Another interesting book is 'History of International Broadcasting, Vol.1', published by The Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1992, New Zealand. Here a short excerpt of the chapter 'Japanese War Time Broadcasting': 'As is the case with most government-funded broadcasting services, Nippon Hoso Kyokai, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, in 1941 had a national and an international broadcasting service. At that time, before Pearl Harbor, the overseas broadcasting bureau was transmitting international programs to the world over a network of SW transmitters - some beamed towards Western Europe, Scandinavia and the Soviet Union, others to Canada and the USA. The programs were produced in English, French, Italian, German and Russian. At the time, ordinary people accepted that the Japanese attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor was one of surprise. However, the attack had been preceded by a fairly lengthy period of strained relations between the two countries, and there is considerable evidence suggesting that President Roosevelt knew the attack was coming; one theory is that it was part of his strategy to get America committed to the war. However, the severity of the raid and its overwhelming success, were a fearsome shock to American self-confidence. Pearl Harbor was merely the first of a long series of victories by Japanese Imperial forces. It was soon followed by surprise air attacks on widely separated parts of SE Asia, stretching from Burma to the Dutch East Indies. After the speedy conquest of Malaya, the British fortress of Singapore, once though unassailable, fell to the Japanese, when the British garrison of 65,000 regulars surrendered to 15,000 Japanese troops on February 10, 1942.One month later, Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies, fell to Japanese forces. In May, the Japanese took the Philippines, and with them the American base at Corregidor. A few months later, Hong Kong, the second jewel in the crown of the British Empire, fell without a shot being fired. The sun had set over Britain's Far Eastern colonies. Within a few months, Japan had acquired an empire which extended from Burma through to Java, Sumatra, Bali, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, and stretched a quarter of the span of the globe, from Burma to the Midway Islands.The sheer speed of the Japanese onslaught meant that many vital strategic installations were seized intact. These included radio installations for both broadcasting and SW communications. In Hong Kong, the vital wireless installations on Stonecutter's Island were taken in working order; some were put to military use, while others were used to extend the voice of NHK Overseas Broadcasting Bureau. Following its string of victories, Japan had acquired a radio broadcasting network of unequalled proportions. By the skilful use of SW pick-ups from NHK studios in Japan, NHK could beam its broadcasts with even greater power than before.Very soon the voices of Japanese operators dominated the airwaves of South and East Asia. But the evidence is that in the beginning, Japan did not use these facilities to their full extent. NHK established some broadcasting studios in Batavia, Manila, Singapore and Hong Kong, but there is little evidence of these being used for propaganda purposes in the first year of the war with America (although broadcasts were beamed to the west coast of America, which had a large percentage of Japanese-Americans). Equally, the Japanese high command showed little initiative or enthusiasm for becoming involved with propaganda broadcasting; it was beneath the dignity of the Imperial Army to engage in such unethical practices, and probably contrary to the spirit of bushido. The Japanese could afford to adopt such an attitude: they were victorious in battle, had acquired an empire for the emperor and the army had proved itself in battle against American, British and Australian troops.'
Oct.27,2009: My friend and writer Christian Blees (Berlin) has produced a new feature with original sound documents 'Das Stasi-Wachregiment Feliks E.Dzierzynski'. The Regiment was the military arm of the STASI-State Security Police in the former GDR. Its task was to protect the homes, offices of Polit-and Party Leaders and act as security guards at Party Rallies. As the possession of privat radio receivers was strictly prohibited in the Regiment's barracks, a special broadcasting studio was built up to entertain these men, accompanied with political indoctrination. Christian uses some of these newly found recordings along with eye-witness accounts. To be heard on Oct 28th on SWR2 radio at 22:05 and on Oct.31st on Bayern2 at 13:04 GMT. Go to their websites for streaming audio.
addendum: I have just seen that a pre-CD-issue of this feature prog. is available via AMAZON. This is a longer version than the broadcasting one.
Oct.29,2009: BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service), I have known from my teens, has now launched its station in Afghanistan. Although it is absolutely different from the days gone by, it's a piece of radio history. 'BFBS Radio Afghanistan went live on air at 0630 local Afghan time this morning, Monday 26th October, broadcasting from Camp Bastion to British Forces across Afghanistan and the Middle East, and to their family and friends back in the UK on DAB Digital Radio.' You can listen to it live via this link:
http://www.bfbs-radio.com/pages/extranet/live-from-afghanistan-i-1401.php
Nov.2,2009: I was deeply touched to see an American WWII-newsreel clipping from the battle in Aachen, showing US tanks fighting in one of the streets where I once lived back in the 1950s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve0ENIIlRJA
Dec01,2009: From today on German radio station MDR-FIGARO brings readings by the great late actor Mathias Wieman, recorded in 1964 (Tales of 1001 Nights) (at 15:10hrs)
On Sunday, Dec.6th, German radio stations WDR+NDR recall the beginning of broadcasting of the US propaganda radio statio '1212' (aka RADIO ANNIE). For more details and streaming audio see their websides.
Dec.5,2009: A site with sound clips (film and radio) on Scottish history in the 20th century can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/scotlandonfilm/media_clips/index_topic.shtml?topic=home_front&subtopic=homeguard
Dec.11,2009:German radio station NDR KULTUR broadcasts from today on and on 13 following days a reading by the author Peter Bamm 'Fruehe Staetten der Christenheit' of 1957, about his journeys in 1952-53 to the Near East. See their website for streaming audio.
Dec.19,2009: The Sound and the Story begins with a lesson in early recording technology including the master tape machine, 'recording' console (long before anyone had heard of Trident or Neve, much less Solid State Logic); practices such as multiple takes and terms such as 'dynamic range' are used, though with minimal explanation. The Sound and the Story clearly was aimed at the general audience. A nice accompiment to 'In Living Stereo' where it told of how 78's are made, 'The Sound And The Story' teaches us how vinyl records are made. This is done by going step by step, by first showing us a recording being done of 'Romeo And Juliet' by the Boston Symphony, to the taping of it, a master being made, to dupes of the master, a mold, and then finally, the dupes of the mold. All of this is explained in a suprisingly easy and interesting way, since I've never been told how records are made. Another interesting point about this, is how many women they had working at the RCA shop, not just typists or what have you, but you had women working the stamping machine! Film is available at Prelinger Archives.
Dec.31, 2009 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE!
2010 |
| INFO |
Jan.11,2010: I was having a big PC problem, so there were no new entries over the last weeks!
Jan.12,2010: On Jan 14th radio MDR FIGARO broadcasts Albert Schweitzer who reports about his childhood and his teens (in German 'Aus meiner Kindheit und Jugendzeit'). Her recorded this document (25mins) between Feb 7th and Dec 27th, 1955.
Jan 13,2010: Recording of Nazi officers who found Hitler's body released - A tape recording of Nazi officers describing the moment they found Adolf Hitler's body in his Berlin bunker has been discovered.
The recording was made on October 25 1956 in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden, site of the Fuehrer's mountaintop home in Bavaria. The court was convened to officially declare the former leader of Nazi Germany dead so that his fortune and rights to his book 'Mein Kampf' could be seized by the state government. Among those giving evidence that day were Otto Guensche, an SS officer, and Heinz Linge, a valet, who first discovered the corpses of Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun. On the recording, discovered by researchers for the German Spiegel TV channel, the men speak under oath of entering the Fuehrer's study after hearing shots ring out on April 30 1945. 'When I entered to my left I saw Hitler on the sofa,' said Linge, who died in 1980. 'Hitler had his head bent forward somewhat and I could see a bullethole approximately the size of a penny on the right side of the temple.' Guensche, who went to his death in 1983 refusing to give details about the dictator's end, said: 'Hitler sat on the arm of the sofa with his head hanging down on the right shoulder which was itself hanging limp over the back of the sofa. On the right side was the bullethole.' Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary, was with them when they first entered Hitler's study, the pair testified. They arrived at 3.30pm and participated in removing the bodies, carrying them upstairs to the devastated garden of the Reich Chancellery and assisting in their cremation. Both men were captured by the Soviets after the fall of Berlin and shipped off to Moscow for over a decade. It fuelled the myth which Russian leader Josef Stalin wanted to perpetuate that Hitler might somehow have escaped and was on the run. They came back to Germany in 1955. The testimony of Guensche and Linge lay hidden in the Munich public records office. Spiegel has restored the recordings to allow them to be heard by scholars and historians. (Telegraph, 12 Jan 2010)
Those who are familiar with the German language can go to: http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/5903/stimmen_aus_dem_fuehrerbunker.html
Jan.16,2010: Tonight German radio stations DLF and DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR broadcast a 'Long Night' (3 hrs) onWinston Churchill and Somerset Maugham. The broadcast is about their parallel lives (both born in 1874), their literary and political traces, in texts and original voices. - 23:05h DLF, DLRK 00:05h. Go to their websites for streaming audio.
Jan.18,2010: German KULTURRADIO brings a feature on the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, UNESCO World Heritage Site, at 19:05 hrs.
The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv has been on the UNESCO 'Memory of the World' for 10 years now. It was started at the end of the 19th century by Carl Stumpf , who began collecting sounds from all around the world on Edison wax cylinders.Today one can listen to voices of long extinct cultures, preserved at the Ethnologisches Museum of Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz on some ten-thousandn of cylinders of which 16,000 wax cylinders are originals, the rest being the matrices that had been manufactured soon after the recordings had been made. (The matrices can still be used for reproduction purposes.) The broadcast is a.o. on the preservation of this heritage for future generations. The first 20 cylinders were recorded in Berlin Zoo in September 1900, a Siamese Theatre Group. Von Hornbostel became his assistant, and he travelled extensively, even to the Pawnee Indians (Winter 1906).
Jan.19,2010: An excerpt (ID) of an old BBC German Language Prog of Nov.4, 1949 'Art and Entertainment' on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecv5P26rk1Q&feature=related
and a German Radio Drama 'Schliemann, der Narr' of 1938 (beginning), pressed for radio broadcasting by Polydor on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjgiRIMB3Ak&feature=related
Jan.27,2010: A good companion to all American radio programmes can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._radio_programs
Jan.30,2010: German radio station BR-KLASSIK (Bavaria) brings the first part of a feature on John and Alan Lomax under the title 'The treasure hunters with the Phonograph', 23:05h-24:00; go to their website for streaming audio.
Feb.4,2010: A catalogue of Voices of the Postwar Era 1945-54 in the National Archives is available here:
http://www.archives.gov/research/voices-of-postwar.html
and a catalogue of TV Interviews 1951-1955 by Longines Chronoscope in the NA :
http://www.archives.gov/research/formats/tv-interviews-1951-to-1955.html
Feb.13,2010: Today at 23:05h, German radio DEUTSCHLANDFUNK brings a 3-hour-special on the bomb raid on Dresden on Feb.13, 1945 with eye-witnesses, historians and people of today. Go to their website for streaming audio.
Feb.16,2010: The Smithonian Magazine has an article that may be of interest: '100 years of Public Broadcasting'
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Radio-Activity-The-100th-Anniversary-of-Public-Broadcasting.html?c=y&page=1
Feb.23,2010: YouTube has a film report about the work of Radio Free Europe -RFE- under the title 'Eagle Cage: Czech-German Border'. The film's anti-communist perspective compares east - west freedoms, or the lack thereof. Scenes show a U.S. tour group at the East German border, and stress the importance of Radio Free Europe. National Security Council. Central Intelligence Agency. (09/18/1947 - 12/04/1981)
Mar8,2010: Tomorrow at 19:15hrs German DEUTSCHLANDFUNK broadcasts a feature on the American radio pioneer Elsa Knight Thompson.
Knight Thompson was Public Affairs Director at Pacifica Radio's KPFA in the San Francisco Bay Area, from 1957 to the early 1970s. She later worked as KPFA's Program Director. Her documentary programs and interviews won numerous broadcasting awards. She was a pathfinder for women in broadcasting and a leading figure in the history of Pacifica Radio and KPFA. Her style of radio influenced generations of public broadcasters.While at KPFA, Thompson produced programs on civil rights issues, the rise of the Black Panther Party and the Vietnam War, as well as her 1960 documentary on the House Un-American Activities Committee called Black Friday. She worked for the Pacific News Service in San Francisco from 1975 to 1979.She was born in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, to Murel Bolden and Earl Knight. At the British Broadcasting Corporation in London during World War II, she headed the international desk of the program Radio Newsreel. Thompson was one of the first journalists to interview survivors of Nazi concentration camps.She died at the age of 76 in Oakland, California.(from Wikipedia)
Mar20,2010:Two million minutes of rare audio at PBC under threat: Two million minutes of rare audio recordings, comprising speeches, interviews, drama, music and Mushairas from pre-partition days to date, available with the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), are under threat because of paucity of funds to preserve them. -The audio include speeches of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Mahatama Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Liaquat Ali Khan, Bahadur Yar Jung, Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardi, Mountbatten, and even Hitler and Mussolini are available at the headquarters of PBC in Islamabad. However, it faces threat because PBC has a budget shortfall of Rs 100 million, a highly-placed source told The News on Friday.- The treasure is not only a great heritage but could also be used as source material for researchers and scholars interested in unearthing the ups and downs of the national liberation movement and the people keen to understand the Pakistan politics in its true perspective. The rare audio collection could also help in understanding the rise and fall of fascism and unearthing malignant aggression of personalities such as Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Mussolini.- The rare audios also include music and dramas but in all likelihood the tapes would become redundant if the authorities fail to take timely action. PBC needs to digitise the audio tapes immediately, the source said. Despite the advent of TV and other media outlets, radio has a special significance, especially for the third world countries like Pakistan because the vast majority of our population lives in rural areas and relies on radio. Therefore, the authorities should pay heed to preserving these rare audios, said Professor Saher Ansari, an eminent poet, critic and educationist. - If the government is short of funds to preserve these rare audios, it can auction it so that it is preserved. I think the British Broadcasting Corporation and All India Radio will be keen to purchase them because it will help researchers, students of history and art and culture in understanding our national liberation movement, and evolution of art and culture in this part of the world, said eminent short story writer and columnist Zahida Hina.(fr.THE PRESS)
March 31,2010 Nothing concerning audio material but a reminder that the bad times of WWII are still present: Today (again) an Allied 300-kilo-bomb (as big as a man) was found near the city centre of Aachen. An area around the main train station incl. a hospital had to be evacuated and trains had to stop. After eight hours they gave the all-clear signal.
April 12,20010: On Thursday 29th April at 1130am , BBC Radio 4 have a documentary about re-mastering old recordings. Full details on the BBC Press Office website. The final paragraph states ' ...re-mastering engineers treat the work with great care and reverence - and often uncover moments in history'.
April 16,2010: The BBC has put some audio clips online re WWII. They are meant for school-children. Go to www.bbc.co.uk/schoolradio.
April 18,2010: Added another early spoken word cylinder to the list: King David Kalakaua of Hawaii. That record is so consumed with mold that it is unplayable, and no transfer was ever made of it. The King made this wax cylinder in The Palace Hotel in San Francisco on Jan.16,1891, four days before his death. The cylinder was given to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in 1918 by James Pratt, 'who at the time was the only person on the islands who had a grammophone to play it.' (KITV.com 21.5.09)
If you are interested to learn more about the story around the cylinder, go to http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=10406604 , which has an article of the Hawaiian News Now. April 20,2010: Experimental Eduction Projects- Optical Sound Track Method: describes how pictures of discs (here a Berliner) and pieces of paper are made listenable. http://www.phonozoic.net/ostm3.html
April 25,2010: A speech recorded by famous Bishop August Count of Galen (1878-1946) of Muenster/Germany has been discovered. The recording made in 1934 was discovered on tapes desposited in the inheritance of the Galen family. In the 8-minute-address von Galem addresses the members of his diocese, and it seems that he read a prepared speech as made for a shellac disc.- The only known recording of his voice is a short statement he made on March 16,1946, in front of his Muenster Cathedral. http://www.direktbroker.de/news-kurse/details/Politik-News/Tondokument+-+Ansprache+von+Bi/21113942
May 1,2010: German radio HR2- Hessia- brings sound recordings from 1949-1990 round the clock (9:05-20:00h) from all walks of life. Go to their website.
May 4,2010: On May 8th at 12:05h on German radio WDR3, my friend Christian Blees presents a feature on Norman Corwin on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Christian has been visiting and interviewing Corwin this year. So he knows who he is talking about. Norman Corwin is famous for a pile of written work and of radio drama. To listen to this feature go to the website of WDR3 for streaming audio.
May 19,2010: Sunday 23rd May, 0900-1000 UK time, BBC Radio 4 : programme 'Broadcasting House': 'Paddy O'Connell talks to BBC Director General Mark Thomson about the social and historical significance of the BBC archives.....
May 25,2010:A NEW PLACE FOR ARCHIVE HOLDINGS ?- BBC uses prisoners to work on programme archive plan
The BBC has used serving prisoners to work on its historic programme archives in a secret project uncovered by The Daily Telegraph (23 May):
Under the scheme, the publicly-funded broadcaster handed over footage to inmates who earn just £30 a week rather than members of its own 23,000 staff. Convicts at a privately run Category B jail, the second-highest security level, transferred tapes of old television shows to computer to save them for posterity. Senior staff in the BBC's archives department visited the jail to watch the work in progress while meetings were held to discuss a landmark deal for the prisoners to digitise all 1million hours of programmes in its vaults.Fearful about the controversy the scheme could cause, the BBC never discussed it publicly and even the broadcasting union, Bectu, was unaware of it. Details were obtained by this newspaper through a Freedom of Information request that took more than four months rather than the usual 20 working days. The BBC insists that it has not given any money to Serco, the private jail operator, for the secret scheme nor signed any contracts, following the pilot project last year. However emails disclosed by the corporation show that it had shown considerable interest in the innovative project proposed by Serco, which runs four prisons in England. The BBC owns more than 1m hours of historic content, some of it decades old and at risk of being lost. It employs 66 people to look after it, at a cost of £5m a year, in its Information and Archives department. The corporation estimates it would take 10 years to safely copy all 100m items in its collection into longer-lasting digital formats. In December 2008 it was approached by Serco to become involved in Artemis Achieving Rehabilitation Through Establishing a Media Ingest Service a new project for prisoners to transfer archive documents to computers. Serco said it would provide 'high-quality employment' and the chance of an NVQ qualification for inmates and HMP Lowdham Grange, a 628-capacity jail near Nottingham all of whose inmates are serving at least four years. The firm said this would mean it could provide a 'stable work force'. The BBC was told it would prove a 'very cost-effective' way of digitising its archive, and several meetings were organised to discuss plans.Managers agreed to hand over 20 hours of old videos, including episodes of Horizon and Earth Story, so prisoners could transfer them to computer and also add 'meta-data' 'typed detailed descriptions of the footage to help producers search through it more easily. The British Library and National Archives also provided material for the pilot project. In September last year, five members of BBC staff visited the jail, where a production workshop had been built, and were reported to be 'pleased' with what they saw of the prisoners work and enthusiasm. However David Crocker, the driving force behind the scheme at Serco, admitted: 'The major concern was around the potential negative newspaper headlines that the BBC may attract.' The company did discuss the scheme with one newspaper and one trade magazine but made no reference to the BBC's involvement. In November, Mr Crocker told the BBC: 'I can't thank you enough for finding a project for us to kick-start Artemis.'He said his staff were drawing up 'terms of reference' and would then 'cost the project' of a full-scale digitisation of the BBC's archive. However no deals have yet been signed. The BBC said: 'The BBC did hold discussions with Serco about their planned project to digitise archives. As part of this the BBC, alongside other organisations, provided some material for Serco to use as part of its feasibility study for the project. 'No payment was made to Serco as part of this, nor was any guarantee or promise of work entered into.'The BBC has no plans to work with Serco to digitise its programme archive and has not come to any agreements nor signed any contracts with any firms about utilising the prison workforce on any project.'
The question of whether the BBC could or should charge for giving instant and entire archive access to the public is still unanswered.
May 31,2010: BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 16th June, 1100-1130 UK time : 'Dancing with the Devil' documentary about British women who visited NS Germany in the 1930s
German radio SWR2 brings a feature on the history of Berlin Radio 1931 to the present day: June 3, 15:05h and 22:18h German time. Go to their website for streaming audio.
June 5,2010: Something to laugh about! A 70-year-old radio at a Scottish heritage centre has been picking up vintage broadcasts featuring Winston Churchill and the music of Glen Miller.The Pye valve wireless at Montrose Air Station, a heritage centre that tells the story of the men and women who served there, has no power and is not connected to any source of electricity. To read the complete mystery story go to http://news.stv.tv/scotland/tayside/181127-radio-ghost-mystery-at-former-raf-station/
June 6,2010: Informative:
Paul Tritton (1991) The Lost Voice of Queen Victoria. The Search for the First Royal Recording. London: Academy
Walter L. Welch & Leah Brodbeck Stenzel Burt (1994) From Tinfoil to Stereo. The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry 1877-1929. Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida
According to Welch & Burt (1975), among the individuals recorded in England by George Gouraud was 'actress Mrs. Stirling' this must be Mary Anne (Fanny) Stirling (1815-1895), who had played Martha in Irving's 1885 production of Faust. It seems unlikely that the recording survives; the British Library Sound Archive does not have a copy.
June 16, 2010: Telegraph, UK, 15 June: Angus Thuermer, who has died aged 92, was an American journalist in wartime Berlin and unwittingly set in train the events that led to the English author PG Wodehouse making his infamous radio broadcasts which were widely interpreted as pro-Nazi propaganda. In December 1940 Thuermer was a correspondent for the American news agency Associated Press (AP) when he was tipped off that 'British civilian prisoner 796' interned in a former lunatic asylum in eastern Germany was none other than Wodehouse, the creator of Jeeves and Wooster and writer of many comic novels, then at the height of his fame. The previous June, Wodehouse had been arrested at his villa in the French seaside resort of Le Touquet, where he had settled in 1935 for tax purposes. In Nazi-occupied France, he and his wife Ethel were declared "alien nationals". With all foreign civilian residents under the age of 60 being interned, Wodehouse, at the age of 58, found himself detained and transported to various camps, ending up in the converted asylum at the village of Tost near the German-Polish border in upper Silesia.
To read the whole obituray go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/7830852/Angus-Thuermer.html
June 20,2010: The Timesunion of June 18 reports about a find of 13 undocumented film canisters at the Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium, that contained the world's oldest surviving radio broadcasts on Edison's optical fim material, recorded on an obscure machine that General Electric developed in 1922 and called a pallophotophone -- which means "shaking light sound" in Greek.
The machine it was recorded with can be viewed in a demonstration on YOUTUBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHL9Clw5yfI&feature=related
June 21,2010: Himan Brown, who created dramas that used sound effects like a creaking door and a steam engine to enthrall listeners during the golden age of radio, has died. He was 99.He was the creative force behind radio classics including 'Inner Sanctum Mysteries' and 'Grand Central Station'. 'Inner Sanctum Mysteries', for example, used the sound of a creaking door as its signature opening and ended with the ominous sign-off, 'pleasant dreams'. 'Grand Central Station' included the sound of a steam engine.- The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Brown was raised in Brooklyn. He graduated from law school, but decided to follow his creative passions instead, his daughter said. He had good timing: The 1930s and 1940s were part of the years when radio was most popular.In 1974, he started 'CBS Radio Mystery Theater', a nightly radio programme that ran until the early 1980s. 'Radio drama', he always said, 'is the theater of the mind.'
June 22,2010: By the mid-1930s, radio had become an important and exciting means of entertainment and communication. The soundtrack http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_wH9V1L3no&playnext_from=TL&videos=cQanNEKTSWw&feature=sub is an excerpt from radio station WOR's celebration of its increase in power to 50,000 watts on March4,1935. The station was licensed in New Jersey at the time but served the New York City area. Its celebration included President Roosevelt pressing a button in the White House to turn on the new transmitter and a concert at Carnegie Hall.
July 2,2010: For those who are interested in Philosophy: German radio MDR FIGARO broadcasts a reading by Ernst Bloch of 9 March 1960 on Thu.,8 July, 2200hrs. Go to their website for streaming audio.
July 10,2010: A literary evening with Heinrich Böll, famous German writer, is rebroadcast this evening on NORDWESTRADIO at 20:05-23:00hrs German time. For details and streaming audio go to their website.
July 16,2010: Today German NORDWESTRADIO broadcasts a 1950 Radio Bremen production of Graham Greene's 'The Third Man'. Starts at 22:05hrs, with a portrait of Anton Karras who wrote the music (a production of ORF-Austrian radio of 1979). Go to their website for streaming audio.
July 28,2010: Today at 19:05hrs, German NORDWESTRADIO broadcasts a travelogue of 1963 to Macao, then a Portugese colony! Go to their website for streaming audio.
Aug 14,2010: There has been nothing new around lately. - Tonight there's a 3-hour-feature evening on the German writer Thomas Mann, probably with lot of sound documents between the talks. It is broadcast on DEUTSCHLANDRADIO at 23:05h - 02:00h. Go to their website for streaming audio.
Aug 26,2010: My friend Graeme informs me that a new book is due out on 19th October. It is called 'Axis Sally: the American Voice of Nazi Germany'. It's written by Richard Lucas and is published by Casemate, GB
Aug 27,2010: News about the BBC Archives:
Go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/2010/08/a-warm-balmy-afternoon-in.shtml . there you will find an article about the new home of the Archives.
Another article on 'Safeguarding the Archive' is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/08/safeguarding_the_bbcs_archive.html
Sep 14,2010: Today I've come across an interesting book : Müller / Richter / Hitzer: OLYMPIA -TONBUCH. Das Erlebnis der XI. Olympischen Spiele in Wort, Bild und Ton. Textteil mit 188 Seiten, 3 doppelseitige Telefunken-Tonplatten mit Original-Aufnahmen der Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft m.b.H. von den Olympischen Sommerspielen 1936, Berlin 1936. (The 11th Olympic Games in Word, Picture and Sound; included are 3 Telefunken 10-inch shellac discs with recordings made by the Reichsrundfunk-Gesellschaft RRG,Berlin during the summer Olymics, publ.Berlin 1936). Those who are interested in buying and spending a lot of money should google. There are sellers who want between 300 Euros and 1,200 USD. I think they extremely do overestimate the value of the product, especially if you consider that the book has not only been published as a single copy! A picture can be seen at www.od43.com/1936_Olympia_Tonbuch.html ), a site which I do not support in any way!
Sep 23,2010: BBC will broadcast a feature on David Boder who recorded the voices of Holocaust survivors; 2000-2030 UK-time
Sept 27,2010: Tomorrow at 23:35hrs German time, German KULTURRADIO brings a feature on the BEAR FAMILY RELEASE of 'Cold War Music From the Golden Age of Homeland Security'. It's a 5-CD+1DVD-box in LP-format plus a 292 pages booklet,made in the excellent Bear Family Records tradition with the title ATOMIC PLATTERS.
'Atomic Platters' is the result of a years-in-the-making musical 'Manhattan Project' that collects over 100 vintage Cold War songs and more than two dozen frighteningly naive civil defense Public Service Announcements (many of these PSAs are voiced by celebrities such as Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, Pat Boone and Johnny Cash, to name just a few!) from the paranoid period that brought us fallout shelters, survival biscuits and uranium fever. - The artists who sing about the Bomb and the Red Scare on this set run the gamut from well-known stars like Bill Haley and His Comets, The Louvin Brothers, Marty Robbins and Wanda Jackson to fascinating obscurities like The Goldwaters, Janet Greene (The Right Wing's answer to Joan Baez!) and Dr. Strangelove and the Fallouts. In addition to music and PSAs, 'Atomic Platters' includes two unintentionally hilarious full-length spoken word civil defense 'scare' LPs: 'If The Bomb Falls' and 'The Complacent Americans.' - But why stop with mere sound The Cold War was a multimedia horror show and 'Atomic Platters' tops off its mushroom cloud of entertainment with a DVD of nine bizarre civil defense and anti-Communist short films from the '50s and '60s. -- Summing all this strange material up is a 292 page hardcover book featuring numerous arresting images from the Cold War era with intriguing text by Bill Geerhart of CONELRAD, an organization devoted to the preservation and examination of atomic popular culture. This collection is for anyone mystified by the current excesses of U.S. Homeland Security who wants to hear and see where the madness all began! You CAN beat the A-Bomb (again).
Sep 28,2010: Info from my friend Graeme who tells me that BBC Radio 4 will have a documenatry on Saturday 2nd October, 1030-1100am UK time, about the cylinder recording with Queen Victoria's voice. Full details on Radio 4 homepage, schedules section.
Oct 1,2010: I have been informed by Professor John Q. Barrett of St. John's University School of Law, Jamestown,NY that (quote)'the Schulberg/Waletzky restoration of the film 'Nuremberg' has premiered, somewhat belatedly, in United States theaters.- 'Nuremberg' is a powerful documentary account of the Allied nations' prosecutions before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) of the principal Nazi war criminals and their organizations. The U.S. chief prosecutor before the IMT was, of course, Justice Robert H. Jackson. Sixty-four years ago today and tomorrow, the IMT returned its judgments in the cases. 'Nuremberg' shows how Jackson and his fellow prosecutors built the cases using captured Nazi films and records. - Somewhat belatedly? The United States War Department, acting at the request of the Allied Military Council that supervised the occupation of the former Germany, agreed to make this film at the time of the IMT trial. The producer, Pare Lorentz, director and scriptwriter Stuart Schulberg and their team largely completed their work, with input from Jackson and others, in 1947. The film then was shown widely in the Allied occupation zones (Germany) as part of the Allies' education and denazification program. But to the frustration of Lorentz, Schulberg, Jackson and others, U.S. officials in the late 1940s deemed the film too provocative for Americans. Some decision maker seems to have concluded that the film was too, well, allied with the Soviet Union, as the U.S. of course had been both in World War II and then at the Nuremberg trial, and also too anti-German, to be shown in U.S. theaters at a time when U.S. foreign policy had turned in Cold War directions. In subsequent years, the picture negative and sound elements of 'Nuremberg' were lost or destroyed.'Nuremberg' exists today in restored form because Sandra Schulberg (Stuart's daughter) and Josh Waletzky used original trial recordings of defendants' and prosecutors' voices. The final voice in the film is Justice Jackson's: 'Let Nuremberg stand as a warning to all who plan and wage aggressive war.' 'Nuremberg' is powerful, accurate, historical, contemporary and, as it always was meant to be, universally educational.-The film 'Nuremberg' has traveled a long path. In early 1947, Pare Lorentz sent Stuart Schulberg's 51-page draft script to Justice Jackson. He read it closely and wrote back promptly: 'I have examined the scenario for the Nuremberg trials motion picture and must confess to you that it overcomes the doubts which I earlier entertained as to whether such a film would be advisable.' Jackson then offered some 'minor criticisms' factual corrections that in his view did not 'go to the heart of the [film] plan.' And he closed his letter with a commitment: 'I shall want to be of any help possible in this effort which I think is a very worthwhile one.' To their great credit, Schulberg and Waletsky are successors, and they have succeeded, in that effort.' (end of quot.) For much more information on the film, its history and its restoration, and to view the trailer, click here: http://www.nurembergfilm.org/.
Oct 10,2010: On Oct 10th, German radio DKULTUR brings a feature on the Nazi Special Organization 'Music' that went through Europe to plunder the music archives of the occupied countries. 22:00hrs, go to their website for streaming audio.
oct 13, 2010: The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the US- A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age is the title of a documentation of the National Recording preservation Board, issued in August 2010 . It can be read/ downloaded as pdf-file at http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub148/pub148.pdf
Oct 14,2010: Just received this from Gerald Fabris: Thomas Edison NHP News Release: Humanity's First Recordings of its Own Voice - Historian David Giovannoni Presentation
WEST ORANGE, NJ - On Saturday evening, November 6, 2010, at 7:00 pm, Thomas Edison National Historical Park welcomes historian David Giovannoni who will give a 75-minute illustrated presentation titled 'Humanity's First Recordings of its Own Voice.' The program will be held at the Laboratory Complex at 211 Main Street. Admission to the program is free. Seating is limited and reservations are required. Reservations can be made by calling 973-736-0550, ext.89. - Thomas Edison's tinfoil phonograph of 1877 is rightly considered one of the marvels of the nineteenth century. But in mid-nineteenth-century France, amateur inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville conceived of a rather similar machine. Between 1854 and 1860 he experimented with focusing airborne sounds of speech and music onto paper. His phonautograph bore a striking resemblance to Edison's phonograph of 20 years later. But his recordings, unlike Edison's, were meant to be read by the eye, not heard by the ear.-For a century-and-a-half his experiments lay quietly in the venerable French archives in which he deposited them. Then in 2007 a few audio historians hypothesized there was a real possibility that modern technology could develop these experimental recordings like dormant photographic plates. Instead of exposing images, however, these would bear sounds perhaps even humanity's first recordings of its own voice!- In this presentation David Giovannoni recounts how he and his colleagues have identified dozens of these forgotten documents and coaxed several to talk and to sing. A principal in their discovery and recovery, Giovannoni is the first person since Scott de Martinville to personally examine every recording. He will explain how they were made and how they are played. He will discuss Scott de Martinville experiments, his reception in established scientific circles, and his early descent into an unmarked grave.-For more information or directions please call 973-736-0550 ext. 11 or visit the website at www.nps.gov/edis.
