25 years ago, the archive’s Historical Collections (1899–1950) were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. These unique sound documents of language and music come from six continents and include recordings made in Brazil (1901), India (1904–1905), Papua New Guinea (1904–1906) and the Kalahari (1908) as well as throughout Europe. The paper is meant to serve as an introduction to the beginnings of the Phonogrammarchiv, its early recording technique and phonographic field research as well as to the edition of its Historical Collections. 

Professor Hermann Gottschewski (The University of Tokyo)

The discovery of different versions of the same recordings on Welte-Mignon piano rolls: Implications for discography and cataloguing

In 2022, I found by chance that three different roll-copies of Raoul Pugno's Welte-Mignon recording of Chopin's Nocturne op. 15,2 (roll number WM548 recorded in 1905) all differed from each other in terms of the coding of the dynamics. The later the roll copy was punched, the more detailed the coding became. The differences were not only of a purely technical nature, but artistic expertise had been applied to certain passages, and the musical effect of these rolls differed audibly. After this discovery, I started a systematic comparison of duplicates of Welte-Mignon recordings on the basis of roll scans. In the SUPRA database of roll-scans at Stanford University I found 37 recordings that were suitable for comparison. In 21 of them I found significant differences in the dynamic coding. On the basis of the punching data handwritten at the end of the rolls I was able to prove that the reworking of the dynamics on already published rolls was regularly practiced in virtually every production period (at least as early as in 1914 and as late as in 1924). It must therefore be assumed that many frequently sold rolls exist in more than one version. These findings will affect the music-historical and artistic appreciation of piano rolls in several respects. On this conference I want to point out the importance of punching data of existing roll copies for future research, since these data are normally neither given in discographies and catalogues nor in CD productions of Welte recordings.

Session 3: Instrumental recordings, 16:00 – 17:30. Chair Ferenc János Szabó

Dr. Lourdes Rebollo (Universidad Internacional de Valencia, VIU) 

The recordings of Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 7 “Valenciana” made by the composer and pupils: Granados (1912) Marshall (1925) and Larrocha (1954) 

Enrique Granados (1867-1916) was one of the great Spanish composers of the early 20th century, along with Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla. Granados founded his piano school, the “Academia Granados” in Barcelona in 1901. After the composer’s dead in 1916, Frank Marshall (1883-1959), a pupil and intimate friend of Granados took over the direction of the school, changing its name to “Academia Marshall” in 1920. The Academy has trained outstanding pianists and teachers following Granados' teachings concerning piano sonority, voicing and the detailed use of pedals. Alicia de Larrocha (1923-2009) was undoubtedly one of the main exponents of this Catalan piano school. She entered the Academy at age 4 and studied piano with Frank Marshall, who guided her from childhood to her professional career and with whom she also maintained a close relationship for 30 years. After Marshall's death in 1959, Larrocha was left in charge of the Academy. Granados was a pianist of considerable reputation, and the height of his career as a pianist coincided with the emergence of new recording technologies: acoustic recordings on 78 RPM double-sided acetate records and recordings on piano rolls. He made some acoustic recordings in 1912 in Barcelona for Odeon released on 2 discs (his Spanish Dances No. 7 and No. 10, an arrangement of the Scarlatti Sonata and an improvisation on El Pelele). Some of these pieces were also recorded on piano rolls between 1912 and 1916. The Spanish Dance No. 7 “Valenciana” is one of those pieces recorded by the composer but also by his direct line of pupils: Granados (Odeon, 1912), Marshall (Welte, 1925) and Larrocha (Decca, 1954). Although different recording technologies are used, there are some common stylistic and interpretive tendencies among these pianists that may have been transmitted from teacher to pupil, providing us with objective elements that contribute to the knowledge of the tradition of the Catalan piano school: Granados-Marshall-Larrocha. 

