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"Music & Arts" realeases historical concert recordings of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra

A first selection of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra’s historical recordings, which were digitised in the Phonogrammarchiv, has recently been released by Music&Arts.

Orfeo (Claudio Monteverdi): Paul Hindemith conducts members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra including Nikolaus Harnoncourt and other musicians who in the 1950s teamed up to form the Concentus Musicus Wien.

Johannes-Passion (Johann Sebastian Bach): Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Singakademie, Uta Graf, Marga Hoeffgen, Julius Patzak, Gerard Souzay, Walter Berry, conducted by Fritz Lehmann.

http://musicandarts.com/0610_New_Class.html

The historical tapes – live recordings from concerts of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra featuring renowned soloists and famous conductors, made between 1952 and 1956 by the Sendergruppe Radio Rot-Weiß-Rot – were saved from destruction by Oskar Deleglise. On behalf of the Orchestra, the Phonogrammarchiv carefully prepared and digitally re-recorded these tapes between 2004 and 2009. Both the digitised recordings and the original tapes were subsequently entrusted to the Österreichische Mediathek to ensure their long-term preservation.

MUSIC AND ARTS PROGRAMS OF AMERICA, INC., a small California-based non-profit record label, also specialises in the release of rare historical recordings. With this release, Music & Arts initiates a series of co-productions with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, featuring outstanding live performances from the Orchestra’s extensive tape archive. Forthcoming releases in the series of unique recordings of post-war musical life will be devoted to the early artistry of pianist Friedrich Gulda and the short-lived Spanish conductor Ataúlfo Argenta.

-- online since August 3, 2010 --

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The Phonogrammarchiv’s contribution to the virtual exhibition “A Roma Journey”

To visit the exhibition click here...

With a selection from its extensive holdings featuring Romani culture, the Phonogrammarchiv has contributed to the new online exhibition of The European Library. The Archive presents its oldest sound document of the Romani language (made in Croatia in 1901, published on OEAW PHA CD 7) and its earliest recording of a Roma musician (made in Bosnia in 1912). In addition, one can listen to many other (hitherto unpublished) recordings comprising storytelling, music and oral history of Roma in various European regions. Original statements by the singer Šaban Bajramović and well-known writers such as Mateo Maximoff, Elena Lacková, Ceija Stojka and Leksa Manuš are included as well.

Read more in the Newsletter of The European Library.

Press release (PDF)

-- online since April 30, 2010 --

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Hot from the press – Volume 1 of the Phonogrammarchiv’s Yearbook

We are happy to announce the publication of Volume 1 of the Jahrbuch des Phonogrammarchivs der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, which appeared just in time for the celebration of our 111th anniversary on 27 April 2010. It contains the proceedings of the international symposium devoted to “Reflections on fields of work, cooperation and perspectives”, held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences precisely 110 years after the Archive’s establishment, as well as an abridged version of our Annual Report for 2009.

Publisher: Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen
http://www.cuvillier.de/flycms/en/html/30/-UickI3zKPS72c0w=/Buchdetails.html?SID=Lk7PXf03952b

-- online since April 28, 2010 --

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Classical Chinese Kunqu opera to be staged in Austria for the first time ever!

The oldest living form of opera, Kunqu, the classical Chinese opera, is on a par with all other opera traditions in terms of artistic value. Its importance for the musical culture of the world has been highlighted by its inscription on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Date and time of performance:	13 and 14 January 2010, 7 p.m.
Venue:	Festsaal der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2, 1010 Wien
	Tickets (incl. programme):	€ 15.- / € 10.- (students)
	For reservations send an e-mail to: pha@oeaw.ac.at

Kunqu dates back to the 13th century, its two sources being Yuan-Zaju in Northern China and Song-Nanxi (Southern Theatre) in Suzhou, Hangzhou and Wenzhou. Becoming canonical under the Ming dynasty in the 16th century, it still follows the same rules today. Until well into the 19th century, Kunqu was the high literary opera of the literati, officials and gentry, with its elegant, aesthetically subtle, water-polished melodies and refined art of performance. In 1790, it fused with local opera styles into the popular Beijing opera, but continued to exist alongside it. Although Kunqu was banned between 1966 and 1976, 16 surviving old masters trained a new generation of opera singers after 1980. Thus Kunqu troupes can again be found in seven cities today (Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Chenzhou). One of the best – the Suzhou troupe from South-East China – will now perform in Vienna for the first time.

Under the patronage of the Austrian UNESCO Commission, two performances (featuring different operas) will take place in the magnificent festive hall of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, on 13 and 14 January 2010, 7 p.m. There will also be an exhibition of several precious costumes.