Oct 18,2010:Sixty-five years ago this morning, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) held its first public session. It met in Berlin, its official seat, in the Grand Conference Room of the Allied Control Authority Building. The session lasted about one hour.-The IMT was comprised, on that day and throughout its work over the next ten-plus months, of eight judges. Major General I.T. Nikitchenko of the Soviet Union served that day as IMT President. His colleagues were Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of the United Kingdom, Mr. Francis Biddle of the United States, and Monsieur Professor Donnedieu de Vabres of the French Republic. Also present were the alternate members of the Tribunal: Lieutenant Colonel A.F. Volchkov of the USSR, Mr. Justice Norman Birkett of the UK, Judge John J. Parker of the US, and M. Le Conseiller Robert Falco of France.-After General Nikitchenko declared the session open, the British chief prosecutor, His Majesty's Attorney-General Sir Hartley Shawcross, announced that the chief prosecutors had agreed on an indictment. He then called on each of his counterparts, the Soviet Chief Prosecutor General R.A. Rudenko, the French Chief Prosecutor M. François de Menthon, and United States representative Francis M. Shea, to speak. Each made a brief statement, which then was translated orally into the other languages, and each presented a copy of the indictment printed in his own language to the IMT.-General Nikitchenko then announced that an Indictment had been lodged with the Tribunal setting out charges against twenty-four persons: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Robert Ley, Wilhelm Keitel, et al. Nikitchenko announced that German language copies of the IMT Charter, the Indictment and accompanying documents would be served upon these defendants immediately, that they would be informed of their rights to defend themselves or to select defense counsel, that they would receive rules of procedure for production of witnesses and documents for 'a fair trial with a full opportunity to present their defense,' that trial would commence in Nuremberg no sooner than thirty days after service of the Indictment, and that Lord Justice Lawrence would preside at the trial. - Nikitchenko also gave notice that the prosecutors intended to ask the IMT to declare six specified organizations the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the SS, etc.to be criminal, and that any member thereof could apply for leave to be heard on the question of that organization's criminality. - After these announcements had been translated orally, and somewhat slowly, into French, English and German, the IMT adjourned. The judges left immediately for Nuremberg. The US, French and Soviet judges, flying together in a plane that General Dwight D. Eisenhower had made available to Judge Biddle, arrived in time for dinner. The British judges, flying in their own plane, encountered bad weather and had to divert to London. Justice Robert H. Jackson, the United States Chief of Counsel, was not present in Berlin for the filing of the Indictment. He had spent much of the previous week there, meeting, working and waiting for judges, generals and other prosecutors to arrive. On Wednesday, October 10th, Jackson, fed up with the confusion and delays in Berlin, had flown back to Nuremberg to resume trial preparation, leaving his close friends and senior assistants Gordon E. Dean and Francis Shea in charge in Berlin. (On Jackson's flight back to Nuremberg, he and colleagues listened to an Armed Forces Network radio broadcast of the Detroit Tigers beating the Chicago Cubs, 9-3, in the 7th and final game of that year's World Series.) Eight days later, as Francis Shea and the others arrived in Nuremberg from filing the Indictment before the IMT in Berlin, Justice Jackson was a hosting a cocktail party at his requisitioned German home. He had invited about forty officers to celebrate the awarding of the Legion of Merit to his executive officer, Col. Robert J. Gill. One diarist noted that '[i]t was a very nice party the table in [Jackson's] dining room was a work of art both with floral decoration and with canapés etc. It was all done by enlisted men but I discovered that the man in charge was formerly with the Stork Club in New York.' - Jackson planned, following that cocktail party, to host a dinner and dancing at his home that evening for all of his staff. At the last minute, however, the Theater Commanding General said no he objected to the idea of enlisted men and officers being together at such an event. A young American secretary wrote home to her mother and sister that Jackson 'argued his head off but it didn't work and so the whole thing was cancelled.'- The complete IMT proceedings were recorded on discs and on tape whereas the recordings of the following trials seem to be lost or have disappeared somewhere in the vaults of the LoC or of other archives.
Oct 21,2010 German NORDWESTRADIO brings a 3-hour-feature on the 'man who invented RADIO BREMEN', Hans Günther Österreich who died in 1990. He began during the war with RADIO BELGRADE (famous for its first Lilli Marleen broadcast), became the founding father of RADIO BREMEN in 1945 where he remained till the 1980s. His 100th birthday is celebrated on Saturday, 23 Oct.,20:05-23:00 German time. Go to their website for streaming audio.
Oct28,2010: I came across an interesting site that is about 'Radio Pioneers' in the recording business from the earliest times on and other related articles. More about it at: http://www.recordingpioneers.com/rs_intro_1.html. I myself found the DOCUMENT on the BEKA recording tour of 1905 very interesting http://www.recordingpioneers.com/docs/The-Great-BEKA-Expedition-1905-6.pdf
Nov 13,2010: Tomorrow, Sun.14.11., 18:05-18:30h, German DKULTUR radio brings a feature on the German Service of the BBC between 1939-1945. Go to their streaming audio.
Nov 24,2010: 'The Voice of Korea', the DPRK's international shortwave radio service, today broadcast on its first report in English on the shelling of Yeonpyeong island. The shelling occurred on Tuesday afternoon and the radio report comes 24 hours after a similar report was carried in English on the Korea Central News Agency wire. The lateness of the report highlights the Voice of Korea's rigid daily programming, which changes only once per day. An excerpt can be heard on YOUTUBE.
Nov 26,2010: Stephen Edwards in The Guardian,UK of 25 Nov.:' A simple change in the law could open up online access to the BBC's archivesThe cost of clearing rights to a treasure trove of programming is prohibitive, but a short enabling bill could put that right'. The article can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/nov/25/bbc-archive-online-access-law
Dec 2,2010: German radio WDR5 will bring a feature on the history of the 'Haus des Rundfunks' (German Radio Broadcasting House) from its beginning in 1931 on. WDR5, 13 Dec, 12:00hrs and repeat. 21:05hrs. Go to their streaming audio for listening.
Dec 3, 2010: My friend Walter Orosz from Austria has launched a website dedicated to the BDN- The Blue Danube Network, the Austrian branch of AFN Europe. Here is the URL: http://www.bluedanubenetwork.at/index.php?lang=en
Dec 14,2010: 'Audio Recordings of U.S.History fading Fast', reports an article by CBS News on Sep.29th. The complete article can be found at : http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/29/tech/main6911154.shtml
Dec 16,2010: Paul Wilson of the BBC reports on new acquisitions of old BBC transcription discs from the 1950s-1970s that have been desposited on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Go to- and scroll down. http://www.bl.uk/website_search/search?q=cache:kLeMLATAXeQJ:www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/soundarch/saplayback/playback44.pdf+paul+wilson+radio+on+ice&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&site=public&restrict=public&proxystylesheet=public&client=public&access=p
NATIONAL ARCHIVES YOUTUBE VIDEO: The Archivist, David S.Ferriero, talks about 'The State of the Archives'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge36WVGxi5w&feature=sub
Dec 21,2010: Tonight at 21:30 GBTime, BBC Radio 3 broadcasts: 'Night Waves' about Alan Lomax.
Dec 29,2010: Latest news (of Nov09) on the King david Kalakaua cylinder : a short video report on http://www.kitv.com/video/21719520/detail.html
Dec.31, 2010 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE!
2011 |
| INFO |
Jan 3,2011: On Jan 6th from 18:00-19:25 German time, German SR2 radio broadcasts a radio classic of the year 1947. It's an NWDR (North-West German Radio) production of Wolfgang Borchert's 'Draußen vor der Tür' freely translated as 'Standing outside at the door'. It is about a German soldier who returns home, the people and the society he finds...- Go to their website for streaming audio.
Jan 4,2011: A relatively new website dedicated to the oldest recordings and recording machines is the French 'Phonorama'. You can find it at http://www.phonorama.fr/le-phonautographe.html . It's in French and no English version available.
Jan.10,2011: recording Pioneer site has added great reference works, most recently the Gaisberg diaries. There are also materials that recount early recording practices in a variety of worldwide locales. http://www.recordingpioneers.com/rs_documents.html
Jan.12,2011:Library of Congress Receives Its Largest Audio Gift: The Library of Congress has found itself the recipient of a large donation of musical material from the vaults of the Universal Music Group. Said to be more than 200,000 tapes and discs, measured in excess of 5,000 linear feet, according to the press release, the donation is the largest single audio donation ever to the Library of Congress. -It consists of master tapes, metal and lacquer discs, some dating to the 1920s. Some of the Universal Music Group labels included in the gift are Decca, Mercury, Vocalion and Brunswick. The material runs through the 1940s and includes hallmark recordings by the Andrews Sisters, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Jimmy Dorsey, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Billie Holliday, Guy Lombardo, the Mills Brothers, Les Paul, Fred Waring and Dinah Washington along with acts long forgotten. It also includes some never released works. The works will be housed at the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Va.
Feb 6,2011: RADIO PRAGUE signs off on shortwave. In a 17-min.-feature Radio Prague presents the ending of an era, included are two sounds, one of Christmas Day 1937 when messages of goodwill were exchanged between India (Tagore), Prague (Krizik) and the USA (Einstein), and one of 1968. There is an article along with the broadcast (in English) http://www.radio.cz/en/print/article/135685
Feb 21,2011: Thousands Of Sinatra And Other WWII Vinyl Records Discovered At Army Base More than 8,000 records were found hidden between a narrow 16-inch wall space (Text:KCPQ-TV)
Thousands of pieces of history was discovered at the 'Old Madigan Hospital' complex during renovation efforts at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.Officials say more than 8,000 vinyl records were found hidden between a narrow 16-inch wall space. The vinyl recordings were dated from 1942 to 1960.They contained popular music and programming recorded by the Armed Forces Radio Service and the War Department.JBLM Cultural Resources Manager Dale Sadler says, 'They're obviously in great shape. We were lucky they stayed in a heated building you didn't have the hot, cold warping, water damage, mold, very clean, their all in sleeves with a very complete card catalog.' The records were provided to military radio stations to inform and entertain service members around the world. It played on the Madigan Hospital radio station (KMAH) for patients at the hospital. The World War II-era music contained classics from Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Eddie Arnold, and Rosemary Clooney. Jazz great Louis Armstrong tunes received considerable air time, and in 1952 he made a personal visit to the KMAH studios.The recordings were re-discovered by an employee of Advanced Technology Construction (ATC), who cut into a gym wall to install new wiring. In the narrow wall space, he found 30 large boxes containing the records.Even after 70 years finding these records may have been the easy part. Finding a way to play them is more difficult.After a lot of online searching we found Precision Audio Restoration in Shoreline.Owner Joe Roeder knows just about all there is to know about every recording medium.Roeder says, 'These are transcription records, 33 or 78 rpm. Oh this is commercially made. You can fit a lot of material on a 16 inch record.'With the lift of a finger and drop of a needle we listened to a recording of Gene Autry that was first heard seven decades ago.Dale Sadler says, 'Someone must have really loved these records, treasured them enough even though the radio station was going away, you don't have a player anymore who knows what they thought when they put it away.'And in doing so preserved them for future generations to enjoy. JBLM is contacting the United States Library Of Congress for advice about what to do with the records.
Videos at:
http://blog.thenewstribune.com/photo/2011/02/08/the-missing-records-vinyl-that-is/
http://www.king5.com/home/Music-found-hidden-at-Fort-Lewis-115607184.html
http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-historical-recordings-discovered-during-jblm-renovation-efforts-20110208,0,422490.story
Feb 24,2011: December last new Nixon White House tapes were made published in which he launched offensive tirades against Jews, Blacks and othe ethnic groups:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338217/New-tape-recordings-reveal-Richard-Nixons-racist-rants-resigning-Watergate-scandal.html#ixzz180Ofvv49
March 3,2011: If you are interested in transcription discs here are two URLs that might be of interest:
http://jerrysoldtimeradio.com/tdl-001/ and
http://jerrysoldtimeradio.com/tdl-002/
March 5,2011: German DEUTSCHLANDFUNK DLF will broadcast a 'Long Night of Historic Speeches' special on 'The Spoken Word'. 23:05-02:00hrs German time. Go to their bebsite for streaming audio.
March 6,2011: Edmond Rostand created the role of Cyrano de Bergerac for the actor Coquelin. Here is a rare film clip, made along with a separate audio recording on wax cylinder. It shows the large cylinder and machine,too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tzmls4gTgQ
March 11,2011: The Library of Congress has acquired the TV and radio sports broadcast collection of John Miley. Known, appropriately enough, as The Miley Collection, it includes over 6,000 recordings of pre-1972 amateur and pro events in virtually every sport including Baseball, hockey, football, basketball, boxing, car and horse racing, tennis and golf. An article about that can be found here: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/464998-Library_of_Congress_Acquires_Miley_Collection.php
March 12,2011: YANK Staff Correspondent Sgt James O'Neill reports about the Fifth Army Mobile Radio Unit in WWII, article of prob.1944/45: http://www.fiftharmymobileradio.com/orig_images/39.JPG
March 14,2011: On Saturday 26th March, 2000-2100 UK time, BBC Radio 4 has a programme called 'Archive on 4 - Walls of Sound' which visits the British Library's Sound Conservation Centre. Full deatils on BBC Press Office page for that date.
March 17,2011: Wednesday 6th March, 1100-1130UK time, BBC R4 brings a documentary about the Eichmann Trial. It includes an interview with Gabriel Bach ( Deputy Prosecutor ) and Rafi Eitan ( leader of the MOSSAD team that captured Eichmann ).
March22, 2011: DEUTSCHLANDRADIO -DLF- brings a 'Long Night' on the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem; Sat.,26 March 23:05-02:00hrs. Go to their website for streaming audio.
March 24, 2011: ARTE-TV (German-French Channel), 27.April 20:15-22:10hrs German time: The British semi-documentary 'Nuremberg- The Trials' It features Göring and Speer, with eye-witnesses, archive footage and re-enactments.
April 13,2011: The disastrous Directive to extend the term of copyright protection for sound recordings to 70 years is back on the European Council's agenda. The FT called the proposal 'disgraceful' in an editorial in 2009. The evidence says the move is unwise. Yet without action it looks like the plans will soon become law. The economic evidence is stacked against the proposal. it will benefit only a small number of artists and businesses. Leading IP professors, the UK government's 'Gowers Review' of IP, and independent analysts commissioned by the EU have all said that extending the copyright term is unwise. It will result in large parts of our cultural history being locked up. This is a dreadful idea that will damage our cultural realm for the benefit of a vanishingly small number of people. For more go to http://www.cippm.org.uk/copyright_term.html
If you are interested in opposing this nonsense action write to your Member of European Parliament. Go to the following link, and send it off. All you have to do is to add your name and address to the prepared letter. It's important to do so!
http://action.openrightsgroup.org/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=1422&ea.campaign.id=10257
April 14,2011: For those interested in North African radio, Radio Free Libya, Benghazi,has now a live stream online at:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/benghaziradio
April 18,2011Easter time is near and with it comes the rememberance of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Hear an excerpt of Patrick Gordon Walker's report from there with former prisoners singing the anthem of hope 'Hatikva': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syUSmEbGLs4&feature=fvwrel
or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Aw_kIWAp4g A minor correction: PGW said that it was the first Jewish Service held on German soil after 6 years; but what he did not know was that the first Service had been held near Aachen on 29 October 1944 (see my intro chapter on Aachen).
April 27,2011: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty fought communism by broadcasting news and features from Munich to countries behind the Iron Curtain. Despite jamming, acts of terrorism, and even opposition by some members of Congress, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty have remained on the air, broadcasting uncensored news since the early 1950s.The radios came into being after World War II in response to the thousands of displaced persons throughout Western Europe, a large number of whom were housed in refugee camps in West Germany, while others had fled to Paris, London, New York, and Washington from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in advance of the Red Army or as the result of communist takeovers. Many had been incarcerated in POW camps and refused to be repatriated to lands controlled by the Soviets after the war ended. As communist governments took over in Eastern Europe, the U.S. government realized that these émigrés represented a powerful force against their communist-controlled homelands and it recruited them as writers, speakers, and in other capacities to facilitate the return of democratic governments.George Kennan of the State Department asked Ambassador Joseph C. Grew to enlist prestigious civilians to lead an anticommunist organization dedicated to returning democracy to Eastern Europe, using the talents of the refugees. This organization, the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), later the Free Europe Committee, was established in 1949 with several objectives: find work for the democratic émigrés from Eastern Europe; put émigré voices on the air in their own languages; and carry émigré articles and statements back to their homelands through the printed word. These objectives were realized through the establishment of a publishing division, Free Europe Press, and a broadcast division, Radio Free Europe (RFE).
More about that Crusade For Freedom can be read at http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6270
April 28,2011: On the occasion of the anniversary of Tshernobyl, German radio MDR has some interesting excerpts of GDR-TV broadcasts on that accident, beginning with a short mentioning at the end of the 28 April newscast in one sentence.- Of course everything is in German.
http://www.mdr.de/damals/thema-der-woche/8341897.html
May 1,2011: Today at 20:05hrs German NORDWESTRADIO broadcasts a classic radio dramatization of Georg Büchner's 'Lenz', a production of 1954.
May 9,2011: Berliner's life, work and connection to Washington, D.C., where he lived for many years, will be the subject of a talk by Samuel Brylawski and Karen Lund at noon on Tuesday, May 17, in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room, located in Room 220 of the Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. For more go to http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2011/11-096.html
May 26, 2011: DIE ZEIT, a famous German newspaper, reports on the future of the German RUNDFUNKARCHIV DRA (national radio archive, comparable to the BBC Sound Archive). It says that the Intendanten (the heads of the German regional radio stations) will decide in June whether they are willing to spend the 12 million Euros per year to support the DRA in the future or if, and that is the worst case, the radio archive should die.
May 31,2011: Every year in May, ceremonies take place on town and village squares across the Czech Republic to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II. Since the fall of communism, a particular effort has been made to remember the Czechs and Slovaks who fought in the British armed forces, whose role was long neglected by the communist regime. Recently rediscovered recordings offer a unique and highly atmospheric insight into the life of the Czechoslovak RAF pilots: A couple of years ago, someone at the Czech Foreign Ministry stumbled upon a large trunk. It turned out to contain more than 700 old gramophone records. It was clear from the labels on some of them, that the recordings were made in Britain during the Second World War, but nobody was quite sure what they were. How they came to be at the ministry remains a mystery to this day. After some negotiation, the recordings, most of which are in excellent condition, were transferred to the archives at Czech Radio. It turns out that they are a very exciting find. It had long been thought that the wartime broadcasts made by the Czechoslovak government in exile, independently of the BBC's own Czechoslovak service, had nearly all been lost, but it turns out that they are preserved on dozens of the records found in the ministry. On top of this, there are numerous BBC recordings, including a number of fascinating propaganda broadcasts in English about the contribution to the war effort being made by the Czechs and Slovaks serving in Britain's armed forces. One of the these broadcasts, not heard for nearly 70 years, is a dramatized documentary, a day in the life of the Czechoslovak pilots in 1943. The fact that the narrator is American could make one think that it could well have been originally intended for audiences in the United States. The scenes are clearly staged and there is no attempt to pretend that it is anything other than propaganda, but the atmosphere is authentic and the pilots' voices are real enough.
June 20,2011: German SWR2 radio will brings a feature with sound bites on the German attack on Russia. 22 June , 19:20-20:00 hrs. Go to their website for streaming audio.
June 23,2011: An early recording system of the 1930s can be seen and read about here:
http://www.btinternet.com/~roger.beckwith/bh/tapes/pm.htm
June 26,2011: German radio CONT.RA brings an interview Gabriel Bach, former prosecutor in the Eichmann Trial, 15:05-15:50 hrs. Go to their website for streaming audio.
July 3,2011: In their meeting in Würzburg on June 28, the Intendanten of all German main radio broadcasting stations have decided to hold on to the DRA and to fulfil their tasks in the future. They say that some press articles had given a wrong picture. What there is to do is 'to opzimize their work'.( See: May 26)
July 9,2011: German radio HR2 brings a radio drama by writer Heinrich Böll 'Eine Stunde Aufenthalt', first broadcast in 1957; Sun.,July 10, 22:00-23:00hrs. Go to their website for streaming audio.
July 14,2011:The Washington Post, July 11,2011:' Sound experts revive a recording discovered at inventor Thomas Edison's lab' By Ron Cowen. Latest technology helps restore sound to oldest recording The scratchy, 12-second audio clip of a woman reciting the first verse of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' doesn't sound like much. But the faint, 123-year-old recording etched into a warped metal cylinder and brought back to life after decades of silence by a three-dimensional optical scanning technique appears to belong to the first record intended for sale to the public. -Made for a talking doll briefly sold by phonograph inventor Thomas Edison, the record is the oldest known American recording of a woman's voice and may be the oldest known record produced at Edison's laboratory in West Orange, N.J.-The talking doll cylinders are evidence of both efforts to further refine recorded sound techniques that were still primitive and in the experimental state, and to develop commercial uses for sound recordings, says Samuel Brylawski, a sound archivist affiliated with the University of California at Santa Barbara, who was not part of the study. -The record was discovered in 1967 at the West Orange site, now a museum, where Edison and his assistants perfected and produced records and the first motion picture. Originally a ring-shaped piece of metal whose exterior had been incised with grooves by a stylus, the record had become so distorted that it could no longer be played by a phonograph stylus or any other method requiring direct contact.-Jerry Fabris, museum curator of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, took the cylinder to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, which had recently helped develop an imaging technique to play Edison's records without touching them. By piecing together millions of microscopic measurements, the researchers assembled a 3-D map of the entire cylinder. Software then translated this topographic map into audio signals.-Sound historian Patrick Feaster of Indiana University in Bloomington dated the cylinder to 1888 by finding several archival documents, including newspaper articles from that year that referred to the toy doll records. -These accounts suggest that these would have been the first phonograph recordings made with the intention of being sold to the public, Feaster says, although Edison abandoned metal cylinders for wax ones for his brief, unsuccessful foray into selling the talking dolls in 1890.-Edison had begun marketing the phonograph to businessmen, who would dictate letters on the cylinder records that stenographers could then play back at a slower speed and transcribe on the recently invented typewriter. But entertainment records were already in demand for penny arcades and touring phonograph exhibition concerts, and Edison wanted to take full advantage of those opportunities, Feaster says.
July 28, 2011: BBC WORLD SERVICE will broadcast a 2-part special on the day the Wall was erected: August 16+23 at 20:00hrs UK time.
August 28,2011: An interesting article about P.G.Woodhouse's radio broadcasts from Nazi Germany can be read in THE TELEGRAPH or 28 August. Go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8727277/P-G-Wodehouse-filthy-traitor-or-frightful-ass.html
Sep.1,2011: This can happen to poorly stored AV-media: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14527809
Sep.6,2011: Good news to report: Some very good news! The Government announced it is broadly accepting the findings of the Hargreaves review and is looking to implement all of the recommendations. That includes adopting new 'exceptions' to copyright including format shifting those old CDs into mp3s, the right to parody, and a commitment to robust evidence as the driver of policy http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/a-welcome-response-to-the-hargreaves-review
Oct 7,2011: A piece of local history (see beginning of this site)- Back in October 1944 one of two young US Army Privates deserted because they couldn't cope with the deadly Huertgenwald Battle (Battle of the Bulge) around Roetgen and nearby places. One of them, Private Eddie Slobik, was caught by the US Army and, after a short trial, executed. Today this story came again to my ears when I spoke to a still living member of the family who gave refuge to the second soldier in Roetgen and who could show me the minutes of that trial. - It was the second execution of that kind in the US Army history. The first was about 80 years ago, during the American Civil War! Some more information can be read here: http://www.indianamilitary.org/28TH/PVT%20Slovik/Pvt%20Slovik.htm
Oct 13,2011: Tomorrow at 8:30-8:58hrs German radio SWR2 will broadcast a feature on German radio after 1945. On Oct 21, another part follows. Go to their website for streaming audio.
Oct 19,2011: A day in history, 1946. By October 1946, Whitney R. Harris, formerly an important junior prosecutor on Justice Jackson's Nuremberg team, had moved to Berlin and begun working in the Office of Military Government for Germany (U.S.) (OMGUS).-On October 15, Harris flew from Berlin to Nuremberg to represent Jackson at the executions. Four days later, back in Berlin, Harris sent this report to his former boss: 'Dear Chief: On Tuesday I flew to Nurnberg to be present at the final episode in the trial of the major war criminals. In spite of the efforts of General [Lucius] Clay to gain my admittance as a witness to the actual hangings, this proved impossible under a policy established by the Control Council which excluded members of prosecuting staffs from the execution chamber. However, familiarity with the scene and close contact with the newspaper men who were present was quite sufficient to enable me to report on the details.- The executions took place in the prison gymnasium which you will remember as the small building about seventy-five yards from the door leading into the cell block where the 'Big Twenty-one' were imprisoned. The secret that this building, which had been the workroom for the defendants who processed the thousands of affidavits submitted for the [defense of the indicted] organizations and had been used for a basketball game only the Saturday preceding, was to be the execution hall was kept so well that only two security officers knew the fact on Tuesday afternoon.-The members of the four-man committee in charge of the executions were all generals, Roy V. Rickard for the United States, Paton Walsh for Britain, Morel for France and Molkov for Russia. They handled the arrangements very efficiently, except, of course, for the Goering suicide which could scarcely be charged to their neglect. This remains at writing the great mystery of the executions. -At nine-thirty [on Tuesday night, October 15], the correspondents were permitted to inspect the cell block and observe the condemned. Jodl was writing a letter; Ribbentrop was in earnest conversation with a chaplain; Sauckel nervously paced the floor, and Goering simulated sleep, his hands outside of the blankets. At the forty-five, the guard noticed Goering twitching. He called for the corporal of the guard and they rushed into the cell. They saw Goering writhing in agony. When the doctor arrived the death rattle was in his throat. Goering had cheated the hangman. They found in the cell a small envelope marked H. Goering on the outside, inside of which were three notes, one addressed to Colonel Andrus [the prison commandant] from Goering, and the cartridge case in which the vial of potassium cyanide had been preserved. As yet, the contents of the notes have not been released for publication and how Goering got the poison remains unsolved. Goering's body was brought into the execution chamber so that it might be viewed by the committee and by the two representatives of the German people present, Dr. Wilhelm Hoegner, Minister President of Bavaria, and Dr. Jakob Meistner, General Prosecutor of the High Court at Nurnberg.At eleven minutes past one o'clock in the morning of 16 October, the white-faced Joachim von Ribbentrop stepped through the door into the execution chamber and faced the gallows on which he and the others condemned to death by the Tribunal were to be hanged. Ribbentrop's hands were unmanacled and bound behind him with a leather thong. He walked to the foot of the thirteen stairs leading to the gallows platform. He was asked to state his name. Flanked by two guards and followed by the Chaplain, he slowly mounted the stairs. On the platform, he saw the hangman with the noose of thirteen coils and the hangman's assistant with the black hood. He stood on the trap and his feet were bound with a webbed Army belt. He was asked to state any last words, and said: 'God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My last wish is that German unity be maintained, that understanding between East and West be realized and there be peace for the world'. The trap was sprung and Ribbentrop died at 1:29.-In the same way, each of the remaining defendants to receive capital sentences approached the scaffold and met the fate of common criminals. All, except the wordy Nazi philosopher, Rosenberg, uttered final statements. Keitel spoke as a Prussian soldier: 'I call on the Almighty to be considerate of the German people, provide tenderness and mercy. Over 2,000,000 German soldiers went to their death for their Fatherland before me. I now follow my sons. All for Germany'. Gestapo Chief Kaltenbrunner declared apologetically: 'I served the German people and my Fatherland with willing heart. I did my duty according to its laws. I am sorry that in her trying hour she was not led only by soldiers. I regret that crimes were committed in which I had no part. Good luck Germany'. Frank said quietly: 'I am thankful for the kind treatment which I received during this incarceration and I pray God to receive me mercifully'. Frick spoke only the phrase, 'Let live the eternal Germany'. Streicher shouted 'Heil Hitler!' as he climbed the stairs and followed with the words: 'Now I go to God, Purim Festival 1946. And now to God. The Bolshevists will one day hang you. I am now by God my father'. And his last words were, 'Adele, my dear wife'. Sauckel protested: 'I die innocently. The verdict was wrong. Got protect Germany and make Germany great again. Let Germany live and God protect my family'. Jodl spoke in the manner of an officer addressing his troops: 'I salute you my Germany'. Seyss-Inquart climaxed the final statements when he said: 'I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the second world war and that a lesson will be learned so that peace and understanding will be realized among the nations. I believe in Germany'. Seyss-Inquart died at 2:57 less than two hours after von Ribbentrop had entered the execution chamber. It was over-the trial ended, evil requited, and as Dr. Hoegner said, 'Justice done'.-- I am now at work in Berlin in the Legal Division, Office of Military Government (U.S.), and my job is 'Legal advice', by which I am charged with answering any and all legal questions which may be referred by the Deputy Military Governor or departments of OMGUS. The Legal Division at present is primarily charged with the reinstitution of the legal basis for democratic government in the American Zone of Germany. The laws of the dictatorship have been repealed, but there remains the task of reenacting codes covering each branch of substantive law and reestablishing workable procedures. I hope this task will have been completed by next summer and that when I leave Germany the basis for a new democratic society will have been laid.' (received from: RH Jackson Center)
A radio report of the hangings was broadcast for the Combined Networks via NBC by Arthur Gates who was present.- On 16-10-1946 CBS net, sustaining, had a 30-min.special show broadcast the day of the Nuremberg executions. A drama/documentary about how the Nazi criminals came to deserve their executions. Martin Wolfson (narrator), Will Hare (narrator), Arnold Pearl (writer), John Becker (director), Robert Stringer (composer, conductor)
Oct 19,2011: The L.A.TIMES reports the death of Norman Corwin. 'Norman Corwin dies at 101; radio's 'poet laureate'- Corwin, whose original radio plays for CBS moved a generation of listeners during radio's golden age, was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993. -
Norman Corwin, the legendary writer, director and producer of original radio plays for CBS during the golden age of radio in the 1930s and '40s when he was revered as the 'poet of the airwaves', has died. He was 101.- Corwin, a journalist, playwright, author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter who was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, said his caregiver, Chris Borjas. The cause was not given.With his often poetic words, Corwin moved and entertained a generation of listeners tuned to the CBS Radio Network during the late 1930s and '40s, with landmark broadcasts ranging from celebrations of the Bill of Rights and the Allied victory in Europe to a light-hearted rhyming play about a demonic plot to overthrow Christmas.Corwin's programs, which CBS aired without sponsors, are considered classics of the era when radio was the primary news and entertainment venue for Americans.
More here: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-norman-corwin-20111019,0,460111,print.story
Oct 20,2011: German radio SWR2 brings a documentary on the history of radio with original sounds, Nov.1 at 15:05hrs German time. Go to their website for streaming audio.
Nov 7,2011:During my stay in Arizona last week I found two interesting items in the Historic Grand Hotel in Jerome, west of Flagstaff: Two Edison discs labeled 'Special record for Mr Henry Ford' given to him by Thomas Edison, 'Varsovienne' 9883-R and 'Heel and Toe Polka' 9913. They must be the only copies of these special pressings, coming from the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan.
Nov 10,2011: I found this in the Internet : 'FORD LOVED FOLK DANCING AND ASKED EDISON TO RECORD SOME OF HIS FAVORITE MUSIC. ON DECEMBER 2, 1924, EDISON'S NEW YORK STUDIO BEGAN RECORDING OLD TIME DANCE PIECES SELECTED BY FORD. THEY WERE PRESSED PRESUMABLY FOR FORD'S PERSONAL USE AND FOR USE IN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS. THESE WERE PRESSED IN RELATIVELY SMALL NUMBERS AND HAVE BEEN IN STORAGE AT THE HENRY FORD MUSEUM FOR OVER 75 YEARS. SINCE THESE WERE RARE SPECIAL PRESSINGS, THEY BEAR NO RECORD NUMBER, BUT SAY (SPECIAL RECORD FOR MR. HENRY FORD).IT IS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT 300 COPIES OF THESE TWO RECORDS WERE PRESSED AND 100 WERE RECENTLY RELEASED FROM THE MUSEUM'.- Two of them, same as mentioned above, sold for 540 USD in 2010.
Nov 15,2011:Adrian Morrow - Globe and Mail Update - Published Monday, Nov. 07, 2011 12:10AM EST. World War II shortwave stories, including Canadian POWs recorded onto cardboard discs. The voices of Canadian servicemen fade in and out, at times clear and booming, at others distant and muffled. But for their families, these scratchy, static-laden messages were the sound of hope.The men were prisoners captured during the Second World War by the Japanese army, which broadcast their messages home over Radio Tokyo. Short-wave radio enthusiasts on the west coast of the United States listened in, making a hobby of recording the messages onto cardboard discs and sending them to the soldiers' families. One such POW was Lawrence Stebbe. A signalman with the Winnipeg Grenadiers, he was captured on Christmas Day, 1941 during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. He toiled as a prisoner for more than three years at an airport in Hong Kong, a shipyard in Tokyo and a coal mine near Sendai. Dysentery, beriberi and skin ulcers were regular occurrences, and many prisoners died. At one point, Mr. Stebbe temporarily lost part of his sight as a result of malnutrition. In 1944, he recorded a message for Radio Tokyo, along with a fellow Manitoban, Alec Henderson. The broadcasts were picked up by James Eichen of the War Prisoner's Recording Studio, a volunteer group in Long Beach, California. He sent both discs to Mr. Stebbe's family in Beausejour, Manitoba. Mr. Stebbe's father could not bring himself to listen to the recordings and hid both away. The record intended for Mr. Henderson's family was never delivered. Not much is known about Mr. Henderson, but his broadcast may offer some clues. It begins with the greeting 'hello, Elmwood,' a neighbourhood in Winnipeg. At one point, he mentions someone named Molly. He also mentions the San Antonio Mine, which is a gold mine near Rice Lake, Manitoba. Mr. Henderson relays several messages for some of his fellow prisoners, rhymes off a list of men who are healthy and directly addresses his own family. 'My sincere hope for your health and happiness until I return,' he says, concluding with: 'May God bless you and keep you well.' Mr. Stebbe survived the war, returning home to go into business operating a chip stand and, later, a shoe store. He died last month. The story of the POW messages was unearthed by a researcher at the Historica Dominion Institute's Memory Project, which provided these sound files and photographs to the Globe. If you have a prisoner-of-war message, or another story from the Second World War or Korea please visit The Memory Project.