Dr. Inja Stanović (University of Surrey, CLPGS)

Austro-German Revivals: (Re)constructing acoustic recordings

This paper discusses a research case-study on Austro-German performance traditions, which was a part of a larger Leverhulme-funded project (Re)constructing Early Recordings: a guide for historically-informed performance, led by Inja Stanović at the University of Huddersfield. The project focused upon mechanical technologies used to produce early recordings and, more specifically, the ways in which those recordings reveal performance practices of the past. The case study on Austro-German performing traditions led to the release of an album involving collaborative performance-based research involving both Stanović, on piano, alongside violinist Dr. David Milsom. The paper presents findings from the case study, which focused on reconstructions of historic recordings by pianists Ilona Eibenschütz (1871-1967), Natalia Janotha (1856-1932), and Alfred Grünfeld (1852-1924), and violinists Joseph Joachim (1831- 1907), Marie Soldat (1863-1955), and Arnold Rosé (1858-1946). These musicians were all, to some extent, linked to Johannes Brahms (1833-1897); a central figure in the Austro-German canon. Curiously, however, the various recordings that these musicians produced reveal their highly personalised interpretative choices and their distinctive approaches to both technique and musical expression. The aim in reconstructing these historic recordings was to reflect on the wider Austro-German performing traditions, and to explore the various ways in which the first recording musicians of Brahms’ circles produced highly individualistic approaches to their instruments. This paper points out a long-standing gap in our contemporary understanding of mechanical recording sessions, and the extent to which performing musicians adapted their practice when recording with mechanical technologies.

Dr. Aleksander Kolkowski (Science Museum London, CLPGS)

Stroh violins and horn amplified strings

The design of stringed instruments underwent a revolution at the turn of the twentieth century, out went the centuries-old resonating corpus, in came new systems of amplifying their tones through diaphragms, oscillating valves and horns, courtesy of the flourishing phonographic technology. Augustus Stroh’s patent of 1899 for Improvements in Violins & other Stringed Instruments describes a new musical instrument that sought to be an advancement on a centuries-old and revered model. It represents the most radical development in stringed instrument design since the Amati violins of the 1600s created not by a luthier, but by one of the most brilliant mechanical engineers of the Victorian age. Charles Parsons, industrial titan of steam turbine fame, who after successfully launching the air assisted Auxetophone-Gramophone that played to mass audiences in parks and stadia, used the same motor-driven blower and valved pick-up system to amplify double-basses, cellos and harps through gargantuan horns. His collaboration with conductor Henry Wood sought to revamp the modern orchestra. These instruments were tailor-made for the modernist era and lauded by leading scientists and musicians but were largely kept from public view behind the closed doors of acoustic recording studios or were met with open hostility from the musical fraternity. After achieving a short-lived popularity during the jazz age, such instruments were rendered obsolete by the arrival of electronic amplification. Their legacy is found in solid-body electric instruments and external pick-ups that are still used today. This presentation will relate how the Stroh violin played a key and largely unrecognised role in the early recording industry.

TUESDAY SESSIONS

Session 1: Online presentations (9:30 – 11:00) Chair: Eva Moreda Rodríguez                                            

1. Sunny Mathew: Gul Mohamed, the first popular performer on Gramophone records in Malayalam language
2. Trayce Arssow: Paul Voigt’s British Electrical Recordings for Edison Bell, 1925-1933
3. Tiago Hora: Portuguese early music discography: context, challenges and paths dealing with discography as a primary source for historical musicology research

Session 2: Case studies (11:30 – 13:00) Chair: João Silva

1. Peter Adamson: Windows and Wallpaper: exploring London’s first Gramophone recording studio
2. Filip Šír and Martin Mejzr: Anti-Nazi Theatre on Radio Waves: Unique WWII Broadcasts by V+W preserved on Acetate Discs  
3. Tore Simonsen: The spreadsheet as a discographic database: a pragmatic solution 