In cooperation with Professor Qu Liuyi (Beijing) and under the direction of ethnomusicologist Professor Rudolf Brandl, the Kunqu research team – University of Göttingen (2004–2008) and Phonogrammarchiv der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (since 2009) – conducts field work among all Kunqu opera troupes (Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wenzhou/Yongjia, Chenzhou) in order to document performance style and tradition. The repertoire thus recorded live on video is representative of the 20th/21st century; it is being archived at the Phonogrammarchiv der ÖAW and published on DVD. This collection constitutes the first scholarly live video documentation of Kunqu

-- online since December 30, 2009 --

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"Albania Project" finalised

Two workshops and a press conference in Tirana, featuring statements by the Albanian Minister for Education and Science, Mr Mygerem Tafaj, and the Austrian Ambassador to Albania, Mr Florian Raunig, concluded the project Digitisation of the Sound Archive of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology of the Centre for Albanological Studies.

In the course of this four-year project the holdings of the institute, formerly the Institute of Folk Culture of the Albanian Academy of Sciences, have been extracted from their original tapes, digitised, and preserved in a digital repository. They represent a corpus of the traditional music styles of Albania, systematically recorded over the past five decades.

The project was financed by the Austrian Development Agency with a grant of 180,000.- Euros.

Read more...

-- online since December 23, 2009 --

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Symposium on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Dietrich Schüller

Digital availability of audio-visual archives in the Internet era

The symposium is jointly organised by Media Archives Austria (m|a|a) and the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Date:	October 27, 2009, UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage
Venue:	Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Herbert Hunger-Haus, Theatersaal Sonnenfelsgasse 19, 1010 Vienna

Programme [PDF]

-- online since October 05, 2009 --

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New Publication within the Series "Mechanical Music":

Vol. 7:
Joseph Haydn -
Sämtliche Flötenuhren

Order CD...

Editor: Helmut Kowar. Editorial Assistance: Gerda Lechleitner.
OEAW PHA CD 29, 2009 .

Joseph Haydn composed special music for musical clocks, and he did this obviously in close cooperation with his colleague at the Esterhazy court, the court chaplain and librarian P. Primitivus Niemecz, who became especially known for his skills in building musical automata. Two flute clocks (from 1792 and 1793) are extant bearing the signature of Niemecz, two others are attributed to him. There is an additional flute clock, made by Johann Joseph Wiest, which was on exhibition until 1804 in Deym’s art gallery in Vienna, thus presenting Haydn’s music to the public – while the Niemecz clocks did not leave private rooms during Haydn’s lifetime. These five instruments have 38 musical pieces on their barrels: 18 original compositions by Haydn or arrangements he himself made of his own works, the remaining pieces probably provided by Niemecz, who was also a musician and a pupil of Haydn. Many pieces show up on two or three clocks, so that the complete edition comprises 65 titles. The five flute clocks saw a changeful history ending up in private and public ownership in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. With this CD their musical repertoire is presented for the first time collectively and completely.

Here the Link to a selected sound sample on our "Editions of Sound Documents" page.

-- online since August 14, 2009 --

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New Publication within the Series "Sound Documents from the Phonogrammarchiv":

Series 12:
Judeo-Spanish from the Balkans
The Recordings by Julius Subak (1908) and Max A. Luria (1927)

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Editor: Christian Liebl. Editorial Assistance: Gerda Lechleitner.
Comments by Paloma Díaz-Mas, Christian Liebl, Aldina Quintana Rodríguez und Edwin Seroussi (in collaboration with Rivka Havassy).
OEAW PHA CD 28, 2009.

During 1908/1909, Julius Subak (1872–1936), an Austrian Romance scholar, was entrusted by the Balkans Commission of the Imperial Academy of Sciences to record, both in writing and phonographically, the Judeo-Spanish of the Balkan Peninsula. He conducted his primarily linguistic investigation among the descendants of those Sephardim who – expelled from Spain in 1492 – had sought refuge in the Balkans, then part of the Ottoman Empire. The resulting 15 Phonogramme are said to be the first recordings of Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) made for scholarly purposes. They contain chiefly poems and romances (the orally transmitted ballads from medieval Spain), but also songs and a passionate appeal to preserve the Judeo-Spanish language. Subak even succeeded in recording prominent representatives of Sarajevo’s Sephardic community – such as Abraham A. Cappon, who is reciting from his own works.
In 1927, the US-American Max A. Luria (1891–1966) undertook linguistic field research in Monastir (present-day Bitola, FYROM) as part of his doctoral dissertation. Equipped with an Archivphonograph, he made a total of 26 recordings which – featuring proverbs and dialogues, but above all numerous konsežas (folktales) – bring to life again this particularly conservative dialect of Judeo-Spanish.
The contributions by Aldina Quintana Rodríguez, Edwin Seroussi & Rivka Havassy as well as Paloma Díaz-Mas highlight the importance of these unique sound documents, especially for Judeo-Spanish dialectology, but also for the study of Sephardic music and literature. Together with the transcriptions, they constitute a valuable supplement to the recorded witnesses of a once flourishing culture on the eve of cataclysmic changes.

Here the Link to a selection of sound samples on our "Editions of Sound Documents" page.

-- online since July 13, 2009 --

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New Publication within the Series "Sound Documents from the Phonogrammarchiv":

Series 11/1:
Croatian Recordings 1901-1936.