Nov 18,2011: A classic GDR radio play of 1976 is broadcast by German KULTURRADIO: Heinrich von Kleist 'Michael Kohlhaas' Fri 18 Nov 22:04-23:00hrs
Nov 19,2011: Japanese Surrender, a letter from listener to New York City radio commentator Jean Shepherd about his experience as an ordinary soldier with the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II. (There is an error by Shepherd in describing Emperor Hirohito's surrender broadcast as 'taped'; it was actually recorded on a phonograph record. The letter was read on August 12, 1975 on WOR, New York.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCugmebnCNA&feature=uploademail
Nov 20,2011:'It is a tremendous step forward in everything: story, development of plot, acting, conception, all the way down the line.' Herb Caen, columnist, San Francisco Chronicle; The quote comes from a 1941 recording made in the lobby of San Francisco's Gary Theater after the northern California premiere of Orson Welles' landmark film Citizen Kane. The recording, made by radio station KSFO, contains short interviews with Caen, Dorothy Comingore who appears in the film, Claude La Belle of the San Francisco News, and Welles himself. It is one of 253 lacquer discs in the Welles Collection at the Lilly Library, the first recordings we are digitally preserving with the Indiana Media Preservation and Access Center (IMPAC) start-up project. This is the first disc we digitized. It is our starting place for us, a significant step forward.- These lacquer discs originated as the Mercury Theatre on the Air's working audio archives. After Welles relocated from the United States to Europe in late 1947, his colleague Richard Wilson took possession of the materials left behind in the group's office, including the sound recordings. These materials were purchased in 1979 by the Lilly Library where they now comprise part of a larger collection titled the Welles mss. The audio portion of this collection contains master, original recordings of numerous episodes of such canonical Welles series as Ceiling Unlimited, Hello Americans, This Is My Best, and various incarnations of the Orson Welles Almanac, including a prospective eight-part series for the Eversharp Pen Company that was never broadcast. Other highlights include an irreverent spoof of Macbeth recorded privately during a rehearsal in April 1940; a broadcast made shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, during which Welles was interrupted by a government blackout notice; and the most complete known set of The Doorway to Life, a Peabody Award winning program by Mercury Theatre member William Alland. Collectively, these discs constitute a unique audio record of the seminal broadcast work of Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre associates during and immediately after the Second World War. The Welles lacquers have serious preservation problems. The format itself is inherently unstable, subject to catastrophic degradation processes that can leave a disc with a lacquer coating that is delaminating (cracking and peeling), resulting in loss of the recorded signal. Forty-three percent of the Welles discs exhibit the characteristic white, oily sheen known as plasticizer exudation, which is considered a precursor to delamination. The lacquer coating is attached to a glass base on 31% of the discs and at least 26 of these items are already cracked or broken. Glass was used due to a shortage of aluminum during the war years. We chose the Welles lacquers as our first collection because they are actively degrading, at very high risk for loss of content, and highly valuable for research, instruction, and entertainment. Other campus collections will follow. This is the first of many steps forward. (The Media Preservation Initiative at Indiana University Bloomington)
Nov 25,2011: We talk so much about historical recordings here. In Germany we have been caught up by history, again. With the River Rhine having so little water (it hasn't rained for ages, so to say)it is possible that people can reach the islands in the stream on foot. That's nice. Not so nice is that the river-bed has brought some unpleasant things to light: the remains of Allied air attacks during WWII. In the city of Koblenz Rhine section a British 1,8-ton-bomb was discovered (still being active). To deactivate it, half of Koblenz will have to be evacuated (c 50,000 people, hospitals and homes for the elderly, train main station, a prison, and hotels) from 9am till the evening hours on Sunday 4th! More 500-kilo-bombs have been discovered at various places as well as numerous barrels that contained stuff for smoke mortars.
Dec 11,2011: German radio SWR2 brings a feature on one of the first medium-wave stations in Germany: Muehlacker. The name can still be found on old radio sets just like Beromuenster and Hilversum because it was built as early as 1930 as the first 'Großsender' (station with maximum power). SWR (South-West Radio) will end its short-wave broadcasting at the end of the year. Go to their streaming audio: SWR2, Monday 12.12.11, 8:30-8:58 hrs German time.
Dec 15,2011:RADIOWORLD 14.Dec.2011- Valuable Vinyl Collection Turns Up: A large collection of forgotten records was discovered at the Wake Island Airfield military airport in the North Pacific Ocean. The collection, consisting of some 9,000 records, has been valued somewhere between $90,000 and $250,000, according to a report from the Air Force public affairs account website. They were stored on base for use by low-power AM military station KEAD. The collection was stored behind a door with KEAD stenciled on the front. It was labeled as a restricted area, which kept out curiosity seekers for many years. According to Larry Sichter, American Forces Network Broadcast Center affiliate relations division chief, the American Forces Radio Service began sometime in 1942 as a means to deliver American music to troops overseas. KEAD operated sometime during the 1960s, according to dates found on the records. Wake Island was controlled by the FAA until the mid- '60s, though according to an entry from Patrick Minoughan at www.richardsramblings.com, KEAD was already around in 1963. I would guess it wrapped up maybe in the '70s or with the advent of satellite radio, said Colin Bradley, communications superintendent with Chugach Federal Solutions Inc., in a press release. CFSI is a contractor operating under the U.S. Air Force to maintain operations on Wake Island. The 611th Air Support Group's Detachment 1 is working to preserve the vintage vinyl records and deliver them to their rightful owner, the American Forces Radio and Television Network, located in Alexandria, Va.
Dec 19,2011: During a news conference at Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, Tuesday Dec. 13, 2011,early sound recordings by telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and others that had been packed way at the Smithsonian Institution for more than a century were played publicly for the first time Tuesday using new technology. The recordings revealed a portion of Hamlet's Soliloquy, a trill of the tongue and someone reciting numbers starting with 1-2-3 . For more details with photos go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/13/alexander-graham-bell-recordings_n_1147241.html#s541628&title=Alexander_Graham_Bell
Dec 25,2011: German radio station DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR will broadcast a feature with original sounds of the 1950s and 1960s with Christmas greeting from all German sations to RIAS BERLIN. In those days it was custum that the stations throughout West Germany sent in tapes with greetings, music, sketches, sound pictures of the different regions to RIAS (Radio In the American Sector). Monday,26th, 08:05-09:00 hrs. Go to their website for streaming audio.
Dec26,2011 An interesting find at the BBC. Google the following title for a recently discovered BBC tape: ' BBC Radio 3 blog: Festival of Nine Lessons'
Dec.31, 2011 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE!
2012 |
| INFO |
Jan. 18,2012: On Jan.22nd German DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR, 08:05-09:00 hrs- In 1962 RIAS Berlin invited young editors from all of Europe to see Berlin and to produce a documentary on tape. That product was produced in three languages and broadcast in many European countries. DKULTUR will broadcast the German edition in its series 'From the Archives'.
Jan.19,2012:ARIEL, the BBC magazine, writes:'BBC considers archive fees for viewers'. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ariel/16543840 . Till now they have blocked most of their online material for no-UK-listeners/viewers!
Jan 31,2012: Extraordinary audio discovery in the Edison National Historic Site: Otto von Bismarck, German Reich Chancellor and Count Bernhard von Moltke, Field Marshall, recorded for Edison's European representative Theo Wangemann in 1889 cylinders, that were found a couple of weeks ago. Both cylinders were presumed to be lost. It was even doubted that they ever hab been recorded! When you 'google' you will find lots of entries, so there's no need to post theme here.
Feb 07,2012: New entry under IV. re the lost cylinder recording of Cardinal Manning.
Feb.11,2012: 15 Nov'11 (Newser)'Got $500,000 to spare? You could be the proud owner of a newly discovered piece of American history. A Philadelphia dealer in historic documents has purchased a reel-to-reel recording from Air Force One following the death of John F. Kennedy, and it's got 30 minutes of never-before-heard conversations from the trip between Dallas and Washington, the AP reports. Top Kennedy aide Gen. Chester Clifton collected material from the JFK administration, and Philadelphia's Raab Collection bought his archive after his widow died and is now putting the recording up for sale. It contains in-flight radio calls between the aircraft, the White House Situation Room, Andrews Air Force Base, and a plane that was carrying Kennedy's press secretary and six Cabinet members. A shortened version of the recording is in the National Archives, and the Raab Collection will donate a copy of the long version to the archives and to the JFK Library. 'It took decades to analyze the shorter, newer version and it will take years to do the same here,' said Nathan Raab. Among other things, he said the tape will end speculation as to the whereabouts of Kennedy adversary Gen. Curtis LeMay right after the murder; he has long been a key figure among assassination researchers. An aide is heard trying to raise him: He 'is in a C140. Last three numbers are 497. His code name is Grandson. And I want to talk to him.'
Feb.16,2012:YAHOO News: 'The radio show that changed the face of broadcasting- 90 years on' - Known as '2MT' it began reaching out to the public far beyond the its immediate surroundings in Chelmsford, Essex. While nothing like the commercial stations which compete for our attention today the informal manner in which it was presented revolutionised the way radio was perceived. This led to the realisation of what could be achieved and paved the way for the first BBC broadcasts....
Complete article can be read here: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/the-radio-show-that-changed-the-face-of-broadcasting-90-years-on.html
The National Museum of American History shares some information on the dawn of recorded sound in America:
http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/2012/01/trilled-rs-and-the-dawn-of-recorded-sound-in-america.html
Feb.17,2012: Two nice children's songs of the late 1940s -'Songs of Safety': Remember Your Name and Address; Heroes of Peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1EQvH5Pujo&feature=uploademail
April 23,2012: Not much to report lately; no new discoveries or such, yet a new book is out by Patrick Conley 'Der parteiliche Journalist', Metropol Verlag (publisher) 2012, ISBN: 978-3-86331-050-9. It's all about the radio feature (hi)story in the former GDR/East Berlin; interviews and recollections of some of those who were involved. (As the title suggests it's in German!)
May 6,2012In National Archives thefts, a radio detective gets his man --THE WASHINGTON POST By Del Quentin Wilber and Lisa Rein, NEWTOWN, Conn. -J. David Goldin, an eccentric 69-year-old with a handlebar mustache and an obsession with radio, was trolling eBay one evening in September 2010, looking for old radios and recordings, when he spotted an item that piqued his interest: the master copy of a broadcast radio interview with baseball legend Babe Ruth as he hunted for quail and pheasants on a crisp morning in 1937. For a moment, Goldin contemplated bidding. It was the kind of historic recording that would fit perfectly in his collection of more than 100,000 radio broadcasts, all meticulously enhanced and preserved on tapes stored in thin white boxes on a maze of shelves in his humidity- and temperature-controlled basement vault. Then he leaned closer to his computer, adjusted his thick glasses and studied the record's photograph and description. What happened next would set in motion a federal investigation with a twist worthy of a classic radio drama. Goldin exposed what authorities have called one of the most egregious instances of theft from the National Archives, where the government preserves billions of historic documents, photographs and recordings. On Thursday, that investigation is scheduled to culminate in the sentencing in Greenbelt's federal court of a longtime Archives official who has admitted to stealing nearly 1,000 recordings, many of them rare. In the courtroom will be Goldin, a respected radio historian don't dare call him a collector who may have been the only person capable of spotting the theft. He lives in a two-story Connecticut house that feels like a shrine to radio: His office is a studio that allows him to preserve and enhance classic records, and the walls are lined with framed albums of vintage radio broadcasts and other bits of nostalgia, including NBC's chimes and an On Air sign. A colorful radio is displayed on nearly every horizontal surface. Among them are a set that doubles as a humidor and another, called a Mae West, that has a design feature you could put a brassiere on,Goldin said with a laugh. There are some people who give us tips who are just passive. He wasn't like that, said the Archives' inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, whose office investigated the theft and plans to honor Goldin for his help after the sentencing. He was a sentinel. For more go to :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/in-national-archives-thefts-a-radio-detective-gets-his-man/2012/05/02/gIQAN1chxT_story.html?hpid=z4
May 10,2012: THE WASHINGTON POST .Leslie Waffen, ex-Archives worker, sentenced for stealing, selling recordings; ARTICLE By Erica W. Morrison.
For more than 40 years, Leslie Waffen was a guardian of national treasures. But for the final 10 years of his career at the National Archives, he secretly peddled some of those rare pieces of history on eBay. On Thursday, in a federal courtroom in Greenbelt, the 67-year-old Rockville resident was sentenced to 18 months in prison and two years of supervised release for embezzling U.S. property. Fighting back tears, Waffen told the court that his 'passion' for historical audio had become an 'obsession'. It all began, he said, when he started taking recordings home without permission to listen to and determine whether the material was suitable for the Archives' collection. But he never returned the items. 'I should have returned it. I did not return it,' he said in court, reading from a prepared statement. Over time, his behavior became 'compulsive' and 'arrogant' as he stole items from the Archives' permanent collection 'with the intent of selling it'. When Waffen plead guilty in October to theft of U.S. government property, he admitted that he stole 955 items from the Archives, including original recordings of the 1948 World Series and a rare recording of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. A government expert valued the 955 items at $83,238.The courtroom was full of relatives and friends. Also present were National Archives staff members and the man who helped authorities crack the case, J. David Goldin, an enthusiast of historic radio recordings who had donated a Babe Ruth hunting recording.Goldin did not speak during the hearing, but afterward he said he had come to know Waffen and was 'disappointed' with what Waffen had done. 'I have great respect for Les. I've known him since 1976,' Goldin said. 'He's one of the best archivists for sound in the U.S.' U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte said he had received letters from Waffen's friends, family and neighbors praising his good character and asking the court to take that into consideration during sentencing.' One hopes as you go forward, you will abandon that parallel universe of crime,' Messitte said.Messitte said that Waffen's actions involved not just a monetary issue, but also an issue of trust. Waffen, the judge said, jeopardized the reputation of not only himself, but also of the Archives and other federal agencies. 'You take our history if you take the thing to sustain our history,' Messitte said, echoing the sentiments of Shylock in Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice'. A restitution hearing is set for Aug. 13.
( http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/leslie-waffen-ex-archives-worker-sentenced-for-stealing-selling-recordings/2012/05/03/gIQAX0f7zT_story.html )
May 11,2012: Some extremely interesting information on the lost Cardinal Manning cylinders have been added in Chapter IV.
May 12,2012:I've just found a recording 'President McKinley's Funeral', Climax Record 453 on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOndOalaJyI&feature=relmfu
May 14,2012: Three interesting German broadcasts ahead: May 17th 09:05-10:00 NORDWESTRADIO: A report of 1954 on the first voyage of 'Gripsholm', a Llyod steamer,on her way to New York; at 14:04-16:00hrs KULTURRADIO a feature on the de-nazification trial of Wilhelm Furtwängler (conductor), based on the newly found minutes of the interrogations, compiled by Klaus Lang who had discovered 1500 magnetic tapes of the Nazi Reichsrundfunk in a Moscow archive in 1987, among them many recordings made in the Alte Philharmonie in Berlin with Furtwängler; and on the same day at 15:05-16:00hrs (German time) SWR2 a feature with original sound documents in excerpts on the 'Story of Radio'. Go to their site for streaming audio.
May 16,2012:WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL vs Ratko Mladic, opening arguments by the prosecution, online, Day 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXgw1mRUao0&feature=uploademail
May 23,2012: For lovers of German archive broadcasts here are some to come:
May 26 on HR2 (Hessian Radio) 14:05-15:20hrs Saint-Exupéry's 'The Little Prince -Der kleine Prinz' (broadcast of 1951),
May 27 on KULTURRADIO 14:04-15:00hrs Büchner's 'Leonce und Lena' (bcast of 1958),
same day on HR2 22:05-23:10hrs Orson Welles' 'Der Krieg der Welten' , a classic German adaptation of 'The War Of The Worlds' (bcast of 1977,
same day BAYERN2 (Bavarian radio) opens its archive, treasures of more than 80 years of collecting at 18:05-19:00, and continued on May 28 same time.
Go to their websites for streaming audio. - Enjoy!
May 26,2012: A Cylinder Recording Process, demonstration, with Jerry Fabris of the Edison NHS:
University of Massachusetts Sound Recording Technology runs a wax cylinder recording session. Gerald Fabris of the Edison National Historic Site joins Music Students in the performance of an original composition, Edison's Frontier by Brian Corey (SRT '09), tracked digitally to mono, stereo and surround in parallel. Hear the music as captured by contemporary recording practice and the Edison Phonograph. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB33qVwhejU&feature=related (I don't know why but you have to open this site in a separate window)
June 3,2012: Added more information to the NATIONAL VOCARIUM label (see above)
June 4.2012: Today at 22:00-23:30hrs on MDR FIGARO the German 1954 adaptation of Herman Wouk's 'The Caine Mutiny' (German title: 'Die Caine war ihr Schicksal') will be broadcast. MDR FIGARO has streaming audio.
June 13,2012: A marathon radio drama performance will be broadcast on 16th+17th June from 08:03am to 06:00am on German radio station SWR2 with James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. It's in German. SWR2 has streaming audio.
and on 16 June WDR3 will broadcast Joyce's 'Dubliner' on 16 June from 18:05 (6:06pm) to 17 June 02:40 (2:40 am). Streaming audio there, too.
June 16,2012: Radio station K C R W in Santa Monica, CA made available to subscribers a cassette tape featuring a compilation of radio newscasts during World War II. It is divided into 4 clips. Heard are prominent broadcast personalities of that era. In some cases, there are later interviews with the broadcasters. Also heard is English-language Nazi radio propaganda. There is no indication on the cassette tape of when it was made. The excerpts begin with the Pearl Harbor attack and end with VJ Day. Posted Memorial Day weekend 2012. Go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9N_m8Wn6jk&feature=relmfu
June 20,2012: IU media historian's find in stacks at Wells Library could represent oldest record in world - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 9th
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. --'Vor seinem Löwengarten/Das Kampfspiel zu erwarten/Saß König Franz/Und um ihn die Großen der Krone/Und rings auf hohem Balkone/Die Damen in schönem Kranz.' - The voice of the father of the gramophone, Emile Berliner, is only slightly muffled as he recites Friedrich Schiller's ballad 'Der Handschuh'. But his words -- preserved as an image in a German magazine from 1890 and resurrected through today's technology at Indiana University - represent what can be considered the oldest record in the world. IU sound media historian Patrick Feaster stumbled on the image of Berliner's recording earlier this year, when he was searching for another article in the more than century old copy of 'Über Land und Meer' in the fourth-floor stacks at Bloomington's Herman B Wells Library. 'I was looking for a picture of the oldest known recording studio, to illustrate a discussion I was giving on my work with Thomas Edison's recordings. I pulled it off the shelf and, while I had it open, I looked at the index and saw there was an article on the gramophone. I thought, 'Oh, that's a bonus,' 'Feaster said. 'So I flipped through and, lo and behold, there's a paper print of the actual recording.'- More on it at http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/22508.html
July 3,2012: German NDR KULTUR radio will broadcast a radio classic of 1955: Faulkner's 'Requiem for a Nun', Wed. July 4th, 20:05-21:30hrs. Go to their website for streaming audio.
July 5,2012: Preserving Indian Speech: 'We are already beginning to regret that no phonographic records could have been made of the voices of great singers of the last generation, while we shall be handing down our Carusos and Melbas to those who come long after us. Not long ago the Department of the Interior in Washington awoke to that fact there was something to be preserved for the future, namely the speech and war songs of our native Indians. The new generation of Carlisle-bred chiefs do not take the ancient rituals very seriously, and it is probable that after the oldest of the living warriors have died, the Indian war songs will be practically forgotten. - It was this feeling which prompted the Government to make phonographic records of the voices of the living chiefs for the files of our nation. For some time past,now, these warriors on their periodic visits to Washington have recorded on the phonograph their songs and their legends for the files of the nation.' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Vol.88 No.4 April,1916
July 21,2012: Tomorrow German radio MDR FIGARO will broadcast a play by Jean Paul 'Katzenbergers Badereise', a production of the former GDR-radio ('Rundfunk der DDR'), 6:00PM-7:00PM, and can be listened to live via their website.
July 24,2012: German radio NORDWESTKULTUR will broadcast early sounds from the post-war era in Bremen (1946). Station Bremen was in the lucky position that they had lots of unused transcription discs from the war-times that they used, and luckily, they could not be erased! July 25 19:05 (7:05PM)-20:00 (8PM). They have streaming audio.
Aug.5,2012: German radio SWR2 will repeat a 6-part-series on German radio history 'Tonspuren' (sound tracks). They will be broadcast from Aug.16th on every work-day at 8:30-9:00 hrs (8:30AM-9:00AM). Go to their website for streaming audio or for the archived series.
Aug.21,2012: German radio WDR5 will broadcast todnight at 20:05-21:00 a radio-drama Joseph Conrad 'The End of the Tether' (German title 'Die letzte Fahrt der Sofala'), a production of 1953. They have streaming audio.
Aug.25,2012: Today, the man who spoke the first words from the moon down to us on July 20,1969, Neil Armstrong, has died today. Who of us cannot recall those moments sitting in front of the TV screen . . . ?
August 30,2012: Graham Greene's 'The Third Man', a German production of 1950, will be broadcast tomorrow on NORDWESTRADIO 19:05-20:00hrs. Go to their streaming audio.
Sep.1, 2012: A feature on one of the first German comedians of the 1920s/30s,Ludwig Manfred Lommel, will be broadcast by German radio WDR5 tomorrow at 20:05-22:00hrs. Go to their streaming audio.
Sep.19,2012: Halifax, Nova Scotia: 10,000 vinly records for free! Free vintage and highly collectible rare vinyl records. The Maritime Conservatory of music in its infinite lack of wisdom has turfed its entire collection of classical, vintage and old vinyl. Now sitting in a dumpster outside the building. Corner of Chebucto and Mathias. Get them now, or they'll be in the landfill FOREVER! Go here to find the way... http://halifax.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-cds-dvds-blu-ray-10-000-FREE-VINYL-RECORDS-W0QQAdIdZ414967671
Sep.21,2012: Mitt Romney's speech on US citizen and what he thinks of them can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge03Sys8SdA
Sep.30,2012: Forthcoming on BBC4, Oct 13th, 10:30h: Paul Gambaccini re-lives Christmas Eve 1955 and The Weavers reunion concert at New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall. Three years after Pete Seeger's blacklisting for Communist sympathies had forced the highly successful folk group to break up, their manager Harold Leventhal took a risk and booked the only venue that would take them. There were queues round the block and the concert was a sell-out. In the company of Pete Seeger himself and the other two surviving Weavers, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman, Paul hears about the birth of The Weavers in the radical home of folk music and left-wing politics that was forties Greenwich Village. Presenter/Paul Gambaccini, Producer/Marya Burgess for the BBC
Sep.30,2012: Today at 20:05h (-22:00h) German radio WDR3 will broadcast a radio classic of 1957: Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 'Der Besuch der alten Dame'. They have streaming audio.
Oct.01,2012: In 2009 the Austrian Mediathek received thousands of recordings from a private collector, Günther Schifter, among them some cylinder recordings. After a first inspection and closer examination they found one very interesting item. From the description on the lid it was the only known recording by Austrian writer Peace Nobel Prize laureate (1905) Bertha von Suttner,recorded in Ebenfurth/Austria on 23 May 1904. The name there said 'Tante Boulotte' (aunt B.). Suttner had written under the pseudonym 'B.Oulot', and an entry in her diary of that day read: 'I talk into the grammophone'. That led to the conclusion that it must be her who is speaking. Yet the recording is that bad that, in 2012,the Mediathek has made the recording public and asks anybody to take part in the deciphering of Suttner's words. (The website in German can be found via 'www.mediathek.at.)
Oct.08,2012: The Austrian Academy of Sciences has produced two new fascinating CDs: 'Soldier Songs of the Austro-Hungarian Army', rec.during WWI, and 'Rudolf Pöchs Kalahari Recordings of 1908' (both in their 'Series 4' resp. 'Series7'). More info can be obtained via http://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/ .
Oct.09,2012:On YOUTUBE you will find a recording made by Fritz Lang speaking about the film METROPOLIS on disc VOX08386,mx1289,2AA. Search for 'Leitworte zum UFA-Film "METROPOLIS" gesprochen von Regisseur Fritz Lang' if interested.
Oct.17,2012: On October 18, 1922 the BBC was founded. German radio WDR5 has a short feature on that event tomorrow at 9:05-9:20, the same is repeated on WDR3 at 17:45hrs. Both have streaming audio.
Oct 19,2012: Bertold Brecht's legendary 1930-performance of 'Der Lindberghflug' (Lindbergh-flight) will be broadcast tomorrow on German radio WDR3 at 15:05-16:00h. It's a recording of the Funkstunde Berlin with Ernst Ginsberg, Fritz Düttbernd, Erik Wirl, Gerhard Pechner, and Betty Mergler. The WDR-broadcast includes an essay on the play.
Oct.28,2012: Gerhart Hauptmann's play 'Die Ratten' (The Rats) of 1964 will be broadcast tonight at 20:05-22:00h on German radio WDR3.
Oct 30,2012: 1878 Edison Audio Unveiled: By CHRIS CAROLA Associated Press, SCHENECTADY, N.Y. October 25, 2012 (AP):(quote) 'It's scratchy, lasts only 78 seconds and features the world's first recorded blooper. The modern masses can now listen to what experts say is the oldest playable recording of an American voice and the first-ever capturing of a musical performance, thanks to digital advances that allowed the sound to be transferred from flimsy tinfoil to computer.The recording was originally made on a Thomas Edison-invented phonograph in St. Louis in 1878. At a time when music lovers can carry thousands of digital songs on a player the size of a pack of gum, Edison's tinfoil playback seems prehistoric. But that dinosaur opens a key window into the development of recorded sound. 'In the history of recorded sound that's still playable, this is about as far back as we can go,' said John Schneiter, a trustee at the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, where it was played Thursday night in the city where Edison helped found the General Electric Co. The recording opens with a 23-second cornet solo of an unidentified song, followed by a man's voice reciting 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' and 'Old Mother Hubbard.' The man laughs at two spots during the recording, including at the end, when he recites the wrong words in the second nursery rhyme. 'Look at me; I don't know the song,' he says.'(end of q)* For more go to the AP's site.
See youtube film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaF-MexzkkA&feature=related.
Nov.3,2012:An interersting CD with Folk Songs related to politics has been issued: 'Freedom Is A Hammer'-Conservative Folk Revolutionaries of the Sixties. In the tumultuous 1960s the powerful voices of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and others shaped the political and musical landscape for many. Less known, but no less strident and artful, were the folk singers from the other side of town. For the very first time the hyper-patriotic voices of conservative folk music mavericks Janet Greene, Tony Dolan and Vera Vanderlaan are reissued and reappraised. Janet Greene sings eloquently of the insidious communist threat (The Hunter And The Bear), Tony Dolan vigorously defends Senator Joseph McCarthy (Abolish, Abolish!) and Vera Vanderlaan reminds us that the price of freedom is preparedness and eternal vigilance (Freedom Is A Hammer). Remastered with exclusive scholarly liner notes, interviews and rare photos/ephemera, this collection presents the acclaimed counter-counter-culture songsmiths Janet Greene, Tony Dolan and Vera Vanderlaan in all their righteous and right-headed glory. More information here: http://www.worldwentdown.com/omni/omni167.php.
Nov.15,2012: Tonight at 10pm there will be a broadcast by poet Gerhart Hauptmann, a radio lecture he helt on the Berliner Funkstunde June 25,1931 and a speech on him by Thomas Mann, helt in Frankfurt Nov 9th,1952, on the occasion of the poet's 90th birthday. MDR FIGARO 22:00-23:00hrs German time. -
On Nov 17th, German radio BAYERN2 has a reading of Erika Mann's report of 1940: 'The Lights Go Down. Middletown-Nazi Version' based on real life stories of refugees and emigrants. (Erika is the eldest daughter of Thomas mann.)
Nov.17,2012: On Sunday,Nov.18th, there will be a re-broadcast of the 1952 play by Gerhart Hauptmann 'Der Biberpelz'. It's a classic performance that even my German teacher way back in the early 1960s thought it was worth presenting to us students, so that he brought his own tape recorder to the classroom! Although it was a shortwave recording he had we were all ears! (The broadcast came from Radio Hamburg which could only received in Aachen via shortwave.) First broadcast: Nov.11,1953 NorthWestGermanRadio-NWDR. (SWR2, 18:20-20:00hrs)
And on DKULTUR you can listen to a 1977 RIAS (Radio in the American Sector of Berlin) broadcast on 'rockstars who died in their early age' (8:05-09:00hrs)
Nov.19,2012: DURBRIDGE 100 German radio WDR5 will bring the complete Durbridge 'Paul Temple und der Fall Genf' in a mono production/first broadcast of Feb.25, 1966, on Nov,24 at 20:05-24:00hrs, one of the crime drama classics of those times.
On DKULTUR at 21:33-22:30 Durbridge 'Nur über meine Leiche', a SDR-production of 1962
There is a BBC broadcast of about 1950: 'Paul Temple and the Van Dyke Affair' in 8 parts on Youtube!
Nov.20,2012: And another German radio classic follows on Nov.25th: Arthur Miller's 'Alle meine Söhne' (All My Sons), a production of NWDR Cologne, first broadcast on Sep.14,1950! It's on WDR3 20:05- c21:45hrs
Nov.22,2012: Johannes von Saaz (1350-1414) aka Johannes von Tepl: 'Der Ackermann und der Tod' (Ackermann is an old German word for farmer, the man who works on the fields) in a production by RUNDFUNK DER DDR (Radio East-Berlin), first broadcast Nov.22,1981, will be broadcast by KULTURRADIO on Nov 23, at 22:04-23:00hrs. The Ackermann, as a representative of all humankind, complains before God about the Death. - This famous eschatological drama consists of 32 arguments between The Death and the Ackermann, and ends with God's judgement.- Saaz's wife's death is the basis of this drama.
Dec.1,2012: The great Irish writer, James Joyce (1882.2.2 ~ 1941.1.13.) reads an excerpt of 'Anna Livia Plurabelle' episode from his book, 'Finnegans Wake'. Recorded on September 5th, 1929, by the request from the linguist C. K. Ogden and his Orthological Institute at Cambridge. A comiplation can be found on YOUTUBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grJC1yu4KRw&feature=em-uploademail (9'20)
The Lindström project has just published a fourth volume on project reports. The new book contains case studies from Germany. Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Slovenia, Indonesia (Dutch East Indies) and Sri Lanka, as well as material on the early history of the recording industry. For more information on the book and the project, see www.phonomuseum.at.- The Lindström project is an international project which aims to reconstruct the global history of the Carl Lindström Company during the 78 rpm era, ca. 1900 - 1950. The Company's labels such as Odeon, Parlophon, Beka, Favorite, etc appeared on all continents, and the total output was hundreds of thousands of titles. The project is coordinated by the Gesellschaft für historische Tonträger in Vienna, and has participants in twenty countries. Three previous project reports are still available and contain reports from several additional countries, as well as general histories of Carl Lindström AG and companies which it acquired, such as Beka and Favorite. The project has also published online discographies (see project website), as well as reproductions of catalogues and scans of all surviving Lindström recording ledgers.
Dec.7,2012: BBC News Technology:BBC finishes Radio Times archive digitisation effort.-The BBC has completed its effort to digitise programme listings from old copies of the Radio Times magazine.The BBC Genome project is designed to help the organisation identify shows missing from its archive.Most early output was not recorded and many later tapes were destroyed.It will be used to create an online database allowing, where possible, the public access to old broadcasts - or available photos, scripts and other materials for missing shows.... For more go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20625884 .
Dec.15,2012:Maybe a bit off-topic , but a very strong statement by one of my most favorite singers, Columbian Soraya Lamilla, in a statement to fight breast-cancer, which IMO is a touching sound document by a strong woman who died May 10,2006 on that desease. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrRWhxbiflc&feature=endscreen&NR=1 Rueda de prensa Octubre de 2000 - Su valentia se evidenció cuando dejo de lado su imagen fisica y las falsas ideas del mercado, demostro q su feminidad estaba en su esencia y que su voz se mantiene en una lucha que no se puede detener. More: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlTf2JF12Dw ; La misión de Soraya y por ser quien soy : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZWpZRlFKk
Dec.20,2012:Curators discover first recordings of Christmas Day,By Pallab Ghosh,Science correspondent, BBC News. There are 24 clear recordings on wax cylinders which were made using a phonograph machine between 1902 and 1917. Music curators say the sound quality of the music recorded is outstanding.Cromwell and Minnie Wall had nine children, eight of whom appear on the recordings. All the recordings are bursting with vibrancy and life, according to Julia Hoffbrand who is the curator at the Museum of London who helped restore the recordings.Many of the recordings were made at family gatherings over Christmas and New Year.Cromwell Wall, who made the recordings, wheeled the phonograph along the streets in his children's pram in order to record the sound of Old Southgate Church bells pealing out New Year.Some of the later recordings were made during WWI when three of the sons, who feature in earlier recordings were away at war. One son, Oliver, died of pneumonia in a French hospital three weeks before peace was declared. More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20772246 .
Dec.21,2012:DOCUMENTING EARLY RADIO -A Review of Existing Pre-1932 Radio Recordings by Elizabeth McLeod, see http://www.midcoast.com/~lizmcl/earlyradio.html
dec.22,2012:IASA News: EU has just announced another step in copyright reform. The press release can be found at
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-1394_en.htm?locale=en - Please note that the latest reform is also intended to facilitate access to Europe's audiovisual 'cultural heritage'. However, the plans are to limit this to films and film archives. The audio sector is not mentioned at all, although we know that there are copyright problems also in preserving our audio heritage and making it accessible.Perhaps there is a need for action also from audio archives and IASA? EUs Orphan works directive was originally also limited to literary works and films. However, thanks to several MEPs from the Baltic region, the Baltic Audiovisual Archiving Council was able to introduce several amendments into the directive which extend its scope to audio.