Session 3: Research projects (14:00 – 15:30) Chair: Inja Stanović

1. George Kokkonis, Nikos Ordoulidis, Kostas Maistrelis, Pantelis Brattis, Simos Leonidakos, Nikos Papazis: Semantic modelling and technological innovation in folk-popular musicology, the case of the discography of the Greek rebetiko songwriter Vassilis Tsitsanis and the reconstitution of the "musical world" of his time
2. Axel Berndt, Andreas Münzmay, Frithjof Vollmer: Multi-Modal Data Networks: Thoughts on a Digital Performance Edition and its Potential for Ethnomusicology (in Collaboration with GHT) 
3. Jelka Vukobratović: The 78 rpm Record Industry in Croatia: Project results

Session 4: African recordings (16:00 – 17:30) Chair: Christiane Hofer

1. João Silva: Musics of the African Diaspora in Portugal: The sonification of race through discs (1900—1933)
2. Wolfgang Bender: African Music of Shellac Discs 2 
3. Tadele Yidnekatchew: The second set of Ethiopian disks (Fonotecnica Milano, 1924) by Azmari Wubate of Crown Prince Tefferi Mekonnen 

TUESDAY ABSTRACTS

Session 1: Online presentations, 9:30 – 11:00. Chair: Eva Moreda Rodríguez       

Sunny Mathew Kunnelpurayidom (independent researcher, GHT)

Gul Mohamed, the first popular performer on Gramophone records in Malayalam language.

Malayalam is the language of the Kerala state in India, which is a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Western Ghats on the eastern side and Arabian sea on the western side. Arabian traders called this land, "Malabar", the land of hills.  Nearly thousand years back, Malayalam originated from "Tamil", the main language of South India. Till the formation of the linguistic state of Kerala for Malayalam speaking people in 1956, there were no recording studios in this area. Recording artists had to travel nearly 500 miles to reach Madras for the recording programs of the Gramophone Company. As such, very few artists have got their performance recorded   on Gramophone records. As per Michael Kinnear from Australia, who made extensive studies on Gramophone Record companies in India, their records and artists, have recorded that as of March 1911, the share of Malayalam was only 12 songs. In 1925 and 1928, many recordings of Gul Mohamed, a performer from Cochin, were taken by the Gramophone Company. In 1929, Columbia Graphophone Company started operations in Madras and Gul Mohamed entered into a contract with Columbia. Till the recession following the second world war, nearly hundred gramophone records of Gul Mohamed were issued. He recorded songs, comics, dramas, etc. in Malayalam and Tamil languages. He was promoted as "Malabar Star" by the Columbia Graphophone Company.

Trayce Arssow (Yugoslav Discographic Society)

Paul Voigt’s Electrical 6” Recordings for Edison Bell in Britain, 1926-1930: as evidenced from test prints preserved in the Voigt Collection 

During his eight-year long recording career with Edison Bell, Paul Voigt made thousands of recordings in very different genres, countries, and formats. In this paper an attempt will be made to survey only one very minor component of his vast output by taking disc format as parameter around which the argument will be constructed. A comprehensive analysis will be proposed of the very few 6” test discs preserved in the Voigt Collection at the Library and Archives Canada, of which they form but a very small component. By focusing on these few discs, not only a snapshot of a minor part of the Voigt Collection will be provided, but also will be offered an insight into the contents of Edison Bell’s production on this often neglected 6” mini disc format, as well as the context of Paul Voigt’s early electrical mini disc recordings. In addition, the research methodology in unravelling this intricate historical sound collection will also be touched upon, especially some of the problems and challenges that it poses to a researcher. From the proposed text it would become evident that Edison Bell had a very elaborate output on mini discs, but this paper shall by no means attempt to present its entire production in full extent. Instead, the purpose is only to demonstrate how these Voigt’s early electrical 6” recordings fit into the general picture of Edison Bell’s mini disc production, as well as to find out if anything specific or new can be learnt by researching them.

