Repositories for recorded sound data produced or received by public or private entities. Existing primarily in the 20th century, they were initially designed using principles, similar to those found in manuscript archives, that have existed since the establishment of a unified administration of archives in Paris in the late 18th century (Archives Nationales, 1789; Archives Départementales, 1796). The 18th-century concern for establishing repositories for records of agencies, recognizing institutional responsibility for the care of documentary heritage, and the responsibility to provide public access, have remained the primary concerns for archives of recorded sound.
For a comprehensive list of Sound archives with significant musical holdings see volume 28.
The invention of a device for reproducing sound took place in 1877 when Thomas Edison patented the cylinder phonograph. By the late 1880s a method for recording and reproducing discs had also been developed by Emile Berliner. Researchers in anthropology and linguistics took advantage of the new technology first, recognizing that the recordings would allow them to preserve the sounds in musical performances that could only be partially represented by written transcription. In 1890 the ethnologist Jesse Walter Fewkes recorded the songs of the Passamaquoddy Indians in Maine, the earliest gramophone recording of songs. In the 1890s songs were recorded by other ethnographers in North America and Europe, including Béla Vikár in Hungary (1892), Waldemar Jochelson in Siberia (1897) and C.S. Myers at Torres Strait (1898). The phonograph was also used during this period to record Western art music. As early as 1889 recordings were made of short instrumental and operatic selections in the USA and Europe for the Edison Library and other agencies. Notable in this period were Gianni Bettini, who recorded operatic performances in the mid- to late-1890s, and Lionel S. Mapleson, who recorded a number of Metropolitan Opera performances between 1900 and 1903. (See Recorded sound, §I, 2.)
The popularity of sound recording spread quickly to researchers who took portable wire, cylinder and disc recorders to the field in Europe, Asia and the Americas during the early 20th century: Bartók and Kodály recorded traditional music in Hungary and Romania before 1915; Cecil Sharp recorded folksongs in England and North America between 1903 and 1918; Janáček and his associates recorded Moravian traditional music between 1909 and 1912; Jaap Kunst was recording in Indonesia in the 1920s and 30s, and Constantin Brăiloiu in Romania between 1929 and 1932.
The commercial recording industry began the mass production of cylinder and disc recordings in the late 19th century. Collected in music libraries, historical sound archives and institutional archives for radio stations and recording companies, commercial recordings also became important sources for historical research later in the 20th century. Today many sound archives include field recordings, commercial recordings dating from the early 20th century, and recorded documents (usually on tape) of radio programmes and concerts, all of which play a role in musicological and ethnomusicological research.
Concern for preserving valuable recordings led to the establishment of sound archives in Europe and North America. In 1899 the first sound archive, the Phonogrammarchiv of the Akademie der Wissenschaften, was founded in Vienna, at the prompting of the physiologist Sigmund Exner. This was followed by the Berlin Phonogrammarchiv, founded in 1900 by Carl Stumpf, and served as a model for other archives in Europe and North America. George Herzog, who had worked at the Berlin Phonogrammarchiv, set up an archive at Columbia; this moved in 1948 to Indiana and became the Archives of Traditional Music.
Between 1900 and 1945 other archives were established in Europe and the USA, including the Discoteca di Stato, Rome (1928), the Musée de l'Homme, Paris (1930), The M.I. Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow (1937), the Phonothèque National, Paris (1938) and the Recorded Sound Section of the Library of Congress, Washington DC (1940).
As recording technology became increasingly portable after 1945 a greater number of archives were established, notably the British Institute of Recorded Sound, London (1948; later the National Sound Archive), the International Library of African Music, Roodepoort, South Africa (1954; in Grahamstown from 1977), the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, Palo Alto, California (1958), the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, New York (1965) and the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings, New Haven, Connecticut (1961). From about 1980 local and regional sound and audiovisual archives have been established throughout the world.
While sound archives generally retain a name and designation that indicates their primary focus is on sound, many contain materials that include a variety of historical data that plays an important role in researching music history. Few sound archives include sound data without written documentation, and today many accept and encourage deposits of visual data, such as video and film, that can document a musical event more completely.
The history of sound and visual recordings and their retention in archives parallels the intellectual development of the scholarly disciplines that have been responsible for establishing, building and maintaining their archives. The function and content of collections in these archives have evolved to reflect changing attitudes towards the use of archival materials. Many sound archives were established to house collections of recordings made by ethnographers in Europe and the USA, and for the benefit of the recording industry. While established and maintained primarily to preserve, today many of these repositories also provide research data for students and scholars. The gradual shift in function in the second half of the 20th century has affected the nature and format of materials collected, as well as the archives' means of access.