Dec.29,2012:Enthusiasts give 620 lost Alistair Cooke 'Letters To America' to BBC The Independent, Cahal Milmo reports:
40 years ago, David Henderson was an avid listener to the radio great. Now his treasured tapes are helping to fill a gap in the BBC's history-In his few spare moments as a Wiltshire dairy farmer nearly 40 years ago, David Henderson was fond - like millions of Britons - of listening to Alistair Cooke's Letter from America. Indeed, such was his enjoyment, he bought a tape recorder to preserve the broadcaster's transatlantic musings.Over a period of five years, Mr Henderson, 64, consigned to dozens of cassettes the thoughts of Mr Cooke on happenings from the end of the Vietnam War to the Camp David peace deal, assuming that his life in rolling fields near Stratford Upon Avon had no part to play in such global events.But, along with another Cooke enthusiast equipped with a reel-to-reel recorder in Cornwall, the farmer has proved the salvation of the BBC (and of the legacy of Britain's most renowned chronicler of American life) by filling a large gap in a recently-unveiled archive of his programmes. The online collection of Letter from America recordings features audio and transcripts from 900 of the weekly broadcasts stretching over 58 years. But with a total of 2,869 'Letters' recorded by Cooke between 1946 and 2004, there are yawning gaps in the Corporation's own collection.Step forward Mr Henderson and Newquay resident Roy Whittaker, who from their long-forgotten boxes of tapes have added a further 620 lost episodes from the 1970s to the archive after an appeal from the BBC led to them unearthing their private collections from attics and cellars. The recordings, some of them made on a defunct eight-track recorder by Mr Henderson at an auction of agricultural equipment in 1975, have been carefully retrieved by BBC engineers and will soon be added to the online archive unveiled last month. Mr Henderson said: 'I was brought up on a family farm and I left school at 16. Alistair Cooke was a voice from a different world but he had the ability to talk to the ordinary guy like myself. He could bridge that gap between the sophistication of America and do it in a way that made sense to people like me.'When I bought the recorder it was part of a lot that included a television set. I wanted the telly but since I had the eight-track I thought it would be great to record Letter from America so, if I was going out, I could listen to it later. It was like listening to a friend. It became something of a habit.'In 1980, the farmer - a keen space enthusiast who, partially inspired by Cooke, visited Florida in 1972 for the launch of the Apollo 17 moon landing - attended a Young Farmers' meeting to show a film he made about his trip and met his future wife, Jenny.At this point, the recordings stopped but Mr Henderson retained the tapes and an affection for the melifluous tones of the Salford-born broadcaster who was credited with awakening if not a love, then a curiosity for America among Britons. Mr Cooke famously missed only three of his 15-minute weekly broadcasts, mostly recorded in his Manhattan flat, before his death aged 95.It was an enthusiasm shared by Roy Whittaker, who like Mr Henderson in his farmhousekitchen, had taken to recording Letter from America at his Newquay home. His collection added 470 missing recordings to the archive, including all broadcasts from 1979 - compared to the five from that year held by the BBC.Mr Whittaker said: 'I wanted to be able to listen to them again. I could listen to them over and over again because he is such a marvellous English-speaking individual the like I've never heard before and I don't suppose I shall ever hear again. He was just a genius.'The finds mean that previously lost recordings by Mr Cooke on seminal events in post-war American history, including a 1975 broadcast about the entry of Communist forces to Saigon and a 1978 'Letter' on the Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, have now been preserved. Although most of Mr Cooke's later broadcasts were kept by the BBC, its post-war practice of not recording output means that large amounts of material up to the 1970s have been lost. The Corporation has only three recordings of Letter from America from the 1950s and approximately one per year for the 1960s and the early 1970s, making the collections of Mr Henderson and Mr Whittaker all the more important. It is still appealing for other recordings.Zillah Watson, senior producer for Radio 4 Interactive, said: 'We always hoped to recover episodes lost to the archives but we never dreamed of getting such a large haul. We have begun the process of digitising these episodes to preserve them in the BBC archives for future generations. Mr Whittaker and Mr Henderson began their collections because of their love of the show and we want to give a wider audience the opportunity to enjoy them as well.'In meantime, the two men can bask in the knowledge that their attic collections have preserved for posterity a little more of the legacy of a national treasure, a fact acknowledged by Mr Cooke's daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, who has written to both of them thanking them for their diligence and saying their story would have delighted her father.Mr Henderson said: 'I never dreamt that I would somehow have a personal connection with Alistair Cooke but the letter completes the circle. It was quite emotional to read it. I'm just an English farmer and I don't consider myself an intellectual but I've ended up as a custodian of this great man's thoughts.
Dec.31, 2012 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE!
2013 |
| INFO |
Jan.10,2013: On Jan.13, German radio DKULTUR will broadcast a RIAS BERLIN (Radio In The American Sector) feature of 1972 on the AVUS, the first city Autobahn. 08:05-09:00AM.
Jan.19,2013: Nearly 175,000 document images are now available in the Digital Edition of the Thomas A. Edison Papers. Included are documents from the archives of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park scanned from Parts I-III of the Microfilm Edition, along with items from other repositories and private collections. Through its integrated structure and ease of access, the Digital Edition provides powerful search capabilities enabling users to search for authors, recipients, and names mentioned in a database of 143,500 document records and 23,300 names. The Digital Edition was created with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. More at:http://edison.rutgers.edu/digital.htm.
Jan.26,2013: Tomorrow at 7:05-7:30am German radio WDR5 will broadcast the recollections of Heinrich Schöpe who during the 3rd Reichh collected flyers which the Allies dropped over Germany. Later, at 20:05-22:00 WDR3 has a 1976 RIAS BERLIN production in its programme: Beckett's Godot
Jan.28,2013: A person to remember, esp. as he was born in my native city, Aachen: Eddy Startz a radio legend Countless people, all over the world, do remember Eddy Startz, born as Eduard Franz Conradin in Aachen (Germany), way back in 1899. He passed away in 1976 in Dutch city of Zeist. It was in 1921 that he started a study as journalist at the Columbia University in New York and he had several jobs including sailor, waiter, dishwasher and salesman. In 1925 he decided it was time to travel and learned a lot about culture, habits and nations. In 1928 he came back to Europe working for Philips Company in the Netherlands as a translator. A year earlier in Eindhoven, where Philips's offices were situated, experimental radio telephony transmissions were started on shortwave, soon removed to Hilversum. As one of the people working there went to another job it was Startz his chance to become the main announcer during the experimental broadcasts. From November 1928 he presented programs mainly consisting of music and technical information. But the most interesting things was, that he presented in many languages. Due to the fact he was also very enthusiastic more and more people tuned into these programs. The station, with the call letters PCJ, soon got the coddle name Happy station. However due to the economical bad situation the station went off the air in 1931. For Startz were more possibilities to be active in radio as he went to work for PHOHI in Dutch Indie where he also gained a lot of popularity, where he also became program director in 1938. After World War II he started working for Radio Herrijzend Nederland and it was in 1947 that his program became part of the then new station Radio Netherlands. Happy Station was on the air every Sunday and thousands of listeners around the globe loved his programs. He went on presenting the Happy Station up till 1969, when Tom Meyer took over.In the very first program from Tom, who kept the name Happy Station alive, special greetings from listeners were transmitted on Radio Netherlands.(Info provided by Hans Knot.)
Jan.29,2013: Storing recordings on man-made DNA: go to: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/computer-breakthrough-code-life-becomes-databank-181305573.html
Feb.15,2013: Saving Sound: The Library of Congress Highlights Radio - Written by: Paul McLane , RADIO WORLD, 13 Feb 2013:'Library of Congress... calls on its preservation board to set up a subcommittee to develop strategies and tools to collect and preserve radio broadcast content. And the report calls for a symposium to discuss the challenges of preserving American radio broadcasts.This development will hearten anyone in radio who has ever worked at a station with a deep history, only to learn that a new owner or a new format was coming in and that all the station audio recordings had been tossed in a dumpster. The recommendation about radio preservation is part of a much larger blueprint set out by the Library of Congress. Its overall goal: Saving sound. Congress has charged the library with implementing a national sound recording preservation program; this new report is a big step in that effort, and contains a list of 32 recommendations.' For more go to http://radioworld.com/default.aspx?tabid=75&entryid=923
Feb.16,2013: I found this interesting film-clip on YouTube with Nazi propaganda called 'Glocken der Heimat' (Bells from Home). It's song sung by W.Strienz, and the Propaganda Company reporter makes us believe that the German soldiers are greeting their beloved ones at home from an ampith theatre in Greece. It's supposed to be one of the 'famous' radio ring broadcasts from all German occupied territories. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2DfeIL6cfs
Feb.26,2013: German KULTURRADIO will broadcast a feature on the Reichstag Fire of 27 Feb.1933 tomorrow (27th) at 22:04-23:00hrs in a production of 1999, with audio excerpts from the trial. Go to their streaming audio, if interested.
March 7,2013: If you are interested to learn about the ways Arab countries think of preserving their sounds, go to http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Music/2013/Mar-02/208473-archiving-the-sound-history-of-iraq.ashx#axzz2MU282sl9 where you find an article of the Lebanon DAILY STAR about it.
March 14,2013:BBC4 will feature the 'Destination Freedom' broadcasts that were on the air between 1948 and 1950.'It launched in 1948, a weekly series of 30 minute radio dramas that showcased the lives and accomplishments of prominent African Americans - from Louis Armstrong, Joe Lewis and Duke Ellington, to the 18th century icon of the anti-slavery movement Crispus Attucks and Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist who fought for women's suffrage. The programme's founder and writer, Richard Durham, described it as radio that was 'rebellious, biting, scornful and cocky'. Artistically, as well as politically, it was years ahead of its time. Never heavy handed or simple propaganda, the broadcasts were even, on rare occasions, acoustically innovative to the point of being sound-art surreal. The profile of the world class African-American heart surgeon Daniel Hale Williams, for example, is told from the point of view of one of his patient's hearts (in an episode called 'The Heart of George Cotton').The show walked a daring line between reform and revolution, and was shut down by its network in 1950, as McCarthyism and anti-communism tightened its grip on American broadcasting. As well as drawing on the archive of Destination Freedom, this programme illuminates a largely unknown, but important, chapter in the history of civil rights and tells how radio drama played its part from the very beginning.' (BBC Prog Info). March 21,2013,11:30-12:00am UK time.
March 16,2013>: I've just come across the earliest (cylinder) recording of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Fud Livingstone recorded in the fall of 1926. Earl Baker, a cornetist who worked with 'The Seattle Harmony Kings' in the 1920s, invited some of Ben Pollack's band musicians - none other than Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Fud Livingstone! - to his home in Chicago for Jam sessions. For mor info and the recording go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtYoRYkdi_E
March 22,2013: UK FOLKS- IMPORTANT!
The Leveson regulations are being applied to UK websites in ways that could catch more or less anyone who publishes a blog. Ordinary bloggers could be threatened with exemplary damages and costs. If this happens, small website publishers will face terrible risks, or burdensome regulation and many may simply stop publishing....Last weekend, the proposals were agreed in a rush, without public consultation, and with no attention to the detail. Outrageously, they have given the Lords until Monday to fix their mistakes. For more details go to http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/leveson
March 29,2013:Sound documents from Chile 1973-89: Este documento, es en cierta medida la continuación de 'Chile, Entre el Dolor... Y la Esperanza', y abarca el período que va desde el golpe de Estado del 11 de septiembre de 1973, hasta la Campaña por el NO, y el retorno de la democracia a Chile.2LPs under the title 'La Fuerza de un Pueblo'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3oZt7TiJ_0
April 1,2013:For those who are interested in literature: German radio 'BAYERN2radio' will broadcast Thomas Mann's daughter Elisabeth Borgese talking about her life (recorded earlier this year). 18:05-19:00hrs German Summer Time (CET+6hrs).
April 22,2013:Bertold Brecht's 'Lehrstück' will be broadcast tomorrow at 20:10-21:00 by DLF KÖLN (Deutschlandfunk)in a performance from 2006 with the Berliner Enssemble.(streaming audio)
April 29,2013: 'Voices from the Inferno'- The last months of the Warsaw Ghetto in eye-witness accounts: http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto_testimonies/gesia_camp.asp -
In 1948 Nuremberg judge Musmanno interviewed people who had been close to Hitler in his last days- and filmed them. The result was published in 1950 under the title Ten Days to Die. These interviews were filmed and were among the most sought-after films. Indeed, it was even unclear if they still existed. Not too long ago a part of these film rolls were discovered with some of his relatives in the USA. 50 minutes of film material have survived and they seem to be a compilation of what had been filmed back in 1948. Witnesses like Traudle Junge, Hitler's secretary from 1943 on, messengers Heinz Lorenz and Wilhelm Johannmeyer who took copies of Hitler's Last Will out of Berlin; Bernd Freytag von Lorinhausen, Hitler's adjuntant,talks about the poisoning of Hitler's dog Blondi, two criminal investigators who witnessed the burning of Hitler's body in the garden of the Reich Chancellery,and finally Artur Axmann, the former 'Reich Youth Leader' who escaped from the Bunker on May 1st. And Musmanno found witnesses who were able to talk about the whereabouts of Hitler's mortal remains that did not burn completely.
May 1,2013: I have just had a closer look at the British Library CD archive and I think it's an amazing collection, spanning from the earliest H.G.Wells' recording of 1931, to A.Huxley, W.H.Auden, American Poets and Writers to the 'Bloomsbury Group'. The voices on their CDs come from all walks of life and a visit is worth while. See also my entry under Sep.24th,2005. Go to: http://shop.bl.uk/mall/departmentpage.cfm/BritishLibrary/_87294/1/Audio
May 1,2013: MAIL ONLINE 25.4.13: 'Hear my voice, I am Alexander Graham Bell': Telephone inventor's voice identified for the first time on wax disc from 1885 - Disc was discovered among audio recordings held at the Smithsonian Institution Record was made at Bell's Volta Laboratory in Washington in 1885- 3D scans of disc allowed it to be heard for the first time in over 100 years. For more go to: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2314558/Alexander-Graham-Bells-voice-identified-time-wax-disc-1885.html
In this connection I came across a Youtube video on early recordings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL9-PrmeG7g
May 2,2013: Michael Ashenfelder,Digital Preservation Project Coordinator,Library of Congress has sent in this information: This week we released a seven-minute video that profiles how the Library of Congress's Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation processes and preserves their digital collections: http://digitalpreservation.gov/multimedia/videos/packard-campus.html. The wonders of technology are presented here!
May 20,2013: A piece of Irish history 1916-22 at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kvMs74E3Wc&pxtry=1 .The story of Ireland's fight for freedom in songs and ballads, interviews with survivors, and excepts from speeches by its leaders, including president Eamon de Valera, recorded live in Dublin, and folk singers 'The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem'.
May 24,2013: Famous Venezuelan singer Soledad Bravo speaks on International Women's Day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dagr30RVYVw
María León, antigua guerrillera, responde a María Corina Machado ante Hugo Chávez.(6', Chavez'answer ):María León Gibory, la heroica antigua guerrillera de 75 años, profesora, madre, abuela y bisabuela, hoy diputada del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, PSUV, por Aragua, improvisó una preciosa y valerosa intervención durante la ceremonia de presentación de la memoria y cuenta de 2011 por parte del Jefe del Estado de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, comandante Hugo Chávez Frías, que tuvo lugar en Caracas el viernes 13 de enero de 2012, de 14 a 24 horas, en el Palacio Legislativo. Habían transcurrido ocho horas de la intervención de diez horas sin interrupción que protagonizó el presidente venezolano, cuando la diputada María Corina Machado, aprovechando la amabilidad del orador al permitir que hiciese uso de la palabra, fue irrespetuosa con él y llegó a llamarle ladrón. Chávez respondió, entre otras cosas, los ya famosos "águila no caza moscas" y "usted está fuera de ranking". "¿Ladrón me dijiste?, No, yo no te voy a decir ladrona, sólo mujer venezolana." "Yo primero le sugiero que gane las primarias, diputada, es lo primero que tiene que hacer porque está fuera de ranking para debatir conmigo. Lo lamento mucho, pero esa es la verdad." La diputada María León no quedó satisfecha y logró que el presidente Chávez le permitiera intervenir, con un discurso que pasará sin duda a las antologías de los discursos políticos contemporáneos de sabor más clásico y terminante.- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqt3n0g4EtE ; part one at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJFRjHirpyM, another clip from Maria Corina Machado's courageous speech vs the President in a parliament where no opposition-voices had been heard so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar5qvetvAZ4
June 6,2013: For those interested in German radio and documentaries, here are some German radio programme previews: MDR FIGARO, 9th,18:00-19:00hrs with two radio plays produced by the former GDR Radio in 1976 and 1979: Poe's Goldkäfer' and Martin's 'Die Bürgen'; MDR FIGARO,6th June,22:04-23:00hrs- a review of the East Berlin uproar of 17th June 1953; DLF KÖLN, 15th, 23:05-02:00hrs with a special on Hannah Arendt; MDR FIGARO, 16th, 18:00-19:00hrs a radio drama by Joachim Nowotny in a production of Radio GDR of 1978; HR2-KULTUR,16th, 18:05-19:05hrs a feature 'Germany during the Nazi period'. All stations have streaming audio,of course.
June 22,2013: Programme preview: 'Archive on 4' Saturday 6th July 2000hrs UK, time is about Winston Churchill's private collection of records ( stored at Cambridge University ) and the fight against time to digitise them before they crumble to dust. Details on BBC Press Office site.
June 28,2013: Autrian Radio Ö1 (Oe1) has a documentary on one of the espionage-(show)trials in the former GDR in the 1960s vs Elli Barczatis and Karl Laurenz with original sounds from the tribunal: June 29, 09:05-10:00AM , a production of WDR 2011 (streaming audio); German radio station DLF Köln (Deutschlandfunk Cologne) same day at 00:05-01:00AM a radio dramatization (crime) by Stanley Ellin 'Verräter' (traitors) in a production of SFB (Station Free Berlin) 1963; German WDR3 features the beginning of AFN in London on July 4th,1943, July4,17:45-18:00; same on WDR5 at 09:05-09:20hrs German time. All have streaming audio.)
July1,2013: AFN Europe turns 70 on July 4. Celebrations are through radio and television with two special program events. All times listed are Central European Time. Tune in on July 4 and July 5 for 'Reflections', airing on AFN The Eagle at noon, The PowerNet at 6 p.m. and on AFN 360 at 9 p.m. The program will also air both days on AFN 360 Internet Radio at 9 p.m. AFN 'Wide Open' airs on The Pentagon Channel July 4 at 7:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., July 5 at 3 a.m., 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., and July 6 at 5:30 a.m.
July 6,2013:Reminder BBC 4 20:00hrs UK-time Churchill's Secret Cabinet-Duration: 58 minutes; Clement Attlee once claimed that Churchill led Britain to victory in the Second World War through his words. But what influenced these words and their delivery? The answer lies in a newly discovered wooden cabinet containing not only Churchill's private collection of gramophone records, but also rare recordings of his unknown speeches.In this Archive on 4, historian Andrew Roberts joins archivists, historians, musicians, even Churchill's own family, to discover how these rapidly disintegrating discs - some of them over a hundred years old - offer new clues about his oratorical style. Their survival depends on the fast action of the Cambridge archivists in a race against time to digitise them, before they quite literally turn to dust. Already, the work in progress has turned up some surprising revelations - including a glimpse into Churchill's very own desert island discs. The apparently unmusical Churchill turns out to be someone who treasures songs of satire, humour and intense patriotism. We discover recordings of black swans enjoyed by a nature loving Churchill we rarely see, and then there are those fascinating newly discovered recordings of Churchill's own voice - including the first known recording of him, from the early 20th century. From these records, Andrew Roberts gleans valuable insights into that famous titan of British oratory - how it was not just his words, but his unique musical delivery that came to reflect and even embody the hopes of a nation.
German radio WDR5 brings a feature on how the BBC fought Hitler with irony and satire ('Der Witzkrieg'), July 7, 20:05-21:00hrs German time. (streaming audio)
July 23,2013: With British soldiers leaving Germany step by step (last step was Münster a couple of weeks ago, and many places around my neck of the woods) I thought a look back might be of interest. They left their marks everywhere, not through their personal presence (they were forbidden to have contact German civilians, even decades after their stationing) but through their British Forces Broadcasting Service -BFBS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJx55uoJKIE
Aug.3,2013: Interview with Suzanne Ziegler of the Staatliche Museen Berlin on the cylinder archive deposited at the Psychologisches Institut, recorded by Carl Stumpf and, in the film by Heinrich Brüning in Peru in 1910; in parts translated into Spanish in 1998 by Peru musicologists visiting the archive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwbsnGfvAwk
Aug.3,2013 Indian music archive goes online - Times Of India: rare and precious recordings from the era of gramophone records have finally found a home and one that is open to all lovers of music and cultural history. The Archive of Indian Music, an online treasure with 1,000 recordings spanning various genres, was launched in Delhi on Wednesday. - And BTW the German source he mentions ist the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, and the recordings were made by Wilhelm Doegen in PoW camps during WWI.- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-01/delhi/40960861_1_gauhar-jaan-carnatic-vikram-sampath
Aug.7,2013: England's vast wealth of folk music heritage has finally been put online. Named The Full English, it includes rare archives found in the basement of London's famous Cecil Sharp House and a dozen other collections. Songs that haven't been heard for a hundred years are now being sung again and are already inspiring a new generation of musical writers and artists. A feature will be broadcast by BBC R4 on Aug 13 at 11:30 AM UK time. For more go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0383vxr
Aug.10,2013: One of the disputed and maybe fake sound documents ,the 'last broadcast from Corregidor', can be found here on youtube. For more details you should 'google': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viCAX8WupTY
Aug.17,2013: BBC Radio 4 Programme preview: In a special 100th edition of The Reunion from Dallas, Texas, Sue MacGregor reunites five people involved in events surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy.The five people who Sue reunites, who were intimately connected to the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination, are Clint Hill, the former Secret Service agent who frantically climbed up the back of the presidential limousine as the shots rang out; Gayle Newman, who stood with her young family in Dealey Plaza and became one of the closest eyewitnesses; Hugh Aynesworth, then of the Dallas Morning News, who reported on the events in November 1963; Kenneth Salyer, who was part of the medical team at Parkland Hospital, desperately trying to revive the president; and James Leavelle, retired Dallas Homicide Detective who was famously handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby.(from BBC Media Centre). Time of broadcast is Sep.1st, 11:15-12:00 AM UK-time.
Aug.18,2013: As a collector one must find the time to go through old files and information that have piled up over the years, and being a teacher who has his summer vacation at the moment (running out too fast!), I -again- came across my files on the recordings made by the LAUTARCHIV under the direction of Wilhelm Doegen, a teacher and linguist who recorded in the 1910s and 20s voices of prominent figues but also the voices of people from around the world. And what better way to do so than going to the German PoW-camp in Wünsdorf, where he found prisoners from all the countries that were engaged in the combat, especially the soldiers the coloial powers took from their colonies. A film was made in 2007 called The Halfmoon Files which I have not been able to see but which is about that sound historic subject.- Even a mosque was built there to give the soldiers of Islamic denomination a spiritual home. Yet not only prisoners of those eastern regions were recorded. Soldiers of the Commonwealth were among them, too.- Today sound archivists from near and far come to Berlin to listen to long lost dialects and languages of their native countries.See my entry under August 3. - More info can be googled, and it is worth while doing so!
Aug.22,2013: BBC90- The History of the BBC on 90 minutes, a BBC series at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGMMJ-T7FdY
Aug.24,2013: History on BBC4 Sept.7th at 8-9PM UK-time: Archive On 4 - Bombing Berlin: Stephen Evans, the BBC's Berlin correspondent, tells the story of Wynford Vaughan-Thomas's 1943 report recorded aboard a Lancaster Bomber during a raid on Berlin. In 1943 the RAF contacted the BBC with a dramatic offer: they were willing to send a two-man radio crew on a bombing raid over Berlin. The BBC chose Wynford Vaughan-Thomas for the mission. He accepted, knowing he might never return. So, on the night of 3 September 1943, Vaughan-Thomas recorded for the BBC, live from a Lancaster Bomber during a bombing raid over Berlin. Wynford Vaughan-Thomas's experiences as a wartime reporter were remarkable - he was at Belsen and at the Normandy landings, reporting as it happened. The recording over Berlin shows his remarkable courage - literally under fire - and his description of the bombing and the views from the plane are rich indeed. He went on to become one of post-war Britain's most prominent media-intellectuals, a regular commentator and journalist, but this flight alone, those hours in the plane, clearly remained a defining time in his life. Stephen Evans puts Wynford Vaughan-Thomas's recordings in context. He looks at the experience in Berlin that night, reflects on the place of the broadcast in journalistic history, and dips into a lifetime of reflections from Vaughan-Thomas on a night that changed his life for ever.
Aug.31,2013 Shaving an early cylinder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-NU4cYb34
Also added a link to Chapter 15. Scroll up..
Sept.24,2013: German radio MDR FIGARO will broadcast a feature by the famous Ernst Schnabel 'Hurricane-ein karibischer Wetterbericht', in a production of DEUTSCHLANDFUNK 1965.
Sept.25,2013: An interesting site that deals with Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds'-broadcast of 31-10-1938: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/
Sept.28,2013 THE ATLANTIC Just How Much of Musical History Has Been Lost to History?-Valuable original recordings and rare tapes have vanished over the years, a process that Jack White and the National Recording Preservation Foundation are looking to stop. Read on: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/just-how-much-of-musical-history-has-been-lost-to-history/279948/
Sept.29,2013: From The Wire Magazine : The British Library Sound Archive Video: The Wire takes a tour of the British Library's Sound Archive, deep below its London residences on the Euston Road, to talk about sound conservation and take a tour of its collections with some of its key sound curators. 'The 20th century was about audiovisual material, our memory of the 20th century is heavily audiovisual, but our sense of the 21st century is going to be a different kind of audiovisual... archiving is not going to be so much about what we can bring in, but about what to exclude,' says Will Prentice, British Library Audio Engineer and Conservation Specialist. Nathan Budzinski interviews Popular Music Curator Andy Linehan, Audio Engineer, Conservation specialist Will Prentice, and Wildlife Sounds Curator Cheryl Tipp.- To see the video go to http://vimeo.com/74616017
Oct 2,2013: Just amazing, have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB_7LOlkjgs
Oct 8,2013: German radio DEUTSCHLANDFUNK-DLF- will feature 90 years of broadcasting in Germany: Oct.26, 23:05-02:00hrs German time. They have streaming audio.
Oct18,2013: Germany celebrates 90 years of radio broadcasting. NORDWESTRADIO has a special on that tomorrow at 19:05-21:00hrs German time.- Austrian radio Ö1 will broadcast a radio dramatization by Ingeborg Bachmann 'Ein Geschäft mit Träumen', a production by SENDER ROT-WEIß-ROT, Vienna of 1952. RWR was then a station under Allied control. Oct.19th, 14:00-15:00 hrs German time.
Oct 19,2013:BBC MEDIA CENTER Sociologist and radio presenter Laurie Taylor travels to Budapest to uncover the story of Telefon Hírmondó, the world's first broadcasting organisation in the 1890s.-People think of the scheduled broadcasting of news, information and entertainment as having begun in the 1920s, but this is a misconception. It was actually in 1893, when Theodore Puskás opened his Telefon Hírmondó or 'Telephone Newspaper' in Budapest. Read more here and listen to it on BBC4 Nov 6, 11:00 UK time: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2013/45/r4-electric-news-wed.html
Oct 23,2013: The German version of 'War of the Worlds' can be heard on German radio BAYERN2, Oct 25th, 21:03hrs with an accomp.feature on the 'Mythos the radio play' (-23:00hrs).
Oct 26,2013: German radio 'DKultur' has a review on 90 years of radio in Germany: Oct,27th 0805-0900hrs.(streaming audio)
Oct 30,2013: German radio SWR2 will present Albert Camus' only radio dramatization 'Les Silences de Paris' (Paris is silent) in an archive production of 1979. It war first broadcast in 1949 by Radiodiffusion Francaise; the first German broadcast was in 1963. The 1979 production uses old sound material.- Camus descibes the situation of those people in Paris who did not go direction south after the Germans had invaded France. SWR2, 18:20-19:13hrs. Streaming audio
Dec 7,2013: BBC4 Dec.19, 11:30 UKTime: 'The Lost Tapes Of Orson Welles' part1 of 2- This two-part programme is a revealing series of informal conversations with the man best known as America's great cultural provocateur and one of the finest of filmmakers.Director Orson Welles was asked to write his life story in his later years. He declined but was convinced by his friend Henry Jaglom to discuss his life over a weekly lunch at their favourite Hollywood restaurant, Ma Maison. The hundreds of tapes, recorded from 1983 to 1985, reveal extraordinary, frank, conversations between Welles and the independent director Jaglom.The tapes gathered dust in a shoebox in the corner of Jaglom's production office for over thirty years - until now, but this programme provides an opportunity to hear the amazing material they contain for the first time.Welles talks intimately, disclosing personal secrets and reflecting on the people of the time. At times the tapes display the great film maker as a world champion grudge keeper, rather different from the amiable character who appeared in interviews when he was alive. As we hear, he hated the way Charlton Heston always called Touch of Evil (directed by Welles) a 'minor film'. Welles also found the work of fellow directors, Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock, difficult to embrace. But, as we hear, he had some unexpected enthusiasms. Presenter Christopher Frayling reveals the great director free to be irreverent and Welles is sometimes cynical and romantic, sentimental but never boring, and often wickedly entertaining. The programmes also feature the thoughts of fellow diner Henry Jaglom, film author Peter Biskind, as well as actor and Welles scholar Simon Callow.
Dec.21,2013: Those of you who are interested in historic vocal performances should tune in to today's Special on Joseph Schmidt and Richard Tauber with rare recordings. German Deutschlandfunk Köln (DLF Köln) has a Special at 23:05-02:00hrs under the title 'You are the world for me'. DLF has a streaming audio.- In case you are interest in children's fairy tales, MDR FIGARO will broadcast a children's radio play ' Die Weihnachtsgans Auguste' by Friedrich Wolf. F.Wolf was the father of the former GDR-head of secret sevice! Go to MDR FIFGARO streaming audio on Sunday ,22rd, 18:00-19:00hrs
Dec.22,2013: German NDR INFO radio will broadcast a feature on the American radio pioneer Elsa Knight Thompson: Dec 25th,17:30-18:00hrs (streaming audio).
Dec.31, 2013 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE and FOR HAVING COME BACK ANYTIME!
2014 |
| INFO |
Jan.4,2014: German DLF KÖLN will broadcast a 3-part-series on the Auschwitz trial. Dates Jan.5,12,19 at 09:30-10:00hrs German time. They have streaming audio.
Those who are interested in German Swing/Jazz of the post-WWII-era should listen to WDR3 on Sunday,5th, 00:05-06:00hrs, where soloists in the Kurt Edelhagen Orchester are presented.
Jan.10,2014: MIT Technology Revue, Jan.2, 2014:Best of 2013: Million-Year Data Storage Disk Unveiled: In October, nanotechnologists designed and built a disk that can store data for a million years or more.--Back in 1956, IBM introduced the world's first commercial computer capable of storing data on a magnetic disk drive. The IBM 305 RAMAC used fifty 24-inch discs to store up to 5 MB, an impressive feat in those days. Today, however, it's not difficult to find hard drives that can store 1 TB of data on a single 3.5-inch disk.But despite this huge increase in storage density and a similarly impressive improvement in power efficiency, one thing hasn't changed. The lifetime over which data can be stored on magnetic discs is still about a decade. That raises an interesting problem. How are we to preserve information about our civilisation on a timescale that outlasts it? In other words, what technology can reliably store information for 1 million years or more?Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Jeroen de Vries at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and a few pals. These guys have designed and built a disk capable of storing data over this timescale. And they've performed accelerated ageing tests which show it should be able to store data for 1 million years and possibly longer.These guys start with some theory about ageing. Clearly, it's impractical to conduct an ageing experiment in real time, particularly when the periods involved are measured in millions of years. But there is a way to accelerate the process of ageing.This is based on the idea that data must be stored in an energy minimum that is separated from other minima by an energy barrier. So to corrupt data by converting a 0 to a 1, for example, requires enough energy to overcome this barrier. The probability that the system will jump in this way is governed by an idea known as Arrhenius law. This relates the probability of jumping the barrier to factors such as its temperature, the Boltzmann constant and how often a jump can be attempted, which is related to the level of atomic vibrations. Some straightforward calculations reveal that to last a million years, the required energy barrier is 63 KBT or 70 KBT to last a billion years. 'These values are well within the range of today's technology,' say de Vries and Co.And to prove the point, they go ahead and build a disk capable of storing information for this period of time. The disk is simple in conception. The data is stored in the pattern of lines etched into a thin metal disc and then covered with a protective layer.The metal in question is tungsten, which they chose because of its high melting temperature (3,422 degrees C) and low thermal expansion coefficient. The protective layer is silicon nitride (Si3N4) chosen because of its high resistance to fracture and its low thermal expansion coefficient.These guys made their disc using standard patterning techniques and stored data in the form of QR codes with lines 100nm wide. They then heated the disks at various temperatures to see how the data fared.The results are impressive. According to Arrhenius law, a disk capable of surviving a million years would have to survive 1 hour at 445 Kelvin, a test that the new disks passed with ease. Indeed, they survived temperatures up to 848 Kelvin, albeit with significant amounts of information loss.That compares well with the Rosetta Project, a proposal by the Long Now Foundation to create archival materials capable of storing information for periods in excess of 10,000 years. The new work suggests we ought to be able to preserve a significant amount of information for future civilisations, perhaps even alien ones.There are caveats, of course. The theory behind accelerated aging only applies in very specific circumstances and says nothing about survivability in other cases. It's hard to imagine the new disk surviving a meteor strike, for example. Indeed, it would be unlikely to survive the temperatures that can occur in an ordinary house fire. But de Vries and co are confident that they can make even more robust data storage systems. Their work is an interesting step towards preserving our data for future civilisations.