Dr. Tiago Manuel da Hora (INET-MD / NOVA-FCSH)

Portuguese early music discography: context, challenges and paths dealing with discography as a primary source for historical musicology research

 The growth in research on phonographic sources or on themes connected with it has revealed that these sources are embodied with a rich and wide range of important historical information and should have a place of relevance in the framework of musicological research. One of the fields in which discographies and the collection of discographic data are of key importance is for the research of musical production in the last 100 years, namely as a methodology to study performance practice, the performers output as well as to know more about record industry and music production and its participants (musicians, producers, engineers, etc.). Taking in account Early Music commercial recordings produced in Portugal as a case-study and my previous PhD research (Early Music Record Production in Portugal (1957-2015), NOVA FCSH (Lisbon), 2020) – for which one of the primary sources was discography -, this presentation will focus on methodologies used on that research and the challenges and ways of the ‘discological’ analysis (Elste 1989) in the specific context of Portuguese record industry – a small and peripherical market in record music business. In this sense, it is important to understand the context of discographies and records preservation and availability in Portugal (especially the field of Early Music/historical informed performance) and to find answers to the following questions: What are the main challenges working with discography in Portugal? Which were the ways for the critical analysis of this sources? How they were useful for new historiographical output and for the final results of research? 

Session 2: Case studies, 11:30 – 13:00. Chair: João Silva

Peter Adamson (independent researcher, CLPGS)

Windows and wallpaper: exploring London’s first Gramophone recording studio

The Gramophone Company’s recording studio in London, established in 1898 near the Strand at 31 Maiden Lane, was in recent times incorrectly stated to have been in the basement at the back of the Cockburn Hotel building. It was in fact in the large first-floor room overlooking the street, and I shall demonstrate this visually by close examination of Fred Gaisberg’s two famous photographs of the studio, transformed and collated with architects’ plans of the building.  The true location is likewise confirmed by Gaisberg himself, together with other eye-witness accounts. I shall also provide some background to the hotel itself, and show how particular contents of the old photographs may yield further useful information. 

Dr. Filip Šír and Martin Mejzr (National Museum, Prague)

Anti-Nazi Theatre on Radio Waves: Unique WWII Broadcasts by V+W preserved on Acetate Discs  

The paper presents the research activities dedicated to wartime recordings of J. Voskovec and J. Werich (V+W) broadcasted between 1939 and 1945 by the BBC and later by the Office of War Information and the Voice of America. These Czech comedians were pioneers of famous avant-garde theater, which encouraged defiance of Nazi aggression in the second half of the 1930s which was also the reason for the emigration of both of them to the U.S. in 1939. The presented paper will show the recent outcomes of the long-term project related to the research, archival evidence, and digitization (not only) of the WWII recordings preserved on lacquer discs (and magnetic tapes as well) that survived and were housed in various cultural institutions and private collections in both the Czech Republic, Great Britain, and the USA.

Emeritus Professor Tore Simonsen (Norwegian Academy of Music, Norwegian Society for Historical Sound)

The spreadsheet as a discographic database: A pragmatic solution

Founded two years ago, the Norwegian Society for Historical Sound had as one of its main objectives to establish a Norwegian discography. For a small society without any financial backing, and without any guarantees for a long-time future existence, it seemed necessary to establish some principles for this undertaking:

• The database itself should be human readable and self-explanatory.
• The database should be based on open solutions only, with no use of proprietary software.

The pragmatic outcome of these two principles was to use the two-dimensional table as our database model. Not in any way optimal, but still a model most record collectors would recognize being close to their own experience. Our pragmatic solution is a table residing in Google Drive, readable through Google Sheet. Although it appears to be a spreadsheet, we do not depend on any special spreadsheet functionalities or datatypes; the cells contain alphanumeric strings only. As such, the database may be exported to any standard text file as csv etc.; it might even be written out on paper. One row in the table links one specific recording to one specific release, in this way the table has a property roughly equivalent to a (greatly expanded) join or junction table in a relational database. Recognizing that not all users would be comfortable using an online table, and to compensate for the complexity and size of the table, a part of the solution is to develop several data routines which reads the table, and produces smaller, readymade discographic tables in pdf format, for use on the society’s web page.

