Lectures, Events, New Publications


Group Picture of Participants of NEILS-5 (2010) in Guwahati


Member of Phonogrammarchiv staff Dr. Jürgen Schöpf is working with a team of linguists researching endangered languages and cultures in Upper Assam. Thus he attended recently North East Indian Linguistics Society's 5th annual conference in Guwahati, February 12-14, 2010. This is a high resolution picture to allow all other participants to download this image from here.

-- online since February 19, 2010 --


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


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 --


"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 --


Season's greetings

A year full of hard work, but rich in memorable events, is drawing to a close: the Phonogrammarchiv celebrated 110 years of its existence, and music lovers all over the world commemorated the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn – an appropriate occasion, we think, to draw your attention to this rare treat:

Link to our Christmas card...

Heartfelt Season’s Greetings

from all of us at the Phonogrammarchiv

-- online since December 17, 2009 --


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 --


New Publication within the Series "Mechanical Music":

Vol. 7:
Joseph Haydn -
Sämtliche Flötenuhren


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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 --


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 --


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 --


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 --


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 --


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 --