German radio BAYERN2 will broadcast a 1996 production of Orson Welles' 'Mr Arkanin', Sat,Jan.11, 15:05-16:25hrs.
Jan.11,2014: 15 Minute Drama: Writing The Century-Writing the Century is an ongoing series of dramas reflecting on the 20th century through diaries and letters. This serial is based on the diaries of Dame Laura Knight, whose painting 'The Dock' has become a classic image of the Nazi War Crime Trials. In January 1946, renowned artist Dame Laura Knight takes a life-changing commission as war artist to the Nuremberg Trials.Dame Laura meets Major Peter Casson, Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General of the British War Crimes Executive, who is charged with smoothing her path through bureaucracy. He helps her to settle into her suite in the Grand Hotel (originally built for Hitler); to deal with the international social whirl that attends the trials; and to cope with coming face-to-face with Hitler's henchmen for the first time in court. With Diana Quick as Dame Laura Knight, Gunnar Cauthery as Peter Casson, Kate Sobey as Penny Ayres, Patrick Keeler as William Dean and Mark Meadows as French Prosecutor. Written by Amanda Whittington.Producer/ Mary Ward-Lowery for the BBC. BBC RAdio 4 Jan.27-31, 10:45-11:00am UK time, 5 episodes.
Jan.24,2014: Austrian radio Ö1 will broadcast a 1977 production of Arthur Schnitzler's 'Stunde der Erkenntnis' on Sa, 25th, at 14:00-15:00hrs.(streaming audio).
2014, the year World War I broke out. German radio HR2 will bring a 4-pt-series on that occasion with sounds and voices of that time and historians talking about the event. Feb.9,16, and March 2,9 at 18:05-19:00hrs German time. Streaming audio is available.
Feb 1,2014: Today at 17:05-18:00 and repeat at 23:05-24:00hrs German WDR5 will bring a classic radio drama by Alfred Andersch 'Fahrerflucht' in a production of SWF/RB of 1959, and by the same author 'Die Brandung von Hossegor' of 1976, SWR2 18:20-20:00hrs, Feb.2nd.
Feb 4,2014: German radio concentrates in these days on the 100th return of the writer Alfred Andersch's birthday. Besides various dramatizations, there is a reading of a part from his autobiograhy where he describes the suffering of the students, among them he himself, under the sadistic head of school, Himmler, the father of the mass murderer Heinrich Himmler, at Munich's Wittelbach Gymnasium (~ Secondary School) in the 1920s.
Feb 14,2014: Another radio classic will be broadcast on Sat., Feb.15th on DLF KÖLN: 'Raskolnikoff'by Leopold Ahlsen,motives taken from Dostojewski (Fyodor Dostoevsky:Crime and Punishment), in a production of 1962: 20:05-22:00hrs German time.
Feb.20,2014: National Library Of Scotland: 'A national sound archive for Scotland': Cover of sound archive strategic vision document.Work is under way to develop a distributed national collection of Scotland's sound heritage.The Scottish Sound Archive will bring together the sound collections relating to Scotland held in a variety of organisations including museums, libraries and archives into a searchable single online resource.A further online resource allowing members of the public to upload sound recordings to the national collection will also be developed.These services are set to vastly improve public awareness, access and interaction with Scottish sound collections. Background to the sound archive project: In 2009 a consultation into sound archive provision in Scotland highlighted key deficiencies in the care of and access to sound collections.The resulting report, by Atkins, recommended that national leadership in the provision for sound collections would be most appropriately undertaken by the National Library of Scotland, alongside the provision for moving image NLS provides through the Scottish Screen Archive. NLS is working with a variety of stakeholders of sound collections in this development.More on it at: http://www.nls.uk/about-us/working-with-others/scottish-sound-archive.
Feb.23,2014: I have found this book which is an interesting survey of BFBS 'Oliver Zöllner: BFBS-'Freund in der Fremde'- British Forces Broadcasting Service (Germany) - der britische Militärrundfunk in Deutschland.Göttingen: Cuvillier, 1996, iv, 370 page.- Originally presented as the author's doctoral thesis-University of Bochum.
BFBS: 'A Friend Abroad.' Since 1945 the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) has been producing radio programmes (later to include television services as well) for the British troops in Germany and elsewhere. Oliver Zoellner's book examines and analyzes contemporary BFBS's output, reception, uses and functions. It includes a historical and organizational overview, a detailed format analysis of two weeks' programme output of BFBS Radio 1, secondary analyses of internal surveys, and focus group research among British military personnel in Germany. Forces radio and TV exist, inter alia, to foster feelings of togetherness and community among soldiers and to boost the troops' morale, they are the sugar icing on a sometimes bitter pill, as it were. The study concludes with an outlook on the future of forces broadcasting in Germany. (http://www.yasni.info/ext.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.research-worldwide.de%2Fbfbs1.html&name=Peter+Mcdonagh&showads=1&lc=de-de&lg=de&rg=de&rip=de).
Galileo Galilei's 450th birtday is celebrated by MDR FIGARO with Bertold Brecht's Leben des Galilei in a production of Radio GDR of 1972, Feb.24 at 22:00-23:30hrs German time (streaming audio).
Febr.23,2014: International workshop 23.4.-24.4. 2014 15. DISKOGRAFENTAG 25.4. - 27.4.2014 14195 BERLIN ARNIMALLEE 27:
International workshop: 'Unsere Reise um die Erde' - Early commercial recordings as a source for ethnomusicological research.Beginning in 1898, European record companies issued a large number of recordings of Asian and North African traditional music. One of the largest collections of such recordings is at the Phonogrammarchiv in Berlin. The purpose of the workshop is to gather a number of experts in the traditional music of various regions to evaluate the recordings in Phonogrammarchiv, to supplement the documentation available on the recordings, and suggest possibilities for future research.On October 5th 1905, Heinrich Bumb, the director of the BEKA record company in Berlin, embarked on an eight-month recording expedition which began in Constantinople and ended in Yokohama. In the course of the trip, Bumb made over 1600 recordings which were pressed in Berlin and exported to agents in Turkey, Egypt, India, Burma, Singapore, Dutch East Indies, China and Japan Bumb also wrote a report of his trip which was published in Phonographische Zeitschrift in 1906 under the title Unsere Reise um die Erde. A partial discography has been published on the GHT website. The Berlin Phonogrammarchiv was the only archive in the world which was foresighted enough to obtain samples of these recordings (the Hornbostel collection). Surviving recordings have been digitized and catalogued in the Dismarc database.
Feb.25,2014: BR-KLASSIK has a feature on Glenn Miller and the Wehrmacht Hour of 1944: Feb.28,19:05-200:00, repeat March 1, 15:05-16:00hrs. (streaming audio,as always).
MDR FIGARO will broadcast early sounds from the MIRAG Broadcasting Station,Leipzig, which began broadcasting on March 1,1924: March 1, 19:05-19:30hrs
And another radio classic will be broadcast by DKULTUR,March 2,18:30-20:00hrs: Wolfgang Borchert's Draußen vor der Tür of NWDR 1947.
March 13,2014: Ö1 (Austria) will broadcast a feature with Alfred Müller's biography, famous 'Inglorious Basterd': March 15th,09:05-10:00 (German time).
March 16,2014: Seventies America rediscovered through lost recordings of Letter From America, on the 10th anniversary of legendary journalist Alistair Cooke's death. A feature broadcast on BBC Radio 4 extra on March 30, 10am-12noon. For more go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/13/letter-from-america-1970s.html
March 26,2014:The full National Recording Registry with information on the selected items is an interesting compendium to read:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/registry/nrpb-masterlist.html.
April 17,2014: For Shakespeare lovers here is a recording of his sonnets, spoken by Wolfgang Heinz, and recorded by the former GDR radio in 1974: Friday,18th at 2200 hrs-2300 hrs.(streaming audio)
April 20,2014: Again Shakespeare: 'Macbeth' in a GDR-archive production of 1964: Monday,21st, MDR-FIGARO at 22:00-23:330hrs German time.
April 25,2014: 'The Listening Post 1940' short from Pathé shows us that even in 1940 the Monitoring Service in England recorded e.g.Hitler on Edison cylinders!- I wonder where these have been placed or if they had been shaved after the transcripts have been typed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALC3AgAYc50
May 1,2014: From BBC 'Ariel': BBC to bring in consultants about radio and TV archive--The BBC is calling in consultants to suggest how it might go about digitising its huge radio and TV archive.-It's estimated that the archive - the largest of its kind in the country - has 11m items, which include radio and TV programmes, press cuttings, sheet music and photographs.The consultation will speak to staff who use the archive, finding out about their requirements and asking for ideas about how to go about the process of digitisation.The proposals will be used to decide on how the archive might be managed in future. It's understood that the consultation would mainly be looking at I&A.Broadcasting union Bectu, however, fears the process will lead to the archive being managed by a 'commercial supplier'.The union has called on the BBC 'to hold a full and open dialogue with all users of archive content' following the decision to bring in consultants.'Still smarting' :Helen Ryan, Bectu's supervisory official for the BBC, said: 'The BBC is still smarting from the embarrassing failure of the DMI project and is now very keen to be seen to seek external advice for any major project.'We are concerned that the BBC's users should be fully consulted about the plans before any major, potentially costly decisions are made that are irreversible.'She added: 'It is also possible that the archive itself could be moved to a commercial supplier.'The BBC has refuted any claims that it is bringing in consultants ahead of outsourcing management of the archive.A spokesman for the BBC said: 'The future of the BBC's archive is of critical importance to the BBC and for licence-fee payers. We're not making any decisions about the future. We are merely inviting ideas on how we manage the UK's largest television and radio archive - in order to improve the service we give to BBC staff. We're committed to working with all parties in this process and will fully consult users of the archive.'
May 11,2014: Oldest Recording of Family at Christmas in 1904 Discovered in 2012 (in case you haven't seen /heard about it):
Wax cylinders dating from 1902-1917 record the Wall family of London as they sing Christmas songs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO2Y_IKjn6M
May 17,2014 Collector of historical sounds and long-time member of the IASA, Rainer Lotz, presents and talks about his collection, deposited in his house in Bonn, W.Germany (2 parts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMe4cNRKLy8
May 24,2014: WDR3 will broadcast an archive production of Goethe's FAUST I, recorded in 1954: May 25, 20:05-22:35 hrs German time.
June 1,2014: AWR 'Wavescan' has two interesting articles out about American Radio Stations in Australia from 1941 on, and one about the oldest sound recordings made by Scott de Martinville (cited in the Net at various sites): http://www.ontheshortwaves.com/Wavescan/wavescan140601.html
June 7,2014: 'V wie Victory- Die Geschichte der V-Disc' (The story of the V-Discs), a feature on NDR INFO, June 7, at 20:15-21:00hrs German time. For more see CHAPTER IX above.
June 17: An interesting survey of sound recording from 1877-2013 can be found here (it's in German,BTW): http://www.archiphon.de/arde/discologica/Unger_Phono-Historie-WU.pdf
July 4,2014:'End-of-Life Care for Aging, Fragile CDs and Their Data Content'see : http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2014/07/end-of-life-care-for-aging-fragile-cds-and-their-data-content/
July 28,2014: 'Archive on 4' Saturday 2nd August 2000hrs UK time has a feature with archive sounds all around the 'Gulf of Tonkin' affaire called War,Lies, and Audiotape'.
Aug.1,2014: On Sun 17.8., BBC4 starts a 5-episode-programme 'The Reunion' which brings together people involved in the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift. 11:15-12:00hrs UK-time.
Aug10,2014: BBC R4 Aug23 10:30-11:00hrs UK-time: 'Vietnam And The Presidents': An examination of America's descent into war from the exclusive vantage point of the Oval Office. Across two decades, BBC Washington producer David Taylor conducted over 50 recorded interviews with first-hand witnesses to the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Administrations, all mired in the Vietnam crisis. By revisiting his own archive and pouring through the complete presidential tapes, David constructs a surprising picture of the Vietnam War through the eyes of the embattled commanders-in-chief.
Aug.15,2014: The Documentary: Delivering The King's Speech- Tuesday 2 September,8.00pm-8.30pm UK-time,BBC WORLD SERVICE-Marking the 75th anniversary of King George VI's declaration of war against Germany, Louise Minchin hears the untold story of how the King's Speech reached the entire world. Inspired by the discovery of the original pressing of the speech in the EMI Archives- bound in goatskin leather and signed by the King himself- Louise uncovers how the King's words reached the furthest corners of the British Empire. Starting with the fascinating history of royalty releasing records, and incorporating rare material from the EMI archives, the documentary explores how the British Empire was united by vinyl.Louise examines the recording of the speech, not from the perspective of the 2010 Oscar-winning film, but from the point of view of the EMI employees, who located previously unpublished letters and production notes from the original sessions. Delivering The King's Speech delves into the earliest days of the BBC Empire Service (later to become the BBC World Service) to find out how the King's message was sent across the globe and how it enabled the Empire Service to win the fight against the anti-British propaganda broadcast by the Germans.
Aug.29,2014: Tomorrow, various German radio stations bring to memory the beginning of WWII: All begin at 22:30-midnight (German time; -1hr UK-time), NDR KULTUR, KULTURRADIO, MDR FIGARO, SR2, HR2,SWR2 BAYERN2, all have internet streaming audio.
In addition WDR5 has a feature on satire broadcasts vs Hitler, Sun 220:05-21:00hrs.
Sep.4,2014: German MDR FIGARO will broadcast a feature on a series of radio broadcasts which ran in the former GDR from 1960 to March 1990 and was entitled 'Not only a file'. In those 30-minute-broadcasts every fortnight, the listeners could hear excerpts of trials which ranged from trials vs former Nazis to simple theft.- Sat,Sep 6th 19:05-19:30hrs
Sep.10,2014:On September 12&13,1964 ML King visited East Berlin and preached in East-Berlin's Marien-Church '...Here are God's children, on both sides of the Wall and no border made by men's hands can annihilate this fact'. Radio DKULTUR features that event using sounds from the archives of RIAS Berlin, DEUTSCHLANDFUNK and Radio GDR. Sep.13th, 05:00-06:00hrs German time. (streaming audio).
Oct.18,2014: Go to genome.ch.bbc.co.uk and you'll find the site that contains the BBC listings information which the BBC printed in Radio Times between 1923 and 2009. You can search the site for BBC programmes, people, dates and Radio Times editions.
Oct.29,2014: Some interesting archive-recordings ahead on German radio: Oct 30th: MDR FIGARO 2200-2300hrs A lecture by philosopher Ernsr Bloch 'Reformation und Revolution' from 1982; WDR5 2105-2400hrs Durbridge's 'Paul Temple und der Fall Gilbert' pt1 (pt2 on Oct 31st same time/station) from 1957;and on FRI,31st, MDR FIGARO 1800-1900 Wolfgang Heinz reads Thomas Mann's 'Mario und der Zauberer', Radio GDR 1970.
Nov.30,2014: German radio SWF2 will broadcast an archive recording of Stefan Zweig's 'Schachnovelle' of 1959. 18:20-19:28hrs; a classic recording of 1956 is broadcast today,too, on WDR3 at 2005-2210 Heinrich von Kleist's 'Penthesiles'
Dec.13,2014: Today on German radio BAYERN2: Arthur Schnitzler's 'Reigen' in a production of 1977 by Bavarian Radio. 15:05-16:50hrs.
Dec.19,2014: VARIETY 17.Dec News 'Murrow's Boys', dies At 97 by Brian Steinberg: Richard C. Hottelet, the last living member of a group of CBS News correspondents whose work under Edward R. Murrow during World War II helped set a template for broadcast journalism, died Wednesday morning at the age of 97, according to information from CBS. Hottelet was the last to join a group of what became known as 'Murrow's Boys', a group of men and one woman who reported from Europe via radio. The others were Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, Cecil Brown, Winston Burdett, Larry LeSueur, Charles Collingwood, William Downs, Thomas Grandin, Eric Sevareid, William L. Shirer and Howard K. Smith. Richard C. Hottelet was the ultimate CBS News reporter, said Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and executive producer of 60 Minutes, in a statement.He was one of the true gentleman reporters, a real 'Murrow boy', an elegant combination of reporter and storyteller. Hottelet was the last to join the team, hired in January, 1944, to help report the imminent Allied invasion of Europe. His first war reports for CBS were from the air. He is believed to have made the first recording for broadcast on a warplane while flying on a bombing mission over France in the spring of 1944. On D-Day, Hottelet was in a bomber again, one that attacked German defenses on Utah Beach and returned to London safely in time for him to broadcast the first eyewitness report of the Allied invasion. Hottelet continued his assignments aloft and then covered some of the bloodiest fighting on the ground, including Huertgen Forest and the German counterattack that became the Battle of the Bulge, delivering the first eyewitness report of that famous battle, too. He went up in a bomber again to cover the final Allied push into Germany at the Rhine River crossing. His plane, a B-17, was set afire by flak during the assault, and Hottelet was forced to parachute to safety. Before joining CBS, he was imprisoned by Germany's Nazi regime for four months while working for United Press. It wasn't that we were supermen, he told the Hartford Courant in a 2003 interview.We were competent reporters and we were sending back our stuff, as we would if we were covering a statehouse or a fire. For more go to: https://variety.com/2014/tv/news/richard-hottelet-last-of-cbs-news-murrows-boys-dies-at-97-1201381926/
Dec.28,2014: New Year's day has some interesting archive productions on German radio stations: DKULTUR at 07:30-08:00hrs Astrid Lindgren reads her 'Karlson vom Dach' (RIAS 1956), MDR FIGARO presents Saint-Exupéry's 'Der kleine Prinz' (Radio GDR 1989)07:05-08:15hrs, and at 18:00-19:00hrs Bertold Brecht's 'Flüchtlingsgespräche' in a GDR-LITERA Records production of 1970.
Dec.31, 2014 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE!
2015 |
| INFO |
Jan.13,2015 BBC NEWS: The British Library has launched a campaign to raise £40m to digitise the country's sound archive of more than six million recordings. The library said around two million of these are fragile and rare recordings. These are at risk of being lost due to physical degradation and the disappearance of the technology to play them, the library said. The archive, which includes the voice of Florence Nightingale, is held on more than 40 formats. These include wax cylinders, lacquer discs, cassette players, reel-to-reel tapes and minidiscs. The UK Sound Archive includes recordings of local accents and dialects used to monitor the evolution of the English language and sounds of rare or extinct wildlife. It also includes full recordings of theatre productions going back 40 years, including the opening night of Hamlet in the Old Vic, starring Peter O'Toole and directed by Laurence Olivier. 'At risk' The British Library estimated it would cost around £18m to digitise the most 'at risk' recordings and to build the facilities needed to digitise the remaining two thirds of the collection. The remaining funds will be used to develop a system to digitally archive the UK's sound output in the future. The library has estimated that 92% of the UK's current radio output, and 65-70% of the UK's published music output, is not being fully archived. The institution is also appealing to the public to let them know about any rare or unique sound collections as well as creating a national sound directory in order to identify other threatened collections. More here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30781320
Jan.17,2015: On YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YH53Q5L_A0 there is a short film on 90 years Bavarian Radio.
Jan.24,2015: To commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp 70 years ago radio WDR3 broadcasts a collage of voice recorded during the first Auschwitz Trial 1963-1965: Jan.25, 20:05-23:00hrs German time in a production of 2005.
Jan.26,2015: Pacifica Radio Archives recovers 'lost' Martin Luther King Jr. speech, By Matthew Lasar in RADIO SURVIVOR of January 19, 2015: Democracy Now! today ran audio of a largely forgotten speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., released and curated by the Pacifica Radio Archives. Just days before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, King spoke in London, offering a detailed overview of the history of the civil rights movement in the United States and linking its efforts to the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. It was December 7, 1964. Journalist Saul Bernstein, then European reporter for Pacifica Radio, recorded the address. The tape was recently discovered by the director of the Pacifica Archives, Brian DeShazor. Here is a particularly prophetic portion of King's remarks, given subsequent events:'Our responsibility':'Our responsibility presents us with a unique opportunity: We can join in the one form of nonviolent action that could bring freedom and justice to South Africa, the action which African leaders have appealed for, in a massive movement for economic sanctions. In a world living under the appalling shadow of nuclear weapons, do we not recognize the need to perfect the use of economic pressures? Why is trade regarded by all nations and all ideologies as sacred? Why does our government and your government in Britain refuse to intervene effectively now, as if only when there is a bloodbath in South Africa or a Korea or a Vietnam will they recognize a crisis? If the United Kingdom and the United States decided tomorrow morning not to buy South African goods, not to buy South African gold, to put an embargo on oil, if our investors and capitalists would withdraw their support for that racial tyranny that we find there, then apartheid would be brought to an end. Then the majority of South Africans of all races could at last build the shared society they desire.' (http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2015/01/19/pacifica-radio-archives-recovers-lost-martin-luther-king-jr-speech/ )
Feb.2,2015: Tomorrow at 21:00hrs-22:00hrs, Austrian Radio Ö1 broadcastsa radio play by Franz Hiesel 'Auf einem Maulwurfshügel', a black comedy on a man and his obsession to record everything on tape, in a 1959 production of NDR HAMBURG & ORF Wien.
Feb.7,2015: BBC3 21.Feb. 9:45-10:15pm UK time- Alan Dein presents the story of a 1950s Ferrograph tape machine and a mysterious collection of home recordings. Early in 2013 record producer Dan Carey bought a vintage tape machine at a charity shop in Streatham, South London. The Ferrograph recorder came with a box of 7-inch tapes containing an audio documentation of the previous owner's social life as a young man in the 1950s at a time when reel to reel tape recorders were state of the art audio technology.Among the recordings was a poetry reading event featuring an unusual selection of texts, from obscure comic verse, to sections from the King James Bible, and a Ministry of Transport pedestrian advice leaflet. Alan Dein goes in search of the recordist, Barrie Simpson, and surviving members of his circle in this evocative and poignant story of suburban life and the Baptist church in South London, over half a century ago.
Feb.13,2015: DLF KÖLN features the fatal air attack on Dresden on 13 Feb 1945. In a 3-hour-long broadcast eye-witnesses, historians,people of Dresden reflect that night. DLF KÖLN ,14 Feb 23:05-02:00hrs, and DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR 00:05-03:00hrs.
Feb.25,2015: A forgotten CBC-TV-interview (the only one he ever gave) with the famous spy Guy Burgess of 1959, held in Moscow, has been found in the CBC-TV-archives. For more about him and the 'Cambridge Five' you may google under his name. The interview is available here: http://www.cbc.ca/player/Embedded-Only/News/ID/2654776717/
March 2,2015: Those of you who want to spend a few thousand bucks for a record, here it is: Kurt Nauck offers 5-inch European Berliner disc (#37): 'Auld Mother Hubbard',recited by Emile Berliner himself and recorded between 1889 to 1892 from John Paul Getty,Jr collection. - Getty died in 2003 and his collection, including the legendary Harold Wayne collection of rarest discs, was offered in auctions in England in the years 2013 and 2014.- For more you must go to his current auction list online (www.78rpm.com).
March 17,2015: Not new, but still interesting to see and listen to: The Wire takes a tour of the British Library's Sound Archive, deep below its London residences on the Euston Road, to talk about sound conservation and take a tour of its collections with some of its key sound curators. 'The 20th century was about audiovisual material, our memory of the 20th century is heavily audiovisual, but our sense of the 21st century is going to be a different kind of audiovisual... archiving is not going to be so much about what we can bring in, but about what to exclude,' says Will Prentice, British Library Audio Engineer and Conservation Specialist.Nathan Budzinski interviews Popular Music Curator Andy Linehan, Audio Engineer, Conservation specialist Will Prentice, and Wildlife Sounds Curator Cheryl Tipp. Go to: YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI5DYJPSf-A
A German NWDR-radio classic of 1952 will be broadcast on March 21: Rolf Becker's 'Gestatten,mein Name ist Cox', NDR INFO at 21:05-22:00hrs and the following 3 weeks at the same place/time.
March 21,2015: If you go to YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8bXpXvD5lE you will be able to listen to a short feature on the production of the first German live classic concert performance in 1931 with Fritz Busch and the Staatskapelle Dresden, giving details on the problems they faced to record, the various media to select from etc. It's in German.
March 22,2015: Austrian radio Ö1 will broadcast a feature on Goebbels' Propaganda Swing Orchestra Charlie and his Orchestra reviewing music as a means of propaganda. March 23, 1905-1930hrs German time. (streaming audio)
March 30,2015: The history of a short-lived recording machine RECORDGRAPH AMERTAPE with audio samples can be read here: http://d-dayrecordgraph.com/AUDIO_FILES_-_AMERTAPES.html.
From the EBAY auction: 'I have owned all of this material, which is one of a kind in the world, for 20 years. I have been asked by the Library of Congress and the Imperial War Museum to part with it but it wasn't the right time. Now I'm moving and it's time for another collector to own this or for someone else to purchase it and donate it to the LOC. I am selling it. From all my research there aren't any Amertapes left in the world in private hands much less these priceless Amertapes recording the most famous day in the history of human conflict. The best viewing of this historic material with a professional finding aid is by going to my website, google search(other search engines don't work), d-dayrecordgraph.com and taking your time examining the material. There is an extensive and thorough amount of material documenting the history of the Recordgraph Machine from Woolfe to Hart and the complete Amertapes of the compilation of recordings that were edited by the Dept of the Navy and approved for broadcast on D-Day. All of the tapes were played and recorded onto flash drives for posterity at Poppy Records in England. Further there is a lot of ancillary material from WW2 and even a one of a kind prototype for a Recordgraph telephone bug.--After sitting in storage for 70 years this historical material has finally come to light. The missing link in audio history, The Recordgraph Machine, and it's media the Amertapes, have been digitized and cataloged here through many years of research and investigation. Ironically this short lived hybrid recording format came at one of the most precipitous moments in the history of mankind. The Recordgraph Machine, through hard work and good fortune, came into existence in time to record the turning point of the greatest conflict to have ever engulfed the world, the D-Day Invasion. The 16 Amertape tapes encompassing these iconic recordings in this collection are all extra copies or originals and masters all recorded at that time and on the original material from a fully traceable provenance. All of the original literature, Amertapes, even the Recordgraph Technical informationl are from the few short years that the machine was employed by the US government from the Fredrick Hart Co. under the overall supervision of Albert Stern, to record the WW2 Normandy D-Day invasion.' (http://www.ebay.com/itm/221723707133 -ebay price is 450 thousand $,BTW)
May 1,2015: International consensus holds that we have around 15 years in which to preserve our sound collections. By 2030, the scarcity of older equipment, the condition of recorded media and the loss of skills will make their preservation costly, difficult and, in many cases, impossible.These risks face all recorded sound collections, across the country, from boxes of forgotten cassette recordings to professional archives.To help us understand the risks faced by the UK's recorded heritage, the Library has been running a project to map the extent of sound collections in the UK, and to create a Directory of UK Sound Collections http://www.bl.uk/projects/uk-sound-directory.
April 11,2015: Andy Walmsley has an interesting blog on BBC radio broadcasting history with some sound samples. It's worth visiting: http://andywalmsley.blogspot.de/
April 28,2015: German radio SWR2 will broadcast o feature '1945- The Year on the Radio', April 29th, 22:03-23:00hrs German time
May 6,2015: German radio HR2 today has two American play/dramatizations in its programme: H.G.Well'S The War Of The Worlds of 1938 and in addition 'The Apple Tree' by John Galsworthy of 1942. Both have Orson Welles in leading roles. HR2 21:00-22:30hrs German time.Streaming radio.
And tomorrow, May 7th, we can listen to the BUNDESTAG-speech by then Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker on the occasion of the 40th return of the end of WWII. Radio MDR FIGARO 22:00-23:00hrs.
June 8,2015: An interesting article here: http://thequietus.com/articles/18004-sound-library-british-library,'The Utopia Of Records: Why Sound Archiving Is Important'.
June 13,2015: Those who are interested in a German performance of Joyce's 'Ulysses' should tune in to radio Oe1 (Ö1)Austrian Radio tomorrow at 08:10hrs to Sunday 08:00hrs. It's a production of SWF+DLF of 2012. Streaming radio.
June 24,2015: 'They Shall Hear The Dead Speak!': They shall hear the dead speak! that was the shocking announcement that proclaimed how new the ceremony taking place in the cellars of the Paris Opera on December 24th 1907 was.- What happened on that day was unprecedented. In the Opera cellars, 24 single-sided records were deposited in lead urns. This idea of a new Museum of the recorded voice received official sanction from the Education Secretary of the time Aristide Briand. Those urns were to be opened a century later, revealing to the men and women of the 21st century what was the state of talking machines in those times and 'what were the voices of the leading singers of our time'.Initiating the project was Alfred Clark, an American living in Paris where he was president of the Compagnie française du Gramophone, the French branch of the Gramophone Company that Emile Berliner had founded. While it was at the same time a scientific operation and a nod to future generations, it was, first and foremost, a marketing coup that publicised both Berliner's gramophone record as opposed to the wax cylinder and the company he had built around his invention. - A second ceremony took place, again at Clark's initiative, in 1912. Three new urns were sealed: two of them contained records, the third one a gramophone player. - In 1989, the urns were transferred to the National Library in Paris. They were opened on September 17th 2008, a difficult endeavour since asbestos sheets, now known to be highly toxic, had been placed in the urns to prevent the fragile records from breaking. Moreover, two of the three 1912 urns had been fractured and their content stolen in the past century. In the end, three urns remained. It was decided to open one from 1907 and one from 1912. One urn from 1907 is still sealed to this day and left for future generations to open. - Elizabeth Giuliani, then Deputy head of the Audiovisual Department at the National Library of France and now Head of the Music Department, tells us what was found in the urns: 'Every recording in the urns is one of classical music. First of all, we have to notice there are very few instrumental pieces, a result of the technical limitations of recording techniques of the time. The process was then entirely acoustical with no electronic amplification. The artists' interpretation was received and recorded through a conical horn. Range was limited and it was very difficult to record large orchestral pieces, most notably where strings were involved. However, we find great artists here, some whose names are still famous (Paderewski, Pugno, Kreisler). We also find a brief extract from a Beethoven symphony, something of a rarity for the time. There is chamber music, which is also uncommon. -As opera pieces were the bulk of recorded music in this first decade of the gramophone, we find extracts from Gounod and Massenet (who was still living at the time), two composers who were highly in favour then. Verdi's Othello was recorded by Tamagno, who had originated the part in 1887. It is priceless to know how it was sung originally. This is a particularly interesting aspect of these records: we can hear the voice of a famed and already aged opera star from the 19th century (Patti, who was 63 then) as well as some stars who knew their greatest glory (Journet, Melba, Plançon). And there is also a younger artist, Caruso, whose popularity is derived from his stage work as much as from his recording career. Some artists are today mostly forgotten (Affre, Noté, Korsoff) though they were very popular then. And finally, we find some beginners, such as Paul Franz or Daniel Vigneau, with long careers still ahead of them.' - If you go to: http://expositions.bnf.fr/voix/index.htm you can read more about these finds (in French).
June 29,2015: East Van Calling: Radio Kricac - Underground AntiFa Transmissions in WW2 Slovenia: During World War 2, across Europe, partisans used underground radio against the Nazis.Ljubljana, Slovenia, was occupied and encircled by barbed wire. Subversive broadcasters set up Radio Kricac in a different basement every night, trying to stay one step ahead of the fascists. Broadcasts opened with the urgency of a ticking clock.In 1945, Slovene partisans threw out the fascist occupiers, without the military assistance of the allies. Seven decades later, the spirit of that resistance is being celebrated. Aljac Pengov Bitenc is descended from Slovenian partisans and radio folk. He writes a blog, a newspaper column and runs Radio Kaos. East Van Calling talked to Aljac about Radio Kricac in his small studios, overlooking the old city of Ljubljana. With one eye on the board to monitor the station's afternoon broadcasts, he explained how those WW2 anti-fascist transmissions worked.The irregular transmissions had moral boosting messages, reports of partisan actions and readings form Slovene authors and poets. Eventually, Kricac went radio silent. The fascists could never find the transmitter. Instead, they confiscated all the radio receivers of Ljubljana. But now it's back. Radioheads in the Slovenian capital are broadcasting on 88.8 FM, and on the web at radiokricac.si until May 9. -Recorded in Ljubljana in 2013 for the CBC Ideas program End of the Dial by G.Mullins, L.Hale & Y.Gall.(https://soundcloud.com/garthmullins/east-van-calling-radio-kri-a?in=garthmullins/sets/east-van-calling-podcast)
July 30 BBC R4 August 17th 8-8:30pm: The Bin Laden Tapes-In early 2002, following the fall of the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden's abandoned compound in the Afghan city of Kandahar was ransacked. Amongst the finds was a collection of more than 1,500 audio cassettes featuring sermons, speeches, songs and candid recordings of Arab-Afghan fighters, recorded between the 1960s right up until the 9/11 attacks. The tapes served as an audio library for those who gathered under Bin Laden's roof between 1997 and 2001 a key period in Al-Qaeda's growth.In this programme, Gordon Corera, the BBC's Security Correspondent, talks to Professor Flagg Miller from the University of California, who has spent more than a decade listening, translating and analysing the recordings. Undertaking pain-staking detective work to understand what their content reveals about the rise of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, he wrote a book, The Audacious Ascetic.Amongst the collection are 24 tapes of Bin Laden himself, including some rarely-heard speeches, as well as talks by some of Al-Qaeda's most famous militants. And while the cassette is undoubtedly an instrument for proselytising and propaganda, this collection reveals that the people making the recordings seemed to find pleasure in capturing the mundane sounds of life conversations over breakfast, sounds from the battlefield, wedding celebrations and militants singing Islamic anthems.In all, this archive covers a range of lectures and discussions by more than 200 different speakers, and as diverse as the recordings in the collection are, they offer exceptional insight into Bin Laden's broad intellectual interests in the years leading up to the September 11th attacks in the US.(BBC Media Centre)
Sep.14,2015 Pop Up Archive and WGBH embark on a landmark project to make the American Archive searchable - On August 31, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded $14.16 million in grant funding to libraries across the United States. We're thrilled to announce that the WGBH Educational Foundation, together with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Pop Up Archive, received one of 276 National Leadership Grants.The $898,474 grant includes transcribing, analyzing, and building crowdsourcing tools for almost 40,000 hours of digital audio from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting over the next two and half years. This will be the first major media archive of its kind: the new American Archive site will integrate full-text, searchable transcripts and crowdsourced metadata for thousands of hours of audiovisual materials.- The IMLS grant follows a 2013 Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) grant that is currently underway: that two-year project announced WGBH and the Library of Congress as the permanent stewards of the American Archive, responsible for digitizing nearly 40,000 hours of media. The new project in partnership with Pop Up Archive is a natural next step for the American Archive, answering the question of how to ensure accessibility for the digitized audiovisual media going forward. Metadata creation for media at scale benefits from both machine analysis and human correction. Pop Up Archive and WGBH are combining forces to do just that. Innovative features of the project include: Speech-to-text and audio analysis tools to transcribe and analyze almost 40,000 hours of digital audio from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting Open source web-based tools to improve transcripts and descriptive data by engaging the public in a crowdsourced, participatory cataloging project Creating and distributing data sets to provide a public database of audiovisual metadata for use by other projects.