Session 3: Research projects, 14:00 – 15:30. Chair: Inja Stanović

Dr. George Kokkonis, Dr. Nikos Ordoulidis, Kostas Maistrelis, Pantelis Brattis, Simos Leonidakos, Nikos Papazis (University of Ioannina)

Semantic modelling and technological innovation in folk-popular musicology, the case of the discography of the Greek rebetiko songwriter Vassilis Tsitsanis and the reconstitution of the "musical world" of his time. 

Our presentation will deal with the research project in progress called ‘M.EL.O.S.’ and the music management platform developed for the purposes of the enterprise. Through this project, an open- source music cultural management platform is developed which features the specialized Music Ontology, based on international conceptual models such as the FRBR. The metadata of the three collections that participate in the project will form an open and interconnected repository of knowledge within a National Archive of Musical Entities. The research team of the University of Ioannina focuses on the discography of one of the most prolific songwriters of Greek rebetiko music, Vassilis Tsitsanis, who recorded at least 550 original compositions, from 1936 to 1983. Beyond the introduction of the standard data to the database, the team mainly works on the question of metadata, as it arises both after listening to the material (harmony, tempo, etc.), and through the primary and secondary moods sources (biographies of protagonists, etc.). In our presentation, members of the technical team for the construction of the platform and members of the research team will present the results of their collaboration. This collaboration brought into focus key-issues concerning both the cataloguing and documentation of folk-popular music discography, as well as how modern library studies, with an emphasis now on this unique archival section, is adapting its methodologies and interacting with musicology, recommending a modern field of applied research. 

Dr. Axel Berndt (University of Paderborn, Dr. Andreas Münzmay (University of Paderborn), Frithjof Vollmer (Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts)

Multi-Modal Data Networks: Thoughts on a Digital Performance Edition and its Potential for Ethnomusicology (in Collaboration with GHT) 

The subject of scholarly-critical music editions today is primarily, if not always, written music. This, however, does not take into account the audio media that are so formative for the musical cultures of the 20th and 21st centuries. Therefore, an edition of sonic music poses an urgent, yet unsolved problem. By a Digital Performance Edition, the authors strive to develop a new, multimodal type of music edition which essentially incorporates early recordings and allows for a one-to-one alignment with annotated scores. Important methodological steps of such a Performance Edition are (1) the choice and restauration of recordings, (2) the measurement and critical evaluation of the sonic interpretation, (3) the linking with music notation sources, (4) digital encoding and critical annotation of the findings, and (5) the readability, navigability, and explorability of the multimodal space which comprises written sources, graphics, audio, and encoding data. In this way, a Digital Performance Edition does not stop at the measurement of acoustic features, but derives model descriptions from them that allow for a critical annotation and systemic contextualization of the measurements. Similarly, printed performance instructions and (handwritten) notes by the musicians may be used to derive (personalized) interpretation hypotheses, made audible via MIDI and audio rendering, and set in relation to the musicians’ recordings. This is linked to fundamental questions of discology as well, such as on original studio environments and correct playback speeds. 

The presentation will provide an outline of both the project and its envisaged collaboration with the Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger and will discuss its potential for the ethnomusicological research on (early) recordings.  