Sound archives today serve the musical community by retaining recordings of musical events in commercial and non-commercial form. Comprehensive collections include historical recordings on cylinder, wire, disc, tape and film, as well as contemporary recordings of both audio and visual media on analogue and digital tape and compact disc.
Over the years sound archives have been established in various organizations, including independent collections, educational and research institutions, historical society collections, government organizations, commercial or public institutions such as radio and television stations or museums, and personal collections. The institutional structure surrounding an archive affects the kind of material collected and the means of access to information, and even the accessibility of recordings. Sound archives that are part of an educational institution generally include commercial recordings to support the institution's curriculum, and also act as research repositories for field recordings made by scholars and students connected to the institution. Public or governmental sound archives act as historical research resources for recordings produced within a region or country – their primary goal is to preserve evidence of local and regional events. Similarly, a sound archive connected to a recording company or radio station is concerned with preserving recordings and programmes of that organization. Institutions concerned mainly with preservation invest fewer resources in providing access to the materials for outside researchers.
Regardless of the institution to which it is attached, the scope of a sound archive can range from local to regional, from national to international. The largest and most comprehensive sound archives hold recordings from around the world and include many hundreds of collections in a variety of formats. A sound archive such as the Archive of Maori and Pacific Music at the University of Auckland holds recordings of traditional music largely of the Pacific, while the National Sound Archive at the British Library holds an extensive collection of Western art music, jazz and popular music, as well as traditional music from around the world. Valuable collections of sound recordings are also found in small regional or local archives attached to colleges and universities or to historical societies. While the collections and scope may be small, the recordings and their documentation often represent the only documentary sources for musical information of that region.
Media represented in sound archives includes tinfoil, wax and celluloid cylinders (1877–c1940), wire, glass, zinc, aluminium, shellac, acetate discs (1890s–1990s), non-magnetic (paper) and magnetic wire (1930s–40s) and paper or plastic tape (1930s–90s) on open reels and cassettes, compact discs (from 1983), and digital audio tape (DAT, from 1987). In addition, many archives collect film, videotape and optical video discs storing both audio and visual data. Original recorded sound and image media require specific equipment for playback, creating a technologically complex environment for archivists and researchers. The preservation process in sound archives encourages dubbing sound recordings to a common medium for patron use. Magnetic tape has been considered a stable preservation medium, although increasingly archives are preferring digital media (DAT and compact discs) for their superior sound quality.
Sound archives today collect, preserve, organize and disseminate the contents of collections for scholars, students and performers. These archives hold keys to information on musical practice for historical research and for supplementing current research. Professional standards and ethics in archives dictate that individual privacy, confidentiality and discretion are respected but also ensure access to information and materials. Most archives have published guidelines for the use and duplication of materials that respect the informants, donors and communities from which the materials were originally taken. Especially as regards ethnomusicological materials, ethical standards used during collecting in the early 20th century differed from those used today, when there is more awareness of issues relating to access and dissemination. A greater concern for the cultural property of indigenous peoples has encouraged the redistribution of songs and music along with other cultural artefacts from archives and museums throughout the world. From collections derived from the native peoples of the Americas some song traditions previously lost have been returned to communities in the form of historical recordings from archives.
There are several organizations that support and promote sound and audiovisual archives through meetings, publications, published standards and directories. Foremost among them is the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA). Established in 1969, the IASA is involved in the preservation, organization and use of sound recordings, techniques of recording and reproducing sound in all fields in which the audio medium is used. The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), founded in 1966, is an American organization whose purpose is to develop and disseminate information related to all aspects of recording and sound media.
Other organizations with sound archive membership include the International association of music libraries (IAML), the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA). All professional organizations are concerned at some level with administration, procedures and standards for access, preservation and ethics, as well as with the dissemination of information on the contents of archival collections.
GroveA (‘Sound and Film Archives’, G.D. Gibson and A. Seeger)
O. Read and W.L. Welch: From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph (Indianapolis, IN, 2/1977)
D. Lance: Sound Archives: a Guide to their Establishment and Development (Milton Keynes, 1983)
F.J. Gillis: ‘The Incunabula of Instantaneous Ethnomusicological Sound Recordings, 1890–1910; a Preliminary List’, Problems and Solutions: Occasional Essays in Musicology presented to Alice M. Moyle, ed. J.C. Kassler and J. Stubington (Sydney, 1984), 323–55
A. Seeger: ‘The Role of Sound Archives in Ethnomusicology Today’, EthM, xxx (1986), 261–76
Trân Quang Hai: ‘Ethnomusicologie: les archives nationales’, Encyclopedia universalis universalia (Paris, 1986), 426–8
A. Ward: A Manual of Sound Archive Administration (Aldershot, 1990)
G.A. Marco: Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound in the United States (New York, 1993)
JENNIFER POST