You may go to: http://americanarchive.org/?utm_source=Pop+Up+Archive+general+mailing+list&utm_campaign=afe0e74611-IMLS_Grant9_4_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_39650ec21b-afe0e74611-116561369 to see what it's all about.
Austrian radio Ö1 (Oe1) has in its programme a radio play, a reading, sort of 'performance', of Auschwitz Concentration Camp Commander Rudolf Höß' biography that he wrote while in prison between 1945-47. 'A performance',as the director used an old bunker near the AA(anti-aircraft)-tower at Vienna Arenbergpark as studio to create a certain acoustic atmosphere. Title: Der Kommandant. Die Aufzeichnungen des SS-Obersturmbannführers Rudolf Höß. Sep.15th, 21:00-22:00 German Time (streaming audio is available).
Oct.22,2015: Recording ledgers of LINDTROEM and other discographies of old labels are available at http://www.phonomuseum.at/category/diskographie/
German radio WDR3 broadcasts a feature called 'Europe calling-Ezra Pound Speaking' on Sat.,Oct.24, at 12:05-13:00hrs (streaming audio), repeated on Sun at 15:05-16:00hrs
Oct.30,2015: Two interesting films on cylinders and cylinder recordings with David Giovannoni of the Library of Congress can be found in their blog at http://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/category/early-recording-industry/ .
Nov.2,2015: Restoring the long-lost sounds of Native Americans of California: In November, researchers at UC Berkeley will begin a three-year project to restore and translate thousands of century-old audio recordings of Native California Indians. The collection was created by cultural anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century and is now considered the largest audio repository of California Indian culture in the world.Nearly a third of the 2,713 recordings come from Ishi, the storied last member of the Yahi tribe who lived the last years of his life inside the University of California's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Ishi died in 1916 from tuberculosis. He was 54 years old. Five years before his death, Ishi desperate, alone and starving walked out of the forest and into the little Gold Rush town of Oroville (Butte County). He was the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe, which had been killed off by European settlers. Upon arriving in Oroville, local journalists had a field day, dubbing Ishi 'the last wild Indian'. The news quickly reached Alfred Kroeber, a cultural anthropologist in San Francisco who specialized in the study of native Californians.In September, 1911, Kroeber began using a portable hand-cranked phonograph to record Ishi's narrations of traditional Yahi songs and stories.(from: KQED News) More on that and an oral report can be found at: http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/10/25/restoring-the-long-lost-sounds-of-native-california
Nov.11,2015: Added some more information on the Mark Twain cylinders under Chapter II.
Nov.19,2015: How Chemistry Is Rescuing Our Audio History from Melting, Posted By Katharine Gammon on Nov 11, 2015 (from NAUTILUS): Our cultural history is crumbling. Not because of bad education though one might make that argument but because of chemistry. - Between the late 60s and the late 80s, much of our culture from the Nixon trials on television to unreleased music from famous artists like the Beatles was recorded on magnetic tape, and this tape is starting to disintegrate. Some of the audio and visual data has already been safely adapted to digital storage, but the majority hasn't and it's a problem of massive proportions. The Cultural Heritage Index estimates that there are 46 million magnetic tapes in museums and archives in the U.S. alone and about 40 percent of them are of unknown quality. (The remaining 60 percent are known to be either already disintegrated or in good enough condition to be played.) -What's more, in only about 20 years we won't be able to digitize them, according to audio and video preservationist George Blood, in Philadelphia. This is partly because digitization machines that can handle the tapes have ceased production. On Sept 30th, for example, Sony stopped taking orders for videotape machines, and in June 2015, the last audio reel-to-reel machine went out of production. Plus, the ones that already exist are wearing down and parts to repair them are difficult to come by. And to add to this, the tapes themselves are degrading. Trying to digitally process these in studio-grade machines, for example, clogs the tape player heads, wrecking the very machinery that can digitize the tapes as stocks of them are dwindling.-- Read more at: http://nautil.us/blog/how-chemistry-is-rescuing-our-audio-history-from-melting
Dec.11,2015: http://www.ontheshortwaves.com/Stations/Zeesen-Deutscher_Deine_Heimat_Spricht_zu_Dir.pdf offers a brochure of the time when the German Short Wave Station Zeesen sent its programmems to nearly every continent.
Densho collection, a project that collects the testimonies of Japanese-Americans during USA's unjust internment of the population. Eye-witness accounts and much more- go to:
https://www.youtube.com/user/DenshoProject/playlists?sort=dd&shelf_id=6&view=50
Dec.22,2015: BBC R4 Jan.12,2016, 11:30-12:00 UK time: The Polish Syrena record label 1904-1939 reviewed. Monica Whitlock tells the story of Poland's Syrena Records,a label that defined a nation. Syrena Records was created in 1904 and went on to sell millions of discs to new audiences hungry for shellac delights. Success allowed founder Juliusz Fejgenbaum to invest in state of the art recording technology. By the time independent Poland was reborn in 1918, Syrena was well placed to shape the sound of a nation. Hot tango and jazz were performed by talented musicians and singers, mostly Jewish and mostly of a generation breaking away from the old world and facing the new. Artists including Adam Aston, Hanka Ordonka and Micheslaw Fogg cut disc after disc before playing in the elite nightclubs of Warsaw. Speeches, comedy skits, significant moments in national life were added to the outpourings of Yiddish tango, slinky foxtrots and romantic ballads; records were produced in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish and Russian; and songs such as Gloomy Sunday and Oh, Donna Clara went international. In 1939, invasion and war ended Syrena and the Polish nation; its factory and archives were destroyed, and its artists were murdered or scattered in exile. But there was one last tune to play. Henryk Wars, musical director at Syrena, formed an orchestra that became the soundtrack of a nation in exile and in uniform. From Tehran and Palestine to the rock of Monte Cassino, the musicians and singers that had once been the heart of Syrena now played songs of a lost nation before creating the anthemic The Red Poppies Of Monte Cassino. In this programme, Monica Whitlock tells Syrena's story and travels to Warsaw to hear from a 102-year-old who can remember the label's founder, as well as a new generation of musicians recreating Syrena's sound.-Presenter/Monica Whitlock, Producer/Mark Burman for the BBC (BBC Media Centre)
Dec.24,2015: On Dec 24,1940 the first German Weihnachtsringsendung was broadcast. 'German Christmas 1940- 90 million celebrate together- 40 microphones connect frontand home'. That's what Minister for Propaganda Goebbels had ordered. They were broadcast from 1940 to 1943. Radio WDR5 recalls that first broadcast. WDR5 Dec24, 09:05-09:20hrs German time or WDR3 17:45-18:00hrs.
2016 |
| INFO |
Jan.9, 2016 A British TV review of 2014 on the discovery of Burgess' voice He was an old Etonian, a Cambridge scholar, a BBC journalist and a Foreign office civil servant. Guy Burgess was also one of the most infamous spies in western history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVAiB7Esfi4
Jan.16,2016: Austrian Radio Ö1 (Oe1) will broadcast a feature on the Nazi Reichsmusikkammer (Reich-Music-Chamber) on Jan.18, 19:05-19:30hrs German Time (streaming audio)
Feb.2,2016: An interesting data base of BBC recordings: http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/index.html
Paul Wells' 'RadioListings' is an episode guide to the speech based programmes broadcast by the BBC - there are details for some musical programmes, and some listings for other stations, but the main focus is on scripted speech. Currently there are details for 57765 programmes (695940 episodes), ranging from 1949 (Much Binding In The Marsh) to the present day, though the bulk of it is from 1997 onwards when the BBC put their schedules online. The main index is the programme name. No programmes are available from these pages, not for downloading or listening. It's just a listing!
Feb.8,2016: WGBH, Library of Congress, and WETA to Digitize PBS NewsHour Collection: AAPB Acquires New Hampshire Public Radio Presidential Collection. New Online Presentation 'Voices of Democracy,' Features Presidential Campaign Resources. The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) has acquired New Hampshire Public Radio's digital collection of interviews and speeches by presidential candidates from 1995-2007. The entire collection -nearly 100 hours of content -has been digitized and is now online, along with other presidential campaign content from the AAPB collection, in a new curated, free presentation, 'Voices of Democracy: Public Media and Presidential Elections' at americanarchive.org/exhibits/presidential-elections.
A disappointing note: I have not found one item that is available online in Europe! An experience that I have made with British institutions!
Feb.15,2016: Holocaust survivors who came to Wisconsin had been recorded in the early 1980s telling their stories. These are now online: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/HolocaustSurvivors/
March 3,2016: The Milo Ryan audio collection at the KIRO Radio sation resp. National Archives can be found here: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.ancestorNaIds=113397&sort=naIdSort%20asc. It includes more than 4000 recordings from 1920s to the 1970s.
A short audio on that collection is online at http://kiroradio.com/listen/10003453/ . See also a newspaper article about it (Beaver County Times Sep 24,194) at https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2002&dat=19740924&id=Pv0qAAAAIBAJ&sjid=btoFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5320,2134743&hl=de
March 27,2016: 'A singular figure among the last cylinders used for sound carriers, the dictabelt is a thin floppy cylinder made of vinyl, red, blue or purple in color stretched between two rollers and set in rotation in a dictaphone machine. Also called tank tread or memobelt, the dictabelt was of common use in the USA for the most part, but also in other countries from 1947 to the late 1970s. A versatile cylinder during the Cold War, it had a few well-known applications, such as the recording of telephone conversations of President Kennedy, the integral dictation of a novel by writer Agatha Christie when she was too old to write by hand, or the recording of the Rivonia trial (1963-1964). This trial is a landmark in South Africa's fight for freedom: It was a trial in which Nelson Mandela together with Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Denis Goldberg, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada were accused of trying to overthrow the state and ended in all the above being sentenced to life inprisonment. During the trial, no discussions were taken down on paper. Instead, the proceedings were recorded on 591 dictabelts. In December 2006 these were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register. These precious documents were loaned to the Ina (Institut national de l'audiovisuel) in October 2014 by the National Archives of South Africa (NARSSA) where they will be returned soon.' - If have become interested then go to: http://www.archeophone.org/dictabelt/windex.php and read more and see photos of that medium.
April 4,2016: Saving Historic Radio Before It's Too Late. - A first of its kind Library of Congress project aims to identify, catalogue, and preserve America's rapidly deteriorating broadcast history.- Read more of this THE ATLANTIC article of March 23 here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/broadcast-preservation/474879/
University of Wisconsin (July9,15): Events & Exhibits-MAYRENT INSTITUTE NOW HOME TO OLDEST SURVIVING RECORDINGS OF YIDDISH MUSIC: The Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture has acquired the twelve earliest known cylinder recordings of Yiddish music, released c.1901 by the one-time Chicago-based Thomas Lambert Company. The recordings enhance the Institute's offerings in combination with the Mayrent Collection of Yiddish Recordings, a repository of over 9,000 78rpm recordings of Yiddish and Jewish music, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Mills Music Library. More to read here: http://www.library.wisc.edu/news/2015/07/09/mayrent-institute-now-home-to-oldest-surviving-recordings-of-yiddish-music/
April 10,2016: On March 5,1946 Churchill spoke in Fulton, Missouri/USA of an 'Iron Curtain' and warned the West that the Russians would refuse any democratic ideas in their conquered areas.- Yet Churchill was not the first to speak of an 'Iron Curtain'. It was Goebbels in his article in the newspaper DAS REICH of Feb.25,1945, where he demanded a continuation of the fight because the Jalta Declaration would lead to an occupation by the Russians of the whole of East-and South of Europe in addition to the most part of the German Reich. If the fight didn't go on, 'an iron curtain would fall down in front of that giantic territory including the Soviet Union behind which the mass slaughter of the peeople would begin.' - In his last speech of 2 Mai, 1945 Reich Foreign Minister of the Dönitz Government in Flensburg, Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigh, adopted that picture. A new world order should come to life where the 'bolshevic terror should not withstand. 'In the East the iron curtain advances more and more behind which, hidden from the eyes of the world, the work of destruction is happening.' If you want to hear these two audio clips, go to http://www.dra.de/online/hinweisdienste/ereignis/2016/maerz5.html .
April 25,2016: Allen Koenigsberg has just sent me a copy of his new research into the Walt Whitman cylinder which has been published in 'The Antique Phonograph' of March 2016 under the title 'The Gramophone Cylinder of Walt Whitman - Hoax or History'. He concludes: 'The mystery will probably never be solved to everyone's satisfaction, but I think it is safe to say (for now), that the famous American poet who 'sang the body electric' only did so on the printed page.'
April 26,2016: Added Chapter 25 on the recordings of the National Committee Free Germany.
April 28,2016: Added Chapter 26 on the Lioret Cylinders (1893-1900)
May 23,2016: Tape recording was introduced 70 years ago today, read an article here: http://www.recode.net/2016/5/16/11672678/tape-recording-70th-anniversary-jack-mullin
ARCHIVAL OUTLOOK of May/June 2016: go to page 3 for information on Studs Terkel Radio Archives at http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=301933
Oct.25,2016: I am still around- but there has been no news over the last months on our subject....
So 'stay tuned'.....
Oct.29,2016: A new book is out:
GÖSSEL, Gabriel and SÍR, Filip. Recorded sound in Czech Lands, 1900-1946. 1. edition. Brno: The Moravian Library, 2016. 205 stran. ISBN 978-80-7051-218-0.
Recorded Sound in Czech Lands, 1900 - 1946
This publication is the first comprehensive contribution to mapping the history of the sound industry in the Czech lands or the Czechoslovak Republic. The publication provides data excerpted from the press of the period, publications and corporate catalogues, knowledge gained by examining physically-found gramophone records and other materials.The collected materials relate to all of the record companies that imported gramophone records to Bohemia, Moravia, and to the Czechoslovak Republic after 1918. Alternatively, they also include records recorded in this area with the participation of Czech, Moravian and Slovak soloists and orchestras. The gramophone record distributors of the relevant brands, size and type of the recorded repertoire, as well as a list of prominent artists who recorded for the relevant company are specified for each record label represented here. With a few exceptions, information was not systematically provided about recordings originating after 1946, when the recording industry in Czechoslovakia was nationalized and the national Gramofonové závody enterprise was established The extensive illustrated appendix includes all known forms of gramophone record labels that included recordings with the participation of Czech and Slovak artists and orchestras, created both in the Czech lands and abroad. Each depicted label is accompanied by a brief legend stating the origin or the place and date of the recording. A copy can be obtained by writing to: filipsir -at- gmail.com.
Nov.08,2016: I have just finished reading a book about the 'Saloon Kitty'. That was a famous Berlin brothel whose owner, Kitty Schmidt, had been forced in 1939-1942 to work for Himmler's State Secuity and Kaltenbrunner's Reichssicherheitshauptamt(RSHA) in cooperation with Walter Schellenberg's SD espionage office. Selected prostitutes were trained to make high ranking persons (visitors) talk about secret things and their own opinions about Hitler and the NS-regime. Every room had hidden microphones connected to recording devices in the cellar of the house in Berlin's Giesebrechstraße 11. Here trained and ardent Nazis sat at turntables to record every word and sound that came down the lines on wax records. Tape recorders were planned but these machines and the tapes were still not available. The author of the book, Peter Norden, writes that in 1959 and in 1963 he had seen some thousands of these wax discs and listened to some dozen in the then (1969/70) State Security Office Archives of the GDR . These discs had not melted in the fires during the air raids and had been taken to Moscow in 1945 by the Russians. - As a 'Geheime Reichssache' (Top Secret operation ) only a few persons knew about it and even the brothel personnel had no idea about the hidden microphones and recording apparatus. Thus no written documents were filed, and after the war possible eye-witnesses did not open their mouths. Schellenberg mentions it in his memoirs (1953) in a few lines but is incorrect as far as he talks about female AND male personnel at Kitty's.- The end of the espionage brothel came on July 17, 1942 when a bomb hit the building and destroyed the rooms which all were on the third floor. - So far the discs seem to have disappeared somewhere. If , after Germany's reunification, they have remained there where the author had seen them is not known.
Nov.09,2016: 'The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's new initiative wants to change the way you think about sound archives'. Read the article at http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2016/02/revive-project-feature
LA WEEKLY article 'Master Recordings - From Abbey Road to Born to Run Could Be Lost Forever, Without Archivists'help, read the article at http://www.laweekly.com/music/master-recordings-from-abbey-road-to-born-to-run-could-be-lost-forever-without-archivists-help-7575450
Nov.23,2016: Vietnam War: 'Hanoi Hannah' died at the age of 85. She was the propagandist, at least the North Vietnamese voice of their propaganda, and the voice on North Vietnamese radio who tried to convince GIs, in impeccable English, that they should lay down their arms and go home. At the height of the war, broadcasting under the name Thu Huong (Autumn Fragrance), 'Hanoi Hannah' (Trinh Thi Ngo, her real name) hosted three 30-minute programmes a day, interspersing rock tunes such as the Animals' We gotta get out of this place and anti-war songs such as Pete Seeger's Where have all the flowers gone? -both banned on AFRS- with lists of the names and hometowns of GIs killed in action and messages, to exploit the ambivalence felt by many servicemen about the war. She broadcast messages from anti-war activists such as Jane Fonda, reported demonstrations around the world and sought to stir up racial tensions within the US forces by playing up news of race riots at home. - Most of her intelligence reports came from publications such as Stars And Stripes, the military newspaper. - Her broadcasts lasted from 1965 until the Americans left a decade later.
clips at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF9L_XnlQg0 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6JH8mYV_VU, an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulFAjYyGpO8
BBC OMNIBUS Series 'The Grammophone Reocrd' celebrates the 100th anniversary of the grammophone record (first broadcast on Dec.14,1987). Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0376jgc
Nov.25,2016 Richard Baier, the last speaker of the Grossdeutscher Rundfunk (Great German Radio) recalls. German radio WDR5, Nov.27, 18:05hrs German Time (17:05 UK Time) 25 mins (repeat 22:05, resp. 21:05) (They have streaming audio.)
Baier was born in Marburg in 1926 and was the youngest and last speaker of the Great German Broadcasting System. With 17 years he began with the RRG as news broadcaster and remained there, happy not to be sent to the front. On May 2, 1945 he spoke the last news ending with 'That is the end of Great German Radio broadcasting'. After the war he worked for RIAS (Radio in the American Sector, Berlin). He reported from East Berlin on the uprising of June 17, 1953. In April 1955 he was arrested by the State Security of the GDR because they accused him of having written agitation leaflets. During the so-called 'RIAS_Trial' he and four others were sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on the count of espionage. In January 1961 he was released. 1982 he was accused of defaming the GDR because he had protested against the blast of the Potsdam Garnison Church (Berlin) and thus criticizing the GDR cultural politics. He was imprisoned for 10 months.- On November 27,2016, the broadcast day, he celebrates his 90th birthday.
Nov.30,2016: Lilly Library -Indiana University- to preserve, share 'lost' Orson Welles radio recordings online
In a 2001 overview of the radio series, Wellesnet founder Jeff Wilson reported that 14 of the 19 episodes survived the passage of time. (See episode guide below). Indiana University Libraries announced on May 3 that Lilly Library has secured original lacquer discs containing 14 broadcasts, as well as other supposedly lost recordings. The Orson Welles Show, which debuted Sept. 15, 1941, was sponsored by Illinois-based cosmetic maker Lady Esther and sought to provide something new to radio listeners. Unfortunately, the program format proved unpopular with the target audience of Lady Esther and it eventually settled into a 'story of the week' format. Originally scheduled for 26 weeks, the show ended prematurely when Welles left on his ill-fated It's All True trip to Brazil. Early episodes featured a mix of comedy, drama, recitations, and patter, all delivered by the mainstays of the Mercury Theatre: Welles, Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, and Ray Collins, and others. For more go to : http://www.wellesnet.com/lilly-library-to-preserve-share-lost-orson-welles-radio-recordings-online/ . For a real audio file on the restauration go to: https://soundcloud.com/ray-steele-wibc/erika-dowell-restoring-orson-welles-at-iu-bloomington
Nov.30,2016: 'Forgotten audio formats: Wire recording - From espionage to home recording, the colorful life of the longest-used audio medium.' An interesting article, can be found here: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/wire-recording-forgotten-audio-format/
Dec.22,2016: Part of the David Goldin Collection, catalogued recordings list at the Marr Sound Archive, UMKC (University of Missouri-Kansas City): http://laurel.lso.missouri.edu/search/?searchtype=t&SORT=D&searcharg=j+david+goldin+collection&searchscope=3
2017 |
| INFO |
Feb.05,2017 Lost Holocaust Songs Played for 1st Time on Repaired Wire Recorder (LIVE SCIENCE Feb.3,2017):
For the first time in decades, Yiddish and German songs sung by Holocaust victims can be heard, now that an old wire recorder has been repaired.The recordings were completed by the late David Boder (1886-1961), a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. During the summer of 1946, Boder traveled to Europeand interviewed 130 Jewish Holocaust survivors.Boder conducted the interviews in nine languages at refugee camps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. To record some of the first oral histories of camp survivors, he used a wire recorder, a novel instrument at the time. The device moves a wire across a recording head, a process that magnetizes points along the wire based on features of an electrical audio signal. - For the complete article go to:
http://www.livescience.com/57754-songs-recorded-after-holocaust-recovered.html
Also on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOyOH_kWAdQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_y4S6vdXgg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTaix91BeTQ
March 27,2017: During WWII so-called 'Sprechende Feldpost' or 'Tönende Feldpost' became popular. These flexible discs with soldiers' messages to their friends and families at home were sent by postal service. Im most cases they were recorded at Red Cross stations or in hospitals. I have found such a disc on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGE9xj3OKqU .
April 3,2017: 1920s editions of the RADIO TIMES now online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/radio-times-1920s
May 12,2017: Memories Of A Musical Dog - Omnibus, BBC broadcast 27.May 1988 A film on the history of sound recording, on YOUTUBE in 4 segments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhgKsFcetyk You will find the others segments there.
May 13,2017: The first known recording of JFK speaking has emerged from Harvard University: The then-20-year-old future President was recorded giving his thoughts on the appointment of the Alabama Senator Hugo Black to the US Supreme court by President Franklin D Roosevelt. JFK, in the same clear and confident voice that carried him to the White House, began by saying, 'We all know the circumstances surrounding Mr. Black's appointment to the Supreme Court.' Continuing, 'Whether Mr. Black's appointment to the Court is the correct one is hard to say. It was evidently made in the heat of presidential anger at conservative elements who did not back Mr. Roosevelt's [unintelligible] plan.'- For more go to: http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/listen-to-the-earliest-known-recording-of-john-f-kennedy
June 29,2017: BBC has now finished the project to put their RADIO TIMES 1923-2009 online. You find the archive at http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk
July 18.2017 'The Origins of Sound Recording' Online Exhibit and Symposium Videos Released:
(Quote)WEST ORANGE, NJ: Today the National Park Service announces the release of an online exhibit and videos that share the latest historical research into the beginnings of recorded sound technology. The web presentation, titled 'The Origins of Sound Recording', is available at www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording.htm. Recent research calls attention to the work of French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (1817-1879). Scott's phonautograph, patented in France in 1857, graphically inscribed airborne sounds over time onto a permanent medium. As such, it was the earliest sound recording device. Twenty years later, Thomas Edison independently re-invented sound recording in the form of the phonograph the first device to both record and reproduce (or playback) sound. The web exhibit, authored by researcher David Giovannoni, contextualizes and compares the innovations of Scott and Edison. It also explains the role of Charles Cros (1842-1888), a visionary Frenchman who conceptualized sound reproduction just weeks before Edison. While both Scott and Cros clearly anticipated a number of essential elements of Edison's phonograph, historical evidence indicates that Edison conceived of sound recording without prior knowledge of their work.-On April 29th, 2017, Thomas Edison National Historical Park hosted an international symposium to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Scott's birth, titled 'The Origins of Sound Recording: Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville Bicentennial Symposium.' Researchers Patrick Feaster and David Giovannoni presented their latest findings to an audience of scholars, teachers, students, writers, and documentarians. Included among the attendees were American representatives from the National Park Service, French dignitaries from the scientific establishment, and representatives of both Scott's and Edison's families. The new web presentation features video recordings of the full program. A physical version of the exhibit, which includes a full-scale replica 1859 Scott phonautograph, is on display at Thomas Edison National Historical Park this summer through August 27. - Because Scott's phonautograph lacked the ability to playback its recordings, he was unable to prove that it actually captured interpretable sound recordings, and faced skepticism. The significance of Scott's phonautograph was not fully recognized during his lifetime. In 2008, researchers Giovannoni and Feaster located Scott's surviving recordings in French archives. Using digital technologies, they demonstrated that Scott's recordings could be understood upon playback. This confirmed Scott as the initial inventor of sound recording and called upon historians to re-examine and reframe Edison's 1877 invention of the phonograph. As of 2017, we have access to a much fuller, clear picture of Scott's history, and a better understanding of how it relates to Edison's first phonograph.(end of quote) August 10,2017: A short review with original reports and recollections of war reporters of 10 July 1944 and 8 July 1994 on the liberation of Caen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCvdx2Md234
August 17,2017: Exploring the British Library Sound Archive- a visit. To watch the film go to https://www.bl.uk/projects/save-our-sounds .
August 29,2017: Interesting to read: The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv: A treasury of sound recordings https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ast/25/4/25_4_227/_pdf in: Lars-Christian Koch, Albrecht Wiedmann, Susanne Ziegler: The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv: A treasury of sound recordings. (PDF) In: Acoustical science and technology, 25, Heft 4, 2004, S. 227-231, ISSN 1346-3969
Oct.13,2017: Thomas Edison to Spotify: 140 Years of Recorded Sound at British Library (from: 'etcetera' 11.10.17)
Until March 11 next year, the British Library is looking back to the invention of the phonograph in 1877 with new exhibition 140 Years of Recorded Sound, tracing the evolution of technology and the influence it has had on our lives since then.-The evolution of sound is mapped from ethnography and documenting wildlife to the launch of the BBC in 1922 and proliferation of live broadcasting, winding through pirate radio, dub reggae remixing, the charts and the invention of cassettes, walkmans, CDs, iPods and streaming.-A specially commissioned sound installation by former composer-in-residence Aleks Kolkowski takes inspiration from the 1922 'Wireless Log' of 16 year old Alfred Taylor. Taylor kept written accounts of radio broadcasts, a valuable resource now as many early recordings have been lost. He documented the audio quality as well as his feeling of delight at being able to hear the applause and coughs of the audience at a live broadcast from the Royal Opera House.-Sound booths positioned along the timeline play sounds from the archive from 'I am Doctor Brahms' in 1889 to the Swet Shop Boys' account of airport security in 2016. The 100 tracks document a full spectrum: Christabel Pankhurst speaking about Suffrage for Women on her release from prison in 1908, James Joyce reading Ulysses, the voice of Amelia Earhart, the original Doctor Who theme tune, the mating call of the haddock, LL Cool J, Maya Angelou, Whale song and the EU referendum result. -'Preserving the nation's sounds is just as important to us as preserving the nation's words,' says Steve Cleary, lead curator of literary and creative recordings at the British Library, 'and we hope to surprise and intrigue visitors to the exhibition with examples of unusual recordings and sound technology over the past 140 years.' - The free exhibition runs until March 11 2018. For full details of the events programme go to bl.uk
2018 |
| INFO |
Oct.12,2018: NEWS CHRONICLE of 7 November 1945 reports: SECRET RECORDINGS MAY PRESERVE MUNICH TALKS, from Ian Bevan, News Chronicle Special Correspondent
Herford (Germany)- Gramophone recordings of the Hitler-Chamberlain talks at Munich are thought to be among a collection of Nazi Party official recordings fround in a German salt mine.- If this is confirmed,the recordings must have been made by means of apparaturs hidden in the conference rooms. The collection has been kept secret in case the records were used as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trials.- It now appears unlikely that they can be produced at Nuremberg because of the legal difficulty of proving when and where the records were made.- More than 4,000 metal negatives or matrices constitute the collection, which was the property of the Reichsrundfunk-Gesellschaft, the German equivalent of the BBC. British Signals staff have already made records from many of the matrices and these are being played to intelligence officers and war crimes investigators, who are endeavouring to identify the voices. Unfortunately no list of recordings has been found and there are no identification marks on the matrices. - The voices of Hitler, Göring, Ley and other party leaders are generelly clearly recognisable to anyone who has heard them on the radio, but it needs a detailed knowledge of Nazi activities to place the time and occasion of many of the records just from hearing the voices.- The custodian of the collection said that they are records of conversations, meetings and speeches which Nazi Party wished to keep for historical purposes. - Private talks: He believed taht among theme were private conversations between Nazi leaders, and also recordings of important diplomatic negotiations such as the Hitler-Chamberlain talks. Some of the matrices had been wilfully thrown into the salt by the German guards in the hope they would be destroyed by corrosion but the low humidity in the mine preserved them unharmed. (end of article)
Capt Glanville Brown's report on that capture states that 'all the records have nothing to identify them except for some numbers on both sides', but is was to be noted that the numbers on the two sides bear no relationship to each other. As an example he gives a record with a Papen speech of 1932 on the one side and on the reverse side a Hitler speech of 1937. They found out that the numbers corresponded with those in the Reichsrundfunk-catalogue of records 1929-1936 [see under Bibliography, Chapter XVIII, above], but that it was still time-consuming task to crosscheck the records with the catalogue (-the indexing was then done by Polish soldiers in Britain). Another problem came up that there seemed to be no such catalogue for the following years.
As far as I am familiar with the Nuremberg Trials no recordings were played as evidence.
Oct.13,2018: A PS. to above text: In his magazine TUNE INTO YESTERDAY #37 of September 2001, the editor, Graeme Stevenson, writes that he had found out that all the above mentioned discs had been stored at Bush House up until 1956.- He was later informed by Alan Ward of the National Sound Archives (England) that the NSA holds all the 4,200 discs.
In case you are interested in the quarterly magazine you may write an eMail to: graemeotr@yahoo.co.uk .They also have a lending library of DVDs and CDRs with thousands of programmes. You can mention this website for reference.
Nov.18,2018: Speaking from the dock on 20 April 1964 during the Trial in Pretoria’s Palace of Justice, Mandela gave a spellbinding three-hour speech in his defence. Mandela (‘Accused Number One’) was charged with acts of sabotage designed to ‘foment violent revolution’.His defiant closing words ‘the ideal of a free and democratic society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities is an ideal for which I am prepared to die’.- In 2000 the National Archives of South Africa revealed that rare ‘Dictabelt’ recordings of the trial existed, but that no means had been found to replay or transfer the sound. With the help of the British Library these belts could be digitized in 2014. Yet only a few snippets have been available (as far as I know) from them. Now I discovered an 28-minute-excerpt of his 3-hour-long speech. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CNewYDzeDg .
If you go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEfQZz02NQE you will hear more about the digitization (South African SABC NEWS-TV).
Dec.8,2018: The release, by the BBC Genome Project, covers World War Two, the immediate post-war years and key landmark events in British history such as the Royal Wedding in 1947 and the 1948 London Olympics.The BBC has today made the 1940s issues of the Radio Times magazine publicly available online for the first time.The release, by the BBC Genome Project, covers World War Two, the immediate post-war years and key landmark events in British history such as the Royal Wedding in 1947 and the 1948 London Olympics.The 1940s also saw the beginnings of well-loved and long-standing programmes: Woman's Hour, Any Questions? and Desert Island Discs.During the first half of the decade Radio Times magazines became slimmer, as resources were diverted to the war effort. Programme billings were often written allusively, with precise locations concealed to avoid giving away too much information for security reasons.Television returned in 1946, after its suspension during the war. There were a series of ambitious outside broadcasts, including the Victory Parade in 1946, the wedding of Princess Elizabeth II and Philip Mountbatten in 1947, and the London Olympics in 1948, which was announced by Radio Times as: 'the biggest operation of its kind that the BBC has ever undertaken'. Renowned artists Eric Fraser, Ronald Searle and Victor Reinganum were among those who contributed artwork to Radio Times during this period.Prof. Jean Seaton, Historian of the BBC, comments: 'This release gives a gripping insight into Britain during the Second World War. It shows everyday life, the tension of the blitz and the D-Day landings on Europe. But the excitement of the post war Royal Wedding and the thrill of the London Olympics are also there. The Radio Times takes you directly to what it was like to live through a pivotal decade in the nation's history.
Access the 1940s editions of the Radio Times online here: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/
Dec.17,2018: A musical Graphophone disc from 1885 can be heard on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKf7n-Vrx_0 . To read more about it google 'Griffonage-Dot-Com' -Patrick Feaster's explorations in historical media. (of Jan 2015)
2019 |
| INFO |
Jan.21: German KULTURRADIO (see their website for streaming audio) features BEAR FAMILY RECORDS' 11CDR/1DVD-Box 'Vorbei-Beyond Recall', a documentary on Jewish Life in Germany in recordings.
For more information on the Oeuvre see: https://www.amazon.de/Vorbei-Beyond-Recall-Dokumentation-Musiklebens/dp/B00005RVPW
March10: About 80 years ago a project similar to the REICHSDENKMAL (see above) was initiated by Himmler's NS-AHNENERBE: to record the people in South Tyrol in the years between 1940 and 1942. - Background: In 1919 (after Versailles) Tyrol became part of Italy and people had to live under fascistic dictatorship. Schoolchildren were taught in Italian although they didn't understand anything. At the end of the 1930s the people of South Tyrol were forced to choose between Germany and Italy, the so-called 'Option': 1939 Hitler and Mussolini agreed to solve the South Tyrol-problem once and for all. Those who wanted to stay had to abstain from using the German language and lost their Tyrol identity. The rest had to emigrate into Hitler's Greater Germany. 80% chose emigration either because they were desperate or because they felt that Nazi Germany would be a better place to live in.- So the AHNENERBE sent Alfred Quellmalz, a German musicologist, equipped with the newest invention to record sounds in the field, the tape recorder, out to record the songs and voices of those who wanted to leave their homes and homeland.- 400 tapes with about 3000 recordings have survived documenting the worries, the hopes and every day live of the then mainly peasant population.
April 18: A list of LPs and other recorded sounds dealing with the years of the Cold War including photos of the media can be found here:
http://www.soundmuseum.com/gallery/BRD/source/rote_schablone.html
June 5,2019 With D-Day 75 years back, a top secret story was published by THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH on June 2nd: 'Britain's sonic warriors helped deceive the German army into thinking the D-Day landings would take place 80 miles away. Specially trained and equipped units played tapes [ann.: the author surely meant discs because tapes were known only in Nazi Germany] of army activity, including tanks, trucks and gunfire to fool the Germans into thinking they faced a bigger force in a different location. Lord Mountbatten, the head of Combined Operations, said sonic deception should be used to replicate a 'feint landing to be carried out at some distance from the actual landing'. The idea of using sounds of war as a deception strategy was conceived by Col.Cecil Disney Barlow of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry , who was tasked with developing his light scout car units at a remote Scottish base on the Ayrshire coast at Ballantrae. The location was well-suited to record the sounds of Sherman and Churchill tanks, as wll as other weapons and equipment, while not drawing attention. - Early tests involved a 'lash-up' of speakers fixed to chairs but proved the concept. The finished equipment, code-named 'Poplin', consisted of two three-foot cube speakers and an amplifier mounted on a White scout car which played the sounds of manoeuvres from a reel to reel tape player [see my ann. above re tape recorders].' (end of quotation)
Sep.4,2019:The BBC German Service 'Deutscher Dienst' existed from September 27,1939 till 1991. This date has inspired the BBC to review the so far not commonly known side of it ,the non-news programmes. Kristina Moorehead has compiled a feature programme called 'Beating Hitler with Humor'. Associate Professor Vike Plock of Exeter University told me that she had been interviewed on it because she currently is preparing a book about the GERMAN SERVICE.- The feature was broadcast on Radio 4 in the 'Archive Hour' on August 31, but can be found in their 'listen again' schedule.- What follows is the BBC's additional information: 'The BBC's German Service used satire to reach ordinary Germans in World War Two. Its aim was to break the Nazi monopoly on news within the Third Reich. - It's a late night in London in 1940, and Austrian exile Robert Lucas is writing at his desk. Bombs are raining down on the city every night, Hitler's army is winning throughout Europe and the invasion of England has become a genuine prospect. In spite of the air-raid sirens and, as he put it 'the hell's noise of the war machinery' going off all around him, Lucas is focused on the job at hand: to 'fight for the souls of the Germans'. He is composing a radio broadcast aimed at citizens of the Third Reich. But this is not a passionate plea for them to come to their senses. This is an attempt to make them laugh.-Lucas had been working for the German Service of the BBC ever since it haphazardly sprang to life during the height of the Sudeten Crisis in September 1938. The aim of the German Service from the beginning 'when it broadcast a translation of a Neville Chamberlain speech shortly before he signed the infamous Munich Agreement' was to break the Nazi monopoly on news within the Third Reich.-The Nazis could not stop foreign radio waves crossing into Germany but they could make listening to enemy stations a crime. They did so as soon as war broke out. Those caught were jailed; the sentence for spreading news from enemy broadcasts was the death penalty. Germans brave enough to disregard the law had to beware of eavesdroppers and ill-meaning neighbours, and so would listen under blankets as if curing themselves of a heavy cold over a bowl of steaming water.-But why would you choose to broadcast satire under these circumstances? Cracking jokes to sustain morale on Britain's home front might be a successful strategy ' implemented particularly well in the BBC's wartime satire It's That Man Again (better known as ITMA). But for enemy propaganda? And in any case, who would risk their life listening to it?-The satire programmes relied upon an unlikely coalition between the BBC, British propaganda officials and disaffected German-speaking exiles .-Indeed, when Lucas began writing Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal he had 'no idea whether there would be at least 50 people in Germany listening'. He spoke 'into the dark without any echo', as he later described it. That his programme 'along with two other satire series called Frau Wernicke and Kurt und Willi' was commissioned in 1940 reveals the bold, experimental approach adopted by the German Service in its infancy.-It lacked the necessary staff, equipment and organisation to approach the daily task of counter-propaganda adequately. Furthermore, this was unchartered territory. Radio was still relatively new, and broadcasting to the enemy was a completely novel experience. This brought about a spirit of creativity and adventure. It was also true that, by 1940, there was an air of desperation. 'All right, we might as well give it a try,' the BBC told Lucas when it commissioned Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal.-The satirical programmes relied on an unlikely coalition between the BBC, British propaganda officials and disaffected German-speaking exiles. On the one hand, the British officials insisted that the message of the German Service had to sound 'as English as Yorkshire pudding'. But it also needed to demonstrate an intimate knowledge of the German psyche, and for that it was much in debt to the contribution of the exiles. But the relationship was not always easy; as an 'enemy alien', Lucas and his fellow exiles were often regarded with suspicion.-Lost in translation: The quirky content of the programmes should be understood in the context of this curious alliance. Adolf Hirnschal is a series of fictitious letters written by a German corporal on the front line to his wife. The protagonist reads the letters to his fighting comrade before they are posted. On the surface Adolf Hirnschal is devoted to his 'beloved Fhrer'. Yet so far-fetched are his exclamations of loyalty that the intention is clear: to expose the shallowness and mendacity of Nazi proclamations. In his first letter after war is declared on Russia in 1941 he tells his wife how he welcomed the news from his lieutenant that they are being transferred to the Russian border:I jump up in joy and say: 'Mr Lieutenant, kindly asking for permission to express that I am tremendously pleased that we are now fraternising with the Russians. Did not our beloved Fhrer already say in 1939 that our friendship with the Russians is irrevocable and irreversible?' Thus Hirnschal exposes the hypocrisy of Hitler's policy towards Russia, all under the cover of absolute loyalty. This was a method that Bruno Adler 'a German art historian and author who had fled to England in 1936 'used for Frau Wernicke. The protagonist is a tough, good-hearted, chatty Berlin housewife who, through her manic monologues, complains about injustices, rationing and the contradictions of everyday life during the war, all the time displaying a robust common sense. By juxtaposing her pseudo-naive support for Nazism and the stark realities of the wartime life she describes, Adler's subversive intentions are clear. In one instance Frau Wernicke asks her friend why she is so upset, and then immediately answers the question herself: Only because your husband had to close his business and because your boy is now with the Wehrmacht and has had enough of it and because your girl, Elsbeth, has to do a second mandatory year of state labour and because 'as you put it' you don't have a family life anymore and you are not happy? Note the heavily ironic use of 'only'. Kurt und Willi was also scripted by Bruno Adler. It is a series of dialogues between two friends: the former a schoolmaster, the latter an official in the German Propaganda Ministry. While discussing the events of the war over a beer in a Berlin bar, Kurt assumes the role of the naive average German. Willi is a cynical, immoral opportunist, leaking to his friend the latest subterfuges, tricks and blunders devised in the Propaganda Ministry.These programmes have a sense of humour that doesn't translate well 'literally from German to English, but also from radio to print. And, of course, they are of their time. But they raise questions which already back then were the subject of fierce debate. Could these programmes really have any effect? Could satire be used as a weapon that would convert Germans to the British viewpoint and make them long for an end to war? Was it even appropriate? The BBC Director of European Broadcasts, Noel Newsome, had his doubts. Referring to a Kurt und Willi broadcast in 1944 he wrote:If this was funny and entertaining it could only have served the lamentable purpose of easing the tension in Germany, just as, for instance, wisecracks about 'doodle bugs' reduce tension here about robot bombs. 'If Kurt und Willi were not really funny the feature was a waste of precious time in any case.On their home radio the Germans ['] should not get jokes, when they tune in to London. There were doubts about the virtues of satirical propaganda from the start. The very first experiment with humour on the German Service was broadcast on April Fool's Day in 1940. The producers had to reassure the propaganda officials in Electra House that the transmission of Der Fhrer Spricht, a Hitler parody written and performed by Austrian exile Martin Miller, would remain an exception. Which, as we know, it did not. Other humorous programmes followed, and soon the Russians got in on the act. Radio Moskau experimented with similar formats, one of which 'Frau Knnecke Will Jarnischt Gesagt Haben' was an obvious copy of Frau Wernicke. But none of these programmes were broadcast with such regularity as Hirnschal, Frau Wernicke and Kurt und Willi. They take us 'either weekly or fortnightly' through the war, from summer 1940 right to the end.Didn't the mere existence of the satirical programmes display faith in the intellect and, above all, the humanity of the audience? But who was listening to the German Service, and what did they make of it? According to Robert Lucas, a 'flood of thank-you letters' arrived from listeners of the German Service as soon as the war was over. 'The London broadcasts saved me from suicide during the blackest days of the Hitler war,' states one letter from the BBC Archives. Another reads: 'It's thanks to the BBC and the BBC alone that I had the moral strength not to become complicit.' Many of the letters singled out the satire programmes: 'That you also brought us humour made the unbearable bearable for us,' wrote one listener, while another expressed admiration for 'how well you understand the soul of the people'. Perhaps those letters provide enough justification if you wonder 'as Charlie Chaplin did after he learned about the atrocities of the Nazis 'whether it was morally appropriate to ridicule them, as he did in The Great Dictator. Theodor Adorno insisted that anti-fascist satire fails to grasp or depict reality and, worse still, it ignores or trivialises the gravity of National Socialism. But did not laughter at least remind people of what it means to be human? Didn't the mere existence of the satirical programmes display faith in the intellect and, above all, the humanity of the audience? 'Like any other tyranny, National Socialism was completely humourless', writes Robert Lucas. Looking back now, perhaps that was the chief success of the pioneering satire programmes of the German Service. For this was one area in which the Nazis had nothing to offer and could not compete. And even if the absurd monologues of Frau Wernicke or Adolf Hirnschal were heard by a relatively small number of Germans, even if they were not always tremendously funny, that they provided comfort and perhaps even enlightenment to anyone was proof that Lucas's mission to 'fight for the souls of the Germans'' was not completely in vain. Beating Hitler with Humour is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 20:00 on Saturday 31 August 2019.
If you are familiar with the German language you could read more here: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/vor-70-jahren-wurde-der-deutsche-dienst-der-bbc-gegruendet.761.de.html?dram:article_id=114094
Sep.8,2019 RADIO SURVIVOR Saving Radio History with The Radio Preservation Task Force: Radio Preservation Task Force's Director Josh Shepperd and Conference Director Neil Verma are guests for a discussion about the work of the Library of Congress initiative. They explain the significance of 2020 for radio history, share some of the accomplishments of the Task Force, and preview the next Radio Preservation Conference Task Force Conference, which will be held in Washington, D.C. in October, 2020. Shepperd is Assistant Professor, Media & Communication Studies at Catholic University and Humanities and Information Fellow at Pennsylvania State University. Verma is Assistant Professor of Sound Studies in Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University.
Can be listened to or downloaded from: http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/05/07/podcast-192-saving-radio-history-with-the-radio-preservation-task-force/
Dec.7,2019Not spoken word but rare music broadcasts are wanted. In 1966-1067 the BBC resp.BFBS broadcast a 37-part-series called 'The London Folk Song Cellar', and my friends of the Folk scene are looking for missing episodes 28, 31 and 35. So if you happen to know somebody who has them in his collection and is willing to share them with others (poss.exchange), please drop me a line to my email address below.
Dec.8,2019 This year has also been a year with nearly no important news on the theme, nor have any recordings been discovered. So I thought I should finish the 2019-entries with some lines on the Reichsrundfunk (RRG) tape recorder:
In 1938 the technical department of the RRG had added the Magnetophon to their recording equipment which had been presented in 1935 by AEG Berlin and IG Farben AG in Ludwigshafen. The Magnetophon offered with its 22 minutes recording time, its vibration-free operation (in contrast to the disc cutting machines), its easy handling esp. its tapes the best available recording technique. Only the sound quality was still poor and could be compared with that of a sound foil.- The first portable equipment was developed in cooperation of AEG and RRG, the 'Magnetophon K6' which the RRG named '-Wagenmagnetrophon R23' (-Wagen is mobile recording van), then on request by the Army renamed 'Tonschreiber d'. In April 1940 RRG technician Walter Weber could develop a high frequency pre-magnetization that catapulted the Magnetophon to the top of all recording systems in every aspect. - To make the new technique public, a big public presentation was prepared by RRG, AEG, TELEFUNKENPLATTE and FILMTECHNISCHE ZENTRAL. It was June 10, 1941 when the broad public, gathered in the 'UFA-Palast am Zoo' (Berlin), could experience the new sound , a.o. excerpts of Brahms' Symphony N1, previously recorded in Berlin's Philharmonie under Wilhelm Furtwngler. The BERLINER LOKALANZEIGER (newspaper) of June 12 wrote that it was the most important presentation of its kind in the last 6 to 10 years. Other newspapers and professional journals called it a top technique of electronical sound recording that 'will lead to a complete revolution in sound recording'. - Last but not least this is the proof that the post-war reports are false which say that the Magnetophon had been 'invented' on highest order and kept secret. To quote here is the fairy tale of John Herbert Orr who tells the story that when RADIO LUXEMBURG had fallen into American hands they discovered intact Magnetophons. [The Allied Forces did not find any recorders there because the German technicians took them with them when they left. cf BBC Publications 1972] This is also the source of an unlikely story where a radio broadcast of Eisenhower was interrupted/ overlayed/ unnoticed continued by a Hitler speech. Orr continues that because of that he received orders by Eisenhower to build up an own production of Magnetophon machines.- What really happened to that Eisenhower speech cannot be traced. The speech probably was recorded on a tape-without identification marking of the end- which had a Hitler speech recorded on it. The tape probably continued running -unnoticed- after the Eisenhower speech. - About 1942 Reichssender (broadcasting stations) Breslau, Hamburg, Knigsberg, Leipzig, Mnchen, Wien and Riga received these new machines. - A firm was founded 'TONBAND G.m.b.H.' to dublicate commercial tapes, even in stereo. The first customer was the RRG that provided 50-70 master tapes per week which should be copied 10 times: four for the archive in Masurenallee (where the RRG was) and the rest to above mentioned stations. In 1942/43 3,800 Magnetophon-tapes, each 1000 meters long, were recorded, in 1944 18,600. - Many trained engineers of the RRG were substituted by women due to their conscription call. (Most information come from Friedrich Engel.)
2020 |
| INFO |
March 2020 The CORONA-virus stops every activity in our daily life! So there are no more meetings etc and get-togethers of more than 2 persons (at least in Germany from March 23 on). Time for people to think about life and living together . . .
Mar23,2020 So better than nothing, here is a a 2-pt-prog. on the Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford sound collection of early field recordings: German radio BAVARIA-KLASSIK (BR-KLASSIK),title 'Virtuelle Archive fr Feldaufnahmen' on March 28,29 23:05-24:00hrs.
May 5,2020An interesting article on the first 'stereo' recordings made by Berthold Laufer in China in 1901 can be found here:
https://griffonagedotcom.wordpress.com/2020/04/28/berthold-laufers-chinese-stereo-recordings-of-1901/ .
There are also three other articles I recommend: 'From Phonautograph to Talking Machine: The Case of Eugene Haberacker', 'The Quarantined Bride and the Phonograph', and 'Phonographic Court Reporting, Interrog'.
June18,2020Vera Lynn, Singer Whose Wartime Ballads Lifted Britain, Dies at 103 -Known as the Forces' Sweetheart, Ms. Lynn performed sentimental songs that captured the affection of troops abroad and Britons at home.
July24,2020 Magnetic Tape Alert Project - Final Report Published - from IASA ''Much of humanity's linguistic and cultural diversity is recorded on magnetic tape produced over the past 60 years. The only way to preserve these sounds and images and to keep them accessible for future generations is their digitisation and transfer to safe digital repositories, as magnetic tape recordings are now obsolete and replay equipment in operable condition is disappearing rapidly. A great many of these audio and video recordings are still in their original state, kept in small academic or cultural institutions, or in private hands. The Magnetic Tape Alert Project report helps to assess the dimension of the threat to magnetic tape materials so that these institutions can better advocate for preservation initiatives and to strengthen the links between these institutions, in terms of capacity building, awareness, and support.''
https://www.iasa-web.org/sites/default/files/publications/MTAP-Report-30-June-2020.pdf gives you the full report. And if you are or have been a collector you'll probably be interested in reading it.
Sep.16,2020 Interesting to read: ''In the latter half of 1895, newspapers around the United States relayed the startling news that a phonograph had just conducted a funeral service in place of a live clergyman.... The barriers against phonographic funerals were not so much technological as cultural, the argument went: surely nobody would want a loved one to have to make do with a 'mechanical' funeral! The Phonoscope editor was not alone in this opinion. An article of 1898 imagines the funeral of a miner in Red Gulch Canyon being conducted by phonograph because the only clergymen within fifty miles is above timber line hunting for bear; the author represents the words of the service as hoarsely recited by the machine and the music as the solemn funeral march from Beethoven (with enough omitted to make up for the shortness of the cylinder).'' The whole article 'The Phonographic Funeral of Baby Burr' by.P.Feaster can be read at Griffonage.com (/i>.
Oct.8,2020 Alan Cross of GLOBAL NEWS has an interesting article about the 'Thtrophone': 'Long before voices and music were transmitted through the air and even before people owned phonographs and records the well-to-do in cities like Paris, Lisbon, Brussels, Stockholm, London, and even New York were able to listen to music and theatre productions without having to go anywhere. And in stereo, too.'- The complete article and more can be read here: https://globalnews.ca/news/7356154/theatrophone-history/
and James O'Neal writes in RADIO WORLD about 'Radio Broadcasting Becomes a Reality: Nov. 2, 1920'. Google for it because the link is too long
Nov,21,2020Some interesting articles in the LA TIMES of November on collecting and restoring early wax cylinders:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-11-12/wax-cylinder-dentist-how-we-got
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-11-12/wax-cylinder-dentist
2021 |
| INFO |
Jan.24,2021: With nearly no news on the subject in these troubled times of pandemia , I thought I should write a few lines that might interest the reader. It's all about ABSiE, American Broadcasting Station in Europe. It beagn broadcasting on April 39, 1944 and had its last one on July 4,1945. It was transmitted via various BBC stations, e.g. Daventry. Announced as 'Hier ist der amerikanische Rundfunksender in Europ'" (This is the American radio station in Europe), followed by the first metres of 'Yankee Doodle'. It was jammed from the beginning by the Germans but with the effect that BBC could broadcast into the Reich with less problems. - Founded in March 1944 and financed by the OWI (Office of War Information) in Washington, it broadcast in various languages with German after English being the most important language. In BROADCASTINGof July 9,1945 Brig.Gen.Robert McClure , chief of the Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF, empahsized the important role played by ABSiE in transmitting messages and instructions from Gen.Eisenhower to the people of occupied Europe before and after the Allied landings in France. Later, he said, ABSiE played its part in transmitting Gen.Eisenhower's messages to the German people who came to appreciate 'the full significance' of his words and the 'inescapable logic' of his instructions. 'The result',said Gen.McClure, 'was measured in the saving of time required for final victory and the saving of Allied soldiers' lives.' John G.Winant, American Ambassador to England, and Robert Sherwood, former director of the OWI Overseas Branch, who was the first speaker on ABSiE when it began, aslo participated. Portions were also broadcast by MUTUAL. - Since its inauguration, ABSiE has broadcast 8 hours daily without interruption in English,French, German, Flemish, Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch to the European target countries. Using powerful shortwave and longwave transmitters, it reached audiences as far as South Africa, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand. - OWI estimates that at one time or another 80% of the people of occupied Europe listened to ABSiE, the Voice of America. In AACHEN, Germany, six out of every ten people admitted they listened to ABSiE. But, in addition, ABSiE's voice reached beyond its listening audience. Until normal communications were restored to Europe it was one of the main sources of news to the press. For months its studios sent newscasts for underground newspapers. - Under the direction of Philip H.Cohen, former chief of the OWI Domestic Radio Bureau, ABSiE operated with a staff of 250, about half of whom wereAmerican and half locally hired. The station originated about 682 programs a month which were supplemented by relay programs from OWI studios in New York, Washington, San Francisco and Honolulu. ABSiE's transmission facilities were part of the BBC Home Service wavelenghts before the war and will now revert to BBC. The American story will be broadcast over the 200 kw longwave transmitter of RADIO LUXEMBOURG, three 50 kw stations, two of which are shortwave, in Algiers, medium and shortwave facilities of the BBC Overseas Service, and shortwave transmitters of 26 OWI stations in eastern United States.
Speaking on the station's farewell program on Independence Day (1945), Mr. Davis declared: 'ABSiE has done its work; but the Voice of America will still be heard in Europe. ABSiE was a weapon of war, an instrument that assisted in the Allied campaign of liberation.' (So far BROADCASTING).
In the beginning ABSiE broadcast 90 minutes, till February 1945 150 minutes in German (of their 8 hour-programme, mainly in the early hours of the morning and then between 8pm and 01.15am. The following programmes became a permanent part in the schedules: Programm fr die Wehrmacht (Wehrmacht Hour), Amerika ruft Europa (A.calls E.), sterreich-Programm (Prog.for Austria), Arbeitersendung/Frauensendung(for workers and women), Kriegsgefangenensendungen (PoW progs), Ein Wort zur Situation in Deutschland (A word on the situation in Germany), Die Yankees kommen(The Yankees are coming), Alfred Zimmermann( with a commentary of a 'normal' American; Alfred Zimmermann was head of the German-language dept. for a while), Stimme des Alliierten Hauptquartiers (Voice of the Allied HQ). The intention of all was to persuade German soldiers to surrender, to cross the lines and go into war captivity, to inform how Americans treated the captured Germans,to prepare the German population on the times after Allied victory etc. according to the principle 'Never tell a lie'.
More than 40 original recordings have survived as far as one can tell. An interview with Alfred Zimmermann (s.a.) was broadcast on 23 Aug.1944 in NBC'S War Telescope.
Jan.28,2021 I want to go on filling gaps. This time it's all about RADIO LUXEMBOURG. It began broadcasting on Sep.23,1944 at 18:45hrs end ended its broadcasting on Nov,11,1945, only interrupted during the German Adrennes offensive 19.-23.December 1944. When it was taken by the Allied troups the first words were:'This is R.L....This is R.L... Radio Luxembourg returns to the air as a free station of the United Nations...'. And the German edition began with: 'Hier ist Radio Freies Luxembourg.' (This is Radio Free L.). From October 3,1944 on, it was under the direct command of the Allied HQ (PWD*/SHAEF)[*Political and Psychological Warfare Section]. Thus it became the most important allied station of psychological warfare against Germany. Since October 24,1944 it worked in close cooperation with the parallel departments of the 'European Service' of the BBC yet not always in best harmony between the British and Americans concerning style and contents of the PWD-broadcasts. A close cooperation from the beginning was with ABSiE and STIMME AMERIKAS (Voice of America), i.e.with the civil Office of War Information. When the 12.US Army Group moved away from Luxembourg (beginning of 1945) the PWD/SHAEF took over the broadcasting.- The contents of the broadcasts came from various official press agencies, from the 'Allied Press Service' (of SHAEF), from the OWI and OSS, the US-Monitoring Service FBIS and bbc' Monitoring Service. In addition Radio Luxembourg had its own small Radio Monitoring Service. The editors received additional material from secret service sources and military intelligence material, German field mail letters and other documents found among the captured soldiers' belongings. Sometimes war correspondents were engaged with mobile recording equipment. Access to interrogation minutes of German PoW was granted.
In BROADCASTING (magazine) of Nov.20,1944, the capture of the station is told: 'A casual recital of the details of the capture of the 150 kw Luxembourg station demonstrates the role that Morrie Pierce, a former chief engineer for OWI in Europe and Africa, played. He was with the American Army when it first entered Luxembourg. Junglinster, site of the transmitter,was in enemy hand about 12 miles away. Morrie lost no time in carrying out his objective. He went off in a jeep with three Army men to reconnoiter. Driving toward Junglinster along a side road,they had to wait while two German tanks passed on the main highway. Reaching the town, he inquired of natives the exact location of the transmitter. He was directed to the top of the hill from where he could see the massive towers of the station.A Luxembourger agreed to go down on his bicycle to look over the situation. He reported that the Germans were all at the nearby schoolhouse where they had been quartered. Morrie hurried back to seek the aid of an American armored division. The colonel in charge was non too enthusiastic about taking the station. It didn't seem very important. Fortunately, however, the commanding general appeared on the scene and Morrie again pressed his request, stressing the value of the station both to OWI and SHAEF. ''You really want that station, Pierce?'' asked the general. ''Yes, sir, I do'', Morrie replied..- An order was immediately issued for a platoon of tanks, a platoon of armored cars, and a complement of infantrymen.At midnight, in pitch blackness, the detail set out through the heavy forest, with Morrie and several officers leading in a jeep, guided by soldiers who led the way on foot.The procession moved as quietly as possible without lights. - They soon found the way barred by tank barriers constructed from sections of huge trees. Heavy chains were attached to the logs and pulled away by winches. On one occasion it was necessary to use dynamite to clear the path. By daybreak, the last obstacle- a hill too steep for the tanks to ascend - was reached.- The infantrymen deployed to surround the station. From all sides they closed in on the transmitter house and the antennas. There was no sound from the enemy. The Germans had evidently been frightened away by the blast.- Entering the transmitter house, Morrie found everything intact except that the tubes had been smashed, apparently as the Germans hastily fled. A Luxembourger who had been employed at the station, knew of a German communications supply warehouse. It was found to contain an ample supply of replacement tubes. - That same day, RADIO LUXEMBOURG was broadcasting the ruth for the first time in five years.It had gome off the air Sep.3, 1939 when Britain declared war on Germany and later became one of four leading German propaganda stations. Two others, designated CALAIS 1 and CALAIS 2 were demolished when the Germans took France. The fourth is RADIO BREMEN.'
There were some interesting side-lights in connection with the capture of RADIO LUXEMBOURG. Because of its high power, the station included its own diesel generated electric plant and used the municipal facilities only in an emergency since it caused a suspension of local transit service. Finding the station's power plant without fuel, Morrie dispatched word to Bill Paley at SHAEF headquarters. Within a short time, a fleet of Army trucks arrived with 85,000 gallons of diesel oil to enable the station to operate on full power. .
Morrie said the Germans employed an elaborate network of transmitters exclusively for jamming, with monitors employed to check jamming signals. But despite all their effort they could not keep up with the different medium wave frequencies used by ABSiE and BBC and when France fell a large part of their jammers fell too. Allied shortwave signals are apparently getting into Germany with little difficulty.... In an effort to stop listening to Allied broadcasts, Morrie said, the Germans had resorted to desperate measures. Two months before D-Day all receivers in Normandy and Brittany were confiscated. On top of that, the Germans shut off the power supply, forcing the inhabitants to use candle light. But that did not stop listening. The French built crystal sets. BBC had broadcast instructions in advance on how to build them and use telephone receivers for headsets. The FFI had even operated clandestine stations before the Germans evacuated.'
May 1,2021: Added some lines on Cesar Searchinger. It's at the beginning of the website.
June 17,2021 This story appears in the July/August copy of the Library of Congress Magazine.
On Okinawa, Marines chat about the weather as machine-gun rounds zip overhead. On Iwo Jima, tanks clank ashore under heavy fire. In Nagasaki, an American general instructs Japanese officers to honor the terms of surrender.-These are the sounds of the Marine Corps at war, preserved in thousands of hours of recordings made on battlefields of the Pacific Theater during World War II, then stored away for decades. In recent years, the Library has given them new, digital life and made them accessible in its 'Recorded Sound Research Center'. The Marines using Library training and recording equipment sent two-man teams into combat during the war to document the experiences of troops and provide real-time accounts of some of the toughest fights in Corps lore: Kwajalein, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. During lulls in the fighting, the correspondents would talk to Marines: What did you do in the fight? Anything you'd like to say to the folks back home? Many of the recordings were quickly transferred to vinyl, sent to the States and broadcast on radio to Americans anxious for news about loved ones serving on faraway shores.All of the recordings made at first on wire and later on film stock were transferred to vinyl by the Marines after the war, then sent to the Library for safekeeping. During the 1960s and 1970s, Library technicians transferred the vinyl records to reel-to-reel tapes.Then the tapes just sat, mostly unused.Beginning in 2010, the Library and the Marines jointly undertook a project to give the recordings a digital format and a new audience. Audio engineers at the Library's Packard Campus digitized the tapes, and interns broke the digitized recordings into segments and created a descriptive record for each. The digital files were ingested into the Library's archive and copies sent to the Marines.Interns at Quantico then created detailed summaries of the contents and linked the recordings to photos, articles and records from the Corps archives documents of the war as Marines heard it and lived it on far-flung battlefields across the vast expanses of the Pacific.(The recordings, so far, are available only on site, not online.)
June 22,2021 The first Mobile radio Station in Italy with the 5th Army - Here's an article about it :
Clinton Man Helps Build 5th Army Radio - (From the Clinton Herald, date unknown). Lt. Vern Carstensen Helps Get Programs to Troops Daily.Second Lt. Vern Carstensen, 211 1/2 Second avenue, Clinton, is assigned to a task of helping keep favorite radio programs available each day to widely scattered troops of the Fifth Army in Italy. He's doing the task with a crew of six enlisted men in charge of the Fifth Army's mobile radio station.Designed and built to move and broadcast as an independent unit anywhere in the combat zone, the modern, completely equipped American expeditionary station on wheels is reaching the most isolated units of Fifth Army. A radio service for American fighting men and women and their Allies, the station is the first of its kind to be put in operation in this theatre of war. The broadcasting unit goes on the air at any spot chosen in the Fifth Army area, enabling troops within a radius of 50 miles to tune in. It moves with the army into the location which best enables it to beam its programs to the largest number of troops. Programs By Personnel In order to cut down on the number of transcribed programs it broadcasts daily, the station is now monitoring a Salute to Fifth Army. Unit personnel is auditioned and the programs rebroadcasted.In less than two hours the station can be disassembled, moved, and placed back on the air. The studio can be compared with one in the States that has been moved to Italy and placed on wheels. It has been built into two-and-a-half ton trucks with jeeps and trailers to carry its transmitter, office and studio. With its 10 units, it resembles a small circus on the march.The idea of a mobile radio station for troops was first proposed last year in North Africa by Major Francis L. McAloon, 67 Brigham street, Providence, Rhode Island, Fifth Army assistant special service officer. At that time the Fifth army station was broadcasting from buildings. Its programs were not reaching a majority of fighting men who were outside the radius of the station's transmitter. The real need for a mobile, self-sustaining unit that could reach large members of men.On Air In Month In a little over a month after Carstensen was assigned to the job, the mobile unit went on the air. Shortly after Allied troops invaded Italy below Salerna last September, the station beamed its first program.But the problem of reaching outlying troops still was unvolved. [sic] Although mobile, the station was not servicing some units. Either they did not have radio sets or they were lacking public address systems. Major McAloon went out and either bought or rented more than 700 radios for distribution among remote outfits. Special Services of each unit arranged to install at least one public address system. Now all Fifth army organizations are hearing daily broadcasts. Studio Built By Crew The studio was designed and built, almost in its entirety, by the crew. Captured German and Italian equipment had an important part in the station's construction. American ordnance units built additions to trucks which house the studio, control room and office.German ply wood makes up the walls of the studio which is large enough to stage a four or five-piece swing band. The light fixtures are shaped out of powdered egg cans. An Italian piano, its fringes removed, fits snugly into one corner of the studio.Four Italian field artillery aluminum observation towers have been broken down and made into antennae. Ration cans were shaped into a 10-second warning bell and the on the air sign. Mikes, transmitter and turntables in the central room were sent from the States. With this mobile expeditionary station on the air daily, Fifth army special service has been accomplished perhaps the greatest service in its power to entertain war-weary troops.
See film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7s_f0gZUkA
For an additional article go to https://www.fiftharmymobileradio.com/orig_images/39.JPG
2022 |
| INFO |
Jan.2022: The year 2021 went by and rediscoveries are down to zero!
And the will of some Archives to communicate with private collectors,too.
So it happened that the German Radio Archive -DRA- in Frankfurt informed me that there is no more interest from their side in finding, locating and exchanging new sound documents - as it had been 10 to 40 years ago. Staff and attitude have changed, early principles- gone.
Gone have also the times when RADIO played an important role to document the past (and presenting it via sound documents) - at least in Germany.
Very frustrating.
So be it!
24.Jan.2022: Some early AUSTRALIAN recordings : The oldest surviving Australian sound recording is a novelty song featuring chicken impersonations, The Hen Convention performed by John James Villiers, 1897 (2'08'')
The first and last Tasmanian Aboriginal songs were recorded in 1903, performed by Fanny Cochrane Smith
In 1928 Aviator Bert Hinkler recorded his Message to Australia- incidents of my flight (4'34''), and so did Charles Kingsford-Smith who, with Charles Ulm, took off in their Southern Cross in Oakland and landed after more than 83 hours actual flight time in Brisbane on 10 June 1928. A week later both recorded for COLUMBIA a talk about their flight.
The Aussie Superman was played by Leonard Teale in the 1949-1954 series. At least 1040 15-min.episodes were produced of which most are reported missing. The Australian The Standard wrote on 10 March 1949: 'Superman, the recently-acquired AW 6 o'clocker, not only makes a better radio serial than a newspaper strip, but it is also more healthy for children than most of the serials currently broadcast'...'Of course, our magnetic friend, Clark Kent, still performs miracles, but then you expect that sort of thing in Superman, and it merely seems part of the fun. It is also so fantastic as to presnet no worry to mothers with sensitive youngsters.'...'Another pleasing feature about the AW show is that while we still recognise the script as American, the serial is recorded by Australian voice.'
25.Jan.2022: Among my files I found the article below which I think is quite interesting. It has the title 'Tolsty's audio postcard to the American people- 100-year-old riddle'.
And before you search for it I'd like to quote it here:
MOSCOW. (Anastasia Yelayeva, RIA Novosti) SPUTNIK INTERNATIONAL 28.8.2008 '' It has been a hundred years since the two geniuses, a famous American inventor and a great Russian writer, exchanged what we might now call 'intellectual products.' However, the story still has many historical riddles associated with it. The names of the two men are Thomas Edison, who perfected and patented more than a thousand inventions, and Leo Tolstoy. One of the pet inventions of Edison, who suffered from impaired hearing from birth, was the 'speaking' machine, a phonograph that he patented in 1878. It could record and reproduce sound on wax cylinders. Tolstoy first tried to make a phonograph record in 1895. He was visiting with ethnographer Blok, who had received a batch of new 'speaking' machines from America, and Tolstoy recorded his short story called 'The Repentant Sinner.' Several years later in May 1907 the editor of the New York Times, Stephen Bonsal, visited Leo Tolstoy at his Yasnaya Polyana estate. Moved by the warm reception, he promised the writer to send him the new phonograph, which American journalists were already using extensively in their work. The promised gift reached Russia almost a year later, in January 1908. Bonsal had entrusted the delivery to Arthur Brisbane, his journalist friend from the New York Evening Journal, who in turn went to Edison's firm Edison Business Phonograph. When the inventor was told who the phonograph was intended for, he refused to charge anything and sent his own machine to Yasnaya Polyana with an engraved caption: 'A Gift to Count Leo Tolstoy from Thomas Alva Edison.' The phonograph is still on view at the writer's museum in Yasnaya Polyana. In the summer of 1908 Edison asked the author of 'War and Peace' to make several recordings for him in English and French. '...Short messages conveying to the people of the world some thought that would tend to their moral and social advancement. My phonographs have now been distributed throughout all of the civilized countries, and in the United States alone upwards of one million are in use,' the American wrote. 'Your fame is worldwide, and I am sure that a message from you would be eagerly received by millions of people who could not help from being impressed with the intimate personality of your own words, which through this medium would be preserved for all time...' The Russian classic consented and later, in December 1908, Tolstoy's personal physician Dushan Makovitsky made a diary entry about the 'arrival of two Englishmen with a good phonograph,' who recorded and then played back the voice of Leo Tolstoy. We learn from the doctor's personal notes that Tolstoy 'practiced before speaking into the phonograph, especially the English text.' He prepared for the recording very thoroughly, was very nervous and thought a great deal about what exactly to tell the millions of listeners 'in all the civilized countries of the world.' Tolstoy's friend and assistant, Vladimir Chertkov, advised him to read in English an extract from the treatise 'On Life' written back in 1887. As Tolstoy's personal physician attests, while the writer delivered the Russian and French texts on the first try, when it came to reading in English, he stumbled on a couple of words and decided to make a new recording the following day. Eventually the recordings turned out to be very good, surviving the journey across the ocean and reaching Edison, who confirmed their high quality. Edison's gift and Tolstoy's reciprocal gesture did not pass unnoticed by the press, although either the journalists or the historians, or both had confused a few things about the episode. On February 20, 1908, the respectable Duma newspaper (Dumsky Listok) reported that Leo Tolstoy had dictated some of his interpretations of Evangelical texts. Tolstoy made his speech into the phonograph in English, of which he has a full command.' It would be logical to assume that these were the famous 'cylinders,' especially since on the following day, February 21, the New York Times carried an article entitled 'Tolstoy's Gift to Edison. Will Send Record of His Voice - Edison Gave Him a Phonograph.' However, the fate of these cylinders is unknown to Russian Tolstoy scholars. Indeed, their existence is widely questioned, and the facts set forth in articles in the early 1908 and the discrepancies in the recording dates suggest that eyewitness accounts were invented or distorted. In January 1909, an obscure Moscow newspaper Rul reported a visit to Tolstoy by Edison's closest assistants (in fact the audio engineers): 'Leo Tolstoy read four extracts in Russian, English and German. The cylinders produced a wonderfully clear rendering of his voice. According to our sources, these cylinders will not be released to the public.' In 1911, after Tolstoy's death, the New York Times reported that his son, Count Tolstoy, had visited Edison, who made an exception for the son of the great writer and let him into the famous Room 12, where he stored everything necessary for his experiments. There was a notice over the door saying 'this room is not open to any visitors on any pretext whatever.' Edison's album in which he kept comments by famous people on his inventions contains a note by Tolstoy: 'The most powerful force in the world is thought. The more forms of expression it finds the more that force can manifest itself. The invention of printing was a milestone in human history. The appearance of the telephone and especially the phonograph, which is the most effective and impressive medium for recording and preserving not only the words, but the shades of the voice that says them, will mark another era.' Signed: 'Leo Tolstoy.' But what about the cylinders with the writer's voice which had been dispatched across the ocean? We were told at the Tolstoy State Museum that they most probably perished during a fire at Edison's office in 1914. However, a historian and audio archivist Lev Shilov claims in his book 'The Voices of Writers. Records of a Sound Archivist' that one recording has survived. This was confirmed in the late 1980s by American author Bell Kaufman, a member of the New York Public Library Edward Kazinets and the curator of the Edison Museum Mary B. Bowling. In a letter to the State Literary Museum in Moscow Mary B. Bowling wrote: 'The question has been raised again and again what happened to the cylinders which Tolstoy had recorded for Edison, especially the two recordings in English... the search we have undertaken uncovered a lot of related correspondence and documentation, but not the cylinders themselves. Even so, in response to your letter we have made another thorough study of some of our unmarked cylinders. I am happy to report to you that we have discovered a cylinder with a recording of Tolstoy in English.'Bell Kaufman later came to Moscow, where she met with and allegedly showed the cylinder to Lev Shilov. Unfortunately, Shilov died in 2004 and the authenticity of the find is still in question because there is no documentary proof, and the American side has not revisited the issue. Tolstoy was planning to dictate his reminiscences into the machine even before he received it. But the tests of the phonograph in action showed that it was incapable of recording non-stop for extended periods: the wax cylinders had to be replaced every 10-12 minutes. So Tolstoy decided to use the phonograph to record small parables, tales and letters. The records have preserved for us not only the writer's voice, but also a waltz he had composed. Most of the cylinders with recordings of the writer's voice, which, incidentally, were later issued on CDs, are now at the Tolstoy State Museum. As for the legendary recording addressed to 'the civilized peoples of the whole world' and dispatched to America, its fate has yet to be found out.''
25 Jan.2022: Something that could be filed under Chapter IV: ''The 'Lost' Tracing of Lincoln's Voice'' (as reported by FIRSTSOUNDSORG in c.2008)
''Did douard-Lon Scott de Martinville record Abraham Lincoln's voice on a phonautograph in the White House in 1863? We often get asked about this persistent rumor. The answer: we have seen no solid evidence that such a recording session ever took place, and we can trace the rumor itself back only a few decades.In Antique Collecting for Men (1969), Louis Hertz writes about 'two legends that continually pass among succeeding groups of collectors, evidently possessing a curious attraction for the minds of such enthusiasts.' One of these involves photography, but the other 'relates to the supposed premature invention of the phonograph by a Frenchman who visited the White House with his machine during the Civil War and actually made recordings of the voice of Abraham Lincoln. His recording material, however, supposedly was so impermanent that a record could be played back but once and was then useless. Furthermore, supposedly his last record remained unplayed for some years until at last Edison ruined it in a bungled attempt to play it into one of his early machines so that it could permanently be preserved. The origin of this story apparently comes from garbled accounts of the Phonautograph, a device invented in 1857 by Leon Scott, that would make a graph of the human voice but not a playable recording' (pp. 269-70).Thirty years later, the New York Times interviewed prominent collector and researcher Allen Koenigsberg, who was familiar with Hertz's account, as quoted above. The article opens with a version of the story that departs markedly from Hertz's. It is now Scott himself who is alleged to have made the recording, which was not destroyed by Edison but has instead 'never been found,' turning it into a holy grail the 'lost tracing of Lincoln's voice.'This legend resurfaces in Brad Smith's novel Busted Flush (2005), which credits Koenigsberg with technical guidance. Smith's protagonist discovers a phonautograph with an intact recording in a sealed room among other Lincoln artifacts. A neighbor later tells him: 'Leon Scott visited the United States in 1863, and it's been well documented that he paid Lincoln a visit in Washington while he was here. There's been a persistent rumor floating around ever since that he recorded old Abe on a phonautograph and that the cylinder still exists somewhere. One theory has it stashed away somewhere in the White House archives' (p. 200). In fact, Smith's characters conclude they have something different: a live recording of Lincoln delivering his Gettysburg Address, made by a local inventor-tinkerer. But meanwhile the story of Scott's visit to Lincoln has advanced from speculation to 'well documented' fact.So it is that a 1960s fable about lost opportunity has become a persistent legend about lost treasure. If anyone can trace the story back before 1969, we'd like very much to hear about it. But we can also challenge the rumor from another direction. Scott's private autobiography, still in the possession of his descendants, spells out his activities for the 1860s in considerable detail. There's no mention in it of a visit to the United States.''
27 April,2022It seems ages that something interesting has come up. So today I post an article issued 5 days ago under the title 'Saving the Sounds of the Early 20th Century Some recordings in the New York Public Library's wax cylinder collection haven't been heard in generations -until now'. '...The Mapleson cylinders are the prized possession of the New York Public Library's vast wax cylinder collection, which comprises about 2,700 recordings. Only a small portion of those cylinders, around 175, have ever been digitized. The vast majority of the cylinders have never even been played in the generations since the library acquired them. But that's all about to change. The library recently acquired a nearly $50,000 machine to create digital recordings of their wax cylinder collection. In the world of wax cylinders, innovations like this come about only once every 20 years, says Jessica Wood, the library's assistant curator of music and recorded sound. 'To be able to hear stuff that was recorded in the 1890s is pretty magical' she says.' To continue reading go to : https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/library-wax-cylinder-digitize-machine.
29 April,2022 I think that digging out sounds has also something to do with documenting everything that is around them. And as spoken word discoveries are down to zero , you might be interested in this discovery: 'Photographer's 3,200 Undeveloped Film Rolls Hold History of Rock 'n' Roll'. We grew up with music and here is something that went along: https://petapixel.com/2022/03/20/photographers-3200-undeveloped-film-rolls-hold-history-of-rock-n-roll/ . Fascinating!
May 2022 'Handle with care- Managing radio collections related to the second world war'- A panel session at the IASA 50th anniversary conference, held from 30th September to 3rd October 2019 at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, in Hilversum, Netherlands. Panellists: Florence Gillet, Frantisek Stambera, Carolyn Birdsall, Richard Ranft, Bas Agterberg, Friedrich Dethlefs. Go to: https://vimeo.com/377041072
2 Aug.2022I found this interesting interview with former Senior manager in the BBC Sound Archives, Simon Rooks, with Cerys Matthews (of 28.10.2018):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06q3l43
7 Aug.,2022 Just watched a BRITISH PATH clip 'The Listening Post' showing the work of the BBC Monitoring Service. What surprised me was that they still used Edison's Ediphone cylinders to record what they were listening to in 1940! Probably to erase them after a written copy had been made. - To see the clip just go to YOUTUBE and enter the title.
26 Sep.,2022Another respected collector has died, a man who had dedicated his life to the preservation of folk music and everything around it: Joe Bussard.
(wiki)Joseph Edward Bussard Jr. (July 11, 1936 - September 26, 2022) was an American collector of 78-rpm records. He was noted for owning more than 15,000 records, principally from the 1920s and 1930s, at the time of his death. Over his lifetime, Bussard amassed a collection of between 15,000 and 25,000 records, primarily of American folk, gospel, jazz and blues from the 1920s and 1930s.From 1956 until 1970, Bussard ran the last 78 rpm record label, Fonotone, which was dedicated to the release of new recordings of old-time music. Among these were recordings by hundreds of performers, including the first recordings by the guitarist John Fahey. A five-CD anthology of Fonotone releases was issued in 2005 by Dust-to-Digital. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package in 2006. - Bussard was the subject of a documentary film, Desperate Man Blues (2003), and his collection was mined for a compilation CD, Down in the Basement. He also authored his own entry in The Encyclopedia of Collectibles, which was published in 1978. He shared his collection, which included many only-known-copies of records, best-known-copies, and numerous reissue labels, as well as work with individuals for whom he taped recordings from his collection for a nominal sum for decades. [He also gave dubs of his priceless records to Johnny Parth of DOCUMENT RECORDS fame. B.W.] His daughter reckoned that a minimum of 150 individuals visited their home annually to hear him play songs and recount how he obtained his records. Bussard produced a weekly music program, Country Classics, for Georgia Tech's radio station, WREK Atlanta. He had radio programs on other stations: including WPAQ-AM 740 in Mount Airy, North Carolina, and WDVX in Knoxville, Tennessee. He disliked the city of Nashville, Tennessee, sometimes called 'Music City', calling it 'Trashville'. In a 2022 intervew, Bussard cited the recording, 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' by Blind Willie Johnson, as one of the greatest recordings of all time. He visited a flea market in Emmitsburg, Maryland, a month before his death to look for more 78s, but left empty-handed.- Bussard died on September 26, 2022, at his home in Frederick while in hospice care. He was 86, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years prior to his death.(end of quote). There are films on and with him on YOUTUBE.
12 Dec.2022I want to finish this year's postings with an item you can find on YOUTUBE (posted in 2012), It's part of our spoken word collection: Propaganda broadcasts during WWII. I quote the YT entry: Glaoch n Tr Reich/ Call from the Third Reich tells the fascinating story of the Nazi propaganda radio broadcasts in Irish during World War 2. A new documentary on TG4 tells the amazing story of two German men that travelled to Donegal in the 1920s and 1930s, learned to speak Irish fluently and returned to Germany to broadcast Nazi propaganda in Irish during World War two! Glaoch n Tr Reich tells the unbelievable story of the Nazi propaganda radio broadcasts in Irish during the Second World War. The story is told from the perspective of a former student of the man who masterminded the broadcasts, Dr. Hans Hartmann. Dr.Ardnt Wigger retraces the steps of his former teacher and supervisor Hans Hartmann, who alongside his teacher Ludwig Mhlhausen broadcast Nazi propaganda in Irish from 1939-1945 on the Irish language station Irland Redaktion, based in Berlin. While exploring the amazing, and sometimes uncomfortable, personal stories of the pair, Dr Wigger travels to Connemara, Dublin, Donegal and Berlin to find out the extent of Hartmann's involvement in the German war effort and to investigate why the Special Branch were tailing him while he was in Ireland. He also journeys to Donegal to delve deeper into the work of Hartmann's mentor Professor Ludwig Mhlhausen. He hears stories from the locals about the mysterious German spy in the sleepy townland of Teelin in the 1930s and finds out that detailed information about this part of South Donegal later appeared in a Nazi invasion handbook. To hear Irish on the radio in 1939 was a remarkable thing in itself, but to hear Nazi propaganda as Gaeilge was nothing short of astonishing! The radio service began broadcasting in December 1939, initially on Sunday evenings after the Lord Haw-Haw broadcast, but it was soon on every night of the week, three times a night and it continued until May 1945. (end of quote) Go to YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6-w5oI4318&t=43s
2023 |
| INFO |
Jan.2,2023 Wax Cylinders Hold Audio From a Century Ago. The Library Is Listening.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts acquired a machine that transfers recordings from the fragile format. Then a batch of cylinders from a Met Opera librarian arrived.By Jeremy Gordon in THE NEW YORK TIMES Published Jan. 2, 2023
The first recording, swathed in sheets of distortion, was nonetheless recognizable as a child's voice small, nervous, encouraged by his father wishing a very Merry Christmas to whoever was listening.The second recording, though still noisy, adequately captured the finale of the second act of Aida, performed by the German singer Johanna Gadski at the Metropolitan Opera House in the spring of 1903.And the third recording was the clearest yet: the waltz from Romeo and Juliet, also from the Met, sung by the Australian soprano Nellie Melba.Accessed by laptop in a conference room at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the recordings had been excavated and digitized from a much older source: wax cylinders, an audio format popularized in the late 19th century as the first commercial means of recording sound. These particular documentations originated with Lionel Mapleson, an English-born librarian for the Metropolitan Opera, who made hundreds of wax cylinder recordings, capturing both the turn-of-the-century opera performances he saw as part of his job and the minutiae of family life.For decades, the Mapleson Cylinders, as they're called by archivists and audiologists, have been a valuable but fragile resource. Wax cylinders were not made for long-term use the earliest models wore out after a few dozen plays and are especially vulnerable to poor storage conditions. But with the innovation of the Endpoint Cylinder and Dictabelt Machine, a custom-built piece of equipment made specifically for safely transferring audio from the cylinders, the library is embarking on an ambitious preservation project: to digitize not just the Mapleson Cylinders, but roughly 2,500 others in the library's possession.The machine will also allow the library to play a handful of broken Mapleson cylinders that nobody alive has ever heard. 'I have no idea what they're going to sound like, but the fact that they were shattered a long time ago saved them from being played too often,' said Jessica Wood, the library's assistant curator for music and recorded sound.'It's possible that the sound quality of those will let us hear something totally new from the earliest moments in recording history.'- Some of the Mapleson Cylinders had already been in the library's collection, but another batch was recently provided by Alfred Mapleson, the Met librarian's great-grandson. This donation was accompanied by another valuable resource: a collection of diaries, written by Lionel Mapleson, that studiously chronicled both his daily life and the Metropolitan Opera's calendar. The diaries provide extra context to both Mapleson's audio recordings and the broader world of New York opera. One entry from New Year's Day in 1908 noted the 'tremendous reception' for a performance by Gustav Mahler. Another described the time that the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, 'in rage', dismissed his orchestra because of noise on the roof.'The consistent keeping of this diary is much more important than just for music,' said Bob Kosovsky, a librarian in the New York Public Library's music division. 'It's such an amazing insight into life in New York and England, since he went back every summer to the family.' The library acquired the Endpoint machine from its creator, Nicholas Bergh, last spring, as NPR reported then. 'The Western music at that time was being recorded in the studios, so it's very unique to have someone that was documenting what was actually going on there at the theater,' said Bergh, who developed the machine as part of his work in audio preservation.Alfred Mapleson soon reached out to the library about the diaries, and the collection of his great-grandfather's cylinders that had, for years, awaited rediscovery in his mother's Long Island basement. In November, they were packed into coolers and transported by climate-controlled truck to the library, where they're now stored in acid-free cardboard boxes meant to mitigate the risk of future degradation. (On Long Island, they'd been kept in Tuborg Gold beer caddies.) These particular cylinders were previously available to the library in the 1980s, when they were transferred to magnetic tape and released as part of a six-volume LP set compiling the Mapleson recordings. After that, they were returned to the Mapleson family, while the greater collection stayed with the library. But, Wood said, 'there's people all over the world that are convinced that a new transfer of those cylinders would reveal more audio details than the previous ones.'Wax cylinders were traditionally played on a phonograph, where, similar to a modern record player, a stylus followed grooves in the wax and translated the information into sound. The Endpoint machine uses a laser that places less stress on the cylinders, allowing it to take a detailed imprint without sacrificing physical integrity, and to adjust for how some cylinders have warped over time. The machine can retrieve information from broken cylinder shards that are incapable of being traditionally played, which can then be digitally reconstituted into a complete recording.Within the next few years, the library hopes to digitize both the cylinders and the diaries, and make them available to the public. The non-Mapleson cylinders in the library's collection are also eligible to be digitized, though Wood said that process will be determined based on requests for certain cylinders. The library's engineers are shared across departments, and with a backlog of thousands, she said, 'We have to wait our turn.'The wax cylinders comprise just one aspect of the library's ongoing audiovisual archival projects. Its archives of magnetic tape were recently digitized thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. And curators are in talks with Bergh about a new machine he's developing that can play back wire recording, a midcentury format that captured audio on a thin steel wire. Wood estimated that about 32,000 lacquer discs - a predecessor to the vinyl record - at very high risk of deterioration are also in the digitization queue. These discs contain all types of audio, including radio excerpts, early jazz music and recordings made at amusement parks. 'Libraries, in general, are very focused on books and paper formats,' Wood said. 'We're getting to a point where we've had to argue less hard for the importance of sound recordings, and that's allowing us to get some more traction to invest resources in digitizing these'.Alfred Mapleson said he was simply happy to put his family inheritance to good use. The cylinders were previously part of the Mapleson Music Library, a family-owned business that rented sheet music, among other things, to performers. But the business liquidated in the mid-1990s, and the cylinders had sat untouched in his mother's basement ever since.'There's an important obligation to history that needs to be maintained,' he said. 'We don't want them sitting in our possession, where they could get lost or damaged.' He waved off the possibility of selling them to a private collector, where they might find no public utility: 'That's not something that would sit well with my family.' is great-grandfather's archives had offered him plenty to reflect on. His wife had gone through the diaries, he said, and pointed out the behavioral similarities between living family members and their ancestors. He noted, with some awe, how his grandfather's voice the one wishing a Merry Christmas resembled his own children's voices. But it was time to pass everything on, and he said he had no interest in repossessing the materials once the library had finished digitizing everything. 'It's in better hands at the New York Public Library,' he said. 'The recordings had originated at the Metropolitan Opera; now, they would reside nearby forever. Let's keep it in New York, because this is where it all happened. I like that idea.'
Jan.19,2023 DAILY TELEGRAPH 19 Jan.23 [quote] AI brings missing wartime deGaulle speech back to life, by Henry Samuel
A lost speech by Ch.DeGaulle can now be heard for the first time after scientists used IAI to give voice to a newly discovered transcript. - DeGaulle's plea of June18,1940 for the French to resist the Nazi occupation was broadcast from a BBC studio in London and is remembered every year by successive Gallic heads of state. Yet, no recording survived and the text, which appears in French history books, is not true to the words he read out. - It was thought that the transcript had been lost forever, but 82 years on, Le Monde yesterday published a speech that had been sitting in the archives of Swiss military intelligence for years. - As the transcript was in German, the newspaper asked historians to check if the French version adhered to the general's style. - The resuls lay to rest any suggestion that it contained the famous De Gaulle line:''France has lost a battle but France has not lost the war''.[see my research below.] That phrase was later added to a poster produced in early August 1940 which appeared all over London and circulated abroad. - Nor does the transcript contain oft-cited: ''I,General de Gaulle, take up here, in England, this national task [of Free France's political and military chief-in-exile]''. Those words were actually uttered a few days later, on June 22. - However the transcript does end with the famous rallying call:''Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow,as today,I will speak on the radio from London''. - The actual speech was made the day afte deGaulle left France in disgust when Marshal Philippe Ptain declared an armistice with Germany. - Le Monde teamed up with the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music in Paris where experts fed other De Gaulle recordings into its computer system and reconstituted the speech by hanging it on a recording of an actor's voice, which they then morphed into that of De Gaulle. -Le Monde said its AI recreation of the transcript is faithful to the recordings of the time, which betrayed a ''49-year-old resistance figure'' with ''a voice that was still stumbling and worried''. - What happened to the original speech's recording remains a mystery. [end of quotation]
The video to that article can be found on YOUTUBE. It's in French with English subtitles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LEg3TU9-kU
Doing a research in my sound archive I found that the BBC French Service RADIO LONDRES quotes DeGaulle in its news broadcast of June 18 with the words ''La France a perdu une bataille, mais la France n'a pas perdu la guerre''
Mar.13,2023 The Whereabouts of German Sound Recordings after WWII in Prague
On Feb.14,2017 the Czech Radio (Cesk rozhlas)PLUS broadcasted a programme 'The mysterious loot-fonds'.
In the building of the Czech Radio Station in Prag-Vinohrady a great part of the German Reichs-Radio (RRG) is stored. Hundreds of hours of unknown sounds material. It is labelled as 'Beutefonds' (loot-fonds). Not only its contents but also its history is mysterious.
The following is a short summary of this broadcast: Under the building of the Czech Broadcasting House, in the third basement floor the modern Czech history of the last 90 years is kept. Yet it also houses tens of thousand of gramphone discs and matrixes which do not belong there, recordings from the 1930s to the end of WWII. The archivists of the Czech radio call them 'loot-fonds' . One of them, Miloslav Turek, works down here. His only help is a computer, no other digital gadgets, unsorted piles of papers, reel-to-reel tapes, records in paper covers. He says that the 'loot-fonds' covers everything that the former German RRG has left. Eva Jesutov, head of the Czech radio archive, tells the listeners that she had heard for the first time of that 'fonds' back in 1982, when she began working for the Radio Station. The Radio Archive was in a desolate condition, then in Prerov nad Labem, where it was scattered over all the rooms of a beautiful Renaissance castle, the 'fonds' In a separate depository called 'Na ruzku' ('At the corner'), originally a pub, unused for decades, with wooden shelves, loamy ground, dirt and dust all over, no lights. Aked why archive material was treated that way she explains that in the immediate post-war times everything German was despised, especially such an enormous collection. When she first entered the depository the ground was covered with gramophone discs, most in pieces, matixes, spiderwebs all over, mice. It remained that way till the end of the 1980s. Then the radio station began using some music discs here and there on the culture channel 'Vltava'. Many questions are still unanswered, e.g. what the 'loot-fonds' contains, what recordings and information it deals with. Legends spin around the story how the 'loot-fonds' had come to Prague. No written document exists. And so recollections are passed on, everybody added his own ideas so that in the end it is a diffuse story that begins at the end of WWII. One story goes telling that it the archive was taken from Dresden to Pilsen to rescue it. Then a quarter of it should have been taken to Karlin and stored there in cellars. The remaining three quarters were, so they say, taken away by the Red Army and are now in Moscow. ' The author thinks that that might be the truth because in the early 1980s Klaus Lang , music editor with the SFB (Sender Freies Berlin) discovered discs of Wilhelm Furtwngler in the then Soviet Union, in Leningrad. End of the 80s he found boxes full of RRG-reel-to-reel tapes in Moscow's Central Archive of which Russia gave back 1500 as a sign of 'good will'. Jesutova: This 'fonds' is enormous but not preserved entirely. Discs are broken, some may have been lost from the beginning. Duplicates were sorted out, lost and broken sound carriers taken off the lists. In 2013 , after a closer examination, the workers of the archive came to the following result: In the archive of the Czech Broadcasting Station are 9,226 Gramophone records and 19,916 metal matrixes (with them 'black discs' can be pressed), all from the archive of the RRG. The author stets: 'When I look at the number of sound carriers in Prague, then there is something wrong. Mrs Jesutova says that the Russians took most 'three quarters- of the German Reichs Archive to Russia. But what is deposited in Prague is by far a bigger amount than that that had been returned to German after the fall of Communism. So there are two possible explanations: either the Russians took only a small part of the Archive or there are tens of thousand more RRG-recordings in Moscow's archives.' Back in the third underground floor the author meets radio archivist Blohlvek who shows him the 222 meters of shelves in iron boards. He says that not much has been investigated here. Most material are music pieces, classical music, Folk music, marches, opera but also Nazi speakers. Sometimes he finds matrixes with no information written on them. So many recordings could not be identified. He estimates that about 30% have not been identified which means 6,000 of the 20,000 matrixes in the Archive. With five minute on each matrix it would mean a total of 500 hours. Maybe there are musical pieces the music professionals think they are lost or there are interpretations nobody knows anything about. Jesutova adds: The Czech Broadcasting Station plans to digitise all sound documents, but with 200,000 Czech Gramophon discs the RRG-ones will have to wait. And the author estimates that it will take 10-20 years although some hundred have already been digitised. The initiative come from the German Radio Archive in Frankfurt/Germany , the DRA. But they were only interested in spoken word recordings. [Ann.: Walter Roller of the DRA discovered several radio plays of famous German authors which, after the matixes had been taken to Germany to press 'black discs' from them, they were broadcast on German radio. B.W.] What the Czech need is a German speaking music scholar to get through the music section. The author Pavel Polk concludes his report with the words: 'There is more than enough to do: to press 'black discs' from the matrixes, listen to them, identify them and put them together. And so this broadcast has no real ending. In contrary, it ends with the questions: Do they know in Germany about that 'fonds' . And do music scholars feel like exploring it? One thing is sure: The story of the 'loot-fonds' will have a follow-up.
March 30,2023 ALL the Houdini wax cylinder audio has been saved and it's phenomenal! Read the article of 29 March 23 here:
https://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2023/03/all-houdini-wax-cylinder-audio-has-been.html
April 7,2023 Benjamin Ferencz, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, has died at the age of 103. On the occasion of his death on April 7, 2023, Deutsche Welle is showing the documentary 'Benjamin Ferencz's Fight for Justice'.It's on YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AjvsX76ImI
Ferencz came to Germany as a young US soldier to secure evidence of the crimes committed there after the liberation of the concentration camps. He came across detailed files of the so-called 'Einsatzgruppen' - an experience he could hardly talk about. He became the chief prosecutor in one of the Nuremberg follow-up trials against 22 SS commanders. The Harvard graduate dedicated the rest of his life to the idea of an International Criminal Court, as had already been called for in Nuremberg. In 2002, the idea finally became reality with the founding of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. With precise analysis, Ferencz presents the story of a century in the film that led humanity to the greatest catastrophes, but also to the wildest hopes of a more just world. Director Ullabritt Horn accompanied her very vital and fun-loving main character to performances in Washington, New York, Frankfurt and Nuremberg and also lets her companions have their say.
and just out on '60 Minutes' on YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-uxyrHJ_mE
May 02,2023 Sad news: my favorite singer and song writer, Gordon Lightfoot, died yesterday, 84 years old. He has accompanied me through my early folk years in the 1960s and all the following years. All of his records are in my LP collection, and, thanks to Youtube, his concerts are now available outside the American continent.
-another voice so closely associated with life in the 60s and 70s, who left so many anthems and memories so much music that instantly transcends time. That voice is now gone- a supremely gifted artist who left a profound impression on so many lives, One of the most renowned voices to emerge from Toronto's Yorkville folk club scene in the 1960s, Lightfoot recorded 20 studio albums and penned hundreds of songs, including 'Carefree Highway', 'Early Morning Rain' and 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald'.In the 1970s, Lightfoot garnered five Grammy nominations, three platinum records and nine gold records for albums and singles. He performed in well over 1,500 concerts and recorded 500 songs. He toured late into his life. Just last month he canceled upcoming U.S. and Canadian shows, citing health issues.Once called a 'rare talent' by Bob Dylan, Lightfoot has been covered by dozens of artists, including Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, Johnny Cash, Anne Murray, Jane's Addiction and Sarah McLachlan. Most of his songs are deeply autobiographical with lyrics that probe his own experiences in a frank manner and explore issues surrounding the Canadian national identity. 'Canadian Railroad Trilogy' depicted the construction of the railway.'I simply write the songs about where I am and where I'm from,' he once said. 'I take situations and write poems about them.'Lightfoot's music had a style all its own. 'It's not country, not folk, not rock,' he said in a 2000 interview. Yet it has strains of all three.
August 19,2023 Interesting article of 1940 by William Shirer 'Berlin Speaking' https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1940/09/166-3/132445317.pdf
Oct.20,2023 For those who are interested in 100 Years German Radio here is a link to a broadcast of DLF LANGE NACHT (Long Night) by my friend Christian Blees, Berlin: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/100-jahre-radio-114.html . It leads to an RSS file to download the 158 minutes full of sound documents! Highly recommended.
December 2023 news on sound recording discovery are down to zero, as far as I am aware of! - Have a good start into the new year whatever it may bring.
2024 |
| INFO |
Feb.03,2024 Similar to above: 'The Commandant - Notes of SS-Obersturmbannfhrer Rudolf H' (Jrg Amann, 2011) - Radio play.Jrg Amann has condensed the notes that Auschwitz commandant Rudolf H wrote down before his execution into a monstrous monologue: This book locks its reader in the head of a mass murderer . From these self-testimonies, from this shockingly naive self-denunciation, an answer to fiction could be obtained from reality. H himself had put the notes coldly on paper in the period between his arrest after the end of the war by the British military police and his sentence to death by the Polish Supreme People's Court in pre-trial detention in Krakw, without a hint of remorse or even insight. The document resulted in around three