Dr. Jelka Vukobratović (Music Academy Zagreb)

The 78 rpm Record Industry in Croatia: Project results

Research project “The Record Industry in Croatia from 1927 until the end of the 1950s” was the first institution-led and state funded research aimed at the domestic production of 78 rpm records in Croatia and former Yugoslavia. The project was led by eight musicologist and ethnomusicologists between the years of 2020 and 2024 and its results include digital data base, scholarly articles, radio sessions, public lectures, and a book (currently in the writing process). The project focused on three local shellac-era record companies. The first company, Edison Bell Penkala, a branch of Edison Bell, started its work in 1927. The second company was Elektroton, originally a privately owned factory from the 1930s, which was nationalized after 1945, and changed its name to Jugoton. Although foreign record companies have been active in Croatia and Yugoslavia since the beginning of the 20th century, the appearance of domestic factories brought a strong focus on local music and musicians, as well as on the local market. Hence this selected period of the Croatian record industry provides only a chronological slice from the longer history of the local music industry, but a one with its distinct contributions. These contributions will be summarized and presented in the paper.

Session 4: African recordings, 16:00 - 15:30. Chair: Christiane Hofer

Dr. Joao Silva (INET-MD/Nova FCSH)

Musics of the African Diaspora in Portugal: The sonification of race through discs (1900—1933)

This paper examines African American and Afro-Brazilian music in Portugal between the first disc recordings for the Gramophone Company and the establishment of the Estado Novo in 1933. Black communities lived in Portugal while popular entertainment venues staged Black characters and blackface performers. In the fin-de-siècle, the Brazilian maxixe and the North American cakewalk made their way into the country; performances, sheet music, sound recordings, and piano rolls helped this spread. After the Great War, Lisbon became a city of jazz-bands and nightclubs. Through local and foreign performers, urban everyday life integrated the new American sounds, such as the fox-trot, the one-step, and the shimmy, as staples of modernity and sophistication. This paper traces the transformation of the Portuguese entertainment market through sound recordings when technological innovations embodied in electrical recording, radio, and talkies became part of everyday life.

Professor Wolfgang Bender (Universität Bayreuth)

African Music of Shellac Discs 2 

Right from the beginning of the record industry, African Music became part of it. In the beginning the record companies either invited musicians from Africa to be recorded in Europe or technicians and equipment were sent to African countries - at the time mostly colonies. From the 1930 onwards local record industries began their activities. After the Second World War recording expanded, organised from within the colonies as well as from outside. In the process of independence, local record companies were growing increasingly. Outside Africa these productions remained more or less unknown, as the African Music shellac discs manufactured in Europe hardly ever reached the European markets.  This overview attempts to get a clearer picture of the recording activities in Africa during the shellac period lasting in Africa up into the mid-sixties.

Tadele Yidnekatchew (independent researcher)

The second set of Ethiopian disks (Fonotecnica Milano, 1924) by Azmari Wubate of Crown Prince Tefferi Mekonnen 

This paper explores Ethiopian music and songs recorded in 1924 on Fonotecnica Milano by Azmari Wubete. Although they contain important political history on the power struggle between deposed Iyassu and then Empress Zewditu and also give indications of the power struggle between Empress Zewditu and Crown Prince Tefferi that was ongoing at the time of recording, they have not been mentioned in any newspaper of Zewditu’s era and/or in any history book to this day. This paper: 1) shall introduce and give due credit to prominent businessman Dejazmach Kinfu Kidane who preserved these disks and many other items of utmost historical significance and to his son Professor Johannes who donated some of the items preserved by his father to the Institute of Ethiopian studies and these Fonotecnica disks to me. 2) presents a brief history of the power struggles from 1909 to 1930, in order to unpick the messages in the recorded songs; 3) presents a brief history of these disks with emphasis on indications of the highly likely possibility that they were from the outset recorded for home use by an exclusive group only, or that they were deliberately concealed after recording for reason (s) yet to be uncovered. This is based on thorough search and findings in the Ethiopian newspaper of the time, in history books and on the labels of these disks; and finally, the paper 4) concludes with power point presentation of photos of the labels, audio of a selected song and with my presentation of direct and hidden meanings of selected verses from some of the words and lines in the songs.