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General Editor: Dietrich Schüller. Editor: Gerda Lechleitner. Editorial Assistance: Christian Liebl and Jakša Primorac.
Comments by Walter Breu, Naila Ceribašić, Radoslav Katičić, Franz Lechleitner, Gerda Lechleitner, Mijo Lončarić, Grozdana Marošević, Dario Marušić, Gerhard Neweklowsky and Jakša Primorac.
OEAW PHA CD 27, 2009.

The basic idea underlying Series 11 – Croatian Recordings – was conceived by Gerda Lechleitner (Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Grozdana Marošević (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb) when considering its publication as a co-operation of both institutions. They decided to include all the material housed in the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv and recorded in the first half of the 20th century, either on the territory of today’s Croatia or among Croats living outside Croatia. Because of its size, Series 11 will be published in two parts: the first part (Series 11/1 – Croatian Recordings 1901–1936) is made up of all the smaller collections, while the second part will comprise the most extensive collection among these holdings, compiled by Milovan Gavazzi and Božidar Širola during the 1920s in co-operation between the Phonogrammarchiv and the Department of Folk Music, founded in 1921 as part of the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb.
This publication features the very first recordings made by Milan Rešetar in 1901 during his investigation of the dialect boundaries in northern Croatia; in 1907, Rešetar again took a recording machine with him when conducting field research in Acquaviva Collecroce (Kruč) near Campobasso in Molise to study the life and culture of Croats living there. In Istria, only single recordings were made of Istro-Romanian and Italian dialects, while František Pospíšil’s project of recording Croats in Moravia in 1910 generated a greater output. Matija (Mathias) Murko recorded and studied epic songs in 1913; and Croatian soldier songs, recorded in Karlovac in Croatia during World War I, are included as well. Quite often, the Phonogrammarchiv took the opportunity to invite visitors to make a recording, e.g. Josip (Josef) Florschütz (1912) or four singers from Parndorf (Burgenland Croats, 1936). Mention must be made of the sizeable collection of Josip Široki, who was author, performer and technician all in one person. His collection (1913–1920) includes items of all South Slavic music styles (he did not only sing but also perform on several instruments) and various dialects (spoken by him) – it is, as far as we know, our only collection compiled in that way.

Here the Link to a selection of sound samples on our "Editions of Sound Documents" page.

-- online since July 13, 2009 --

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The UNESCO Jikji Prize and the José Maceda Collection

A cooperation between the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv and the University of the Philippines

The biannual UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize, the first prize in the field of documentary heritage preservation and access, was established by UNESCO in April 2004 to commemorate the inscription, on the Memory of the World Register, of Jikji, the oldest surviving book made with moveable metal characters by monks from Cheongju City, Korea, in 1377.

The Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences was the UNESCO Jikji Prize Winner 2007. In the application for the prize, it had been stated that the prize money (USD 30,000 donated by Cheongju City) would be used to contribute to safeguarding an audiovisual collection, preferably from a country with developing economy.

Also in 2007, the José Maceda Collection of the University of the Philippines was inscribed by UNESCO on the International Register of the Memory of the World Programme. Familiar with the collection and its precarious situation from previous contacts, the Phonogrammarchiv thus decided to spend the prize money on the digitisation of this important corpus of ethnomusicological recordings.

The digitisation is meanwhile well under way. Read more about the José Maceda Collection and the cooperation between Vienna and Manila HERE.

-- online since December 15, 2008 --

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Rudolf M. Brandl Director of the Phonogrammarchiv as of October 1st 2008

Dr. Rudolf M. Brandl, Professor of Comparative Musicology at the Georg-August-Universität of Göttingen, Germany, succeeded Dietrich Schüller as Director. He took office on 1st of October 2008.

Rudolf M. Brandl was a student assistant and curator at the Phonogrammarchiv from 1965 to 1975, then Assistant Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, before he was appointed Professor at the University of Göttingen in 1982. Already during his first term in the Phonogrammarchiv he started field work in Greece and amongst Serbian migrant workers in Vienna, subsequently extending his research to China, where he concentrated on the audiovisual documentation of masque rituals, Kunqu and other local opera styles.

Link to select bibliography

-- online since September 30, 2008 --

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UNESCO/Jikji Prize awarded to Phonogrammarchiv

The Jikji Prize, funded by the Republic of Korea, is given every two years to promote the objectives of the Memory of the World Programme: preserving and digitizing humanity's documentary heritage.
The Phonogrammarchiv is the 2007 prizewinner. It is recognized for its substantial contribution to the advancement of audio and video preservation.

The award ceremony took place on 4 September 2007 at the Cultural Centre of Cheongju City, with 1200 invited guests in attendance. Dietrich Schüller and Bernhard Graf received the Prize from Mr Nam Sang-Woo, Mayor of Cheongju City. Among those offering their congratulations were the Minister for Culture of the Republic of Korea as well as, via video messages, Mr Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, and Mr Koďchiro Matsuura, Director General of UNESCO.

Message from Koďchiro Matsuura, Director General of UNESCO: video and text as *.pdf.

Find more information on the Jikji Prize here.

Here you find a video of the award ceremony - click the button below the picture to view the video.

Dietrich Schüller's words of thanks.

-- online since September 18, 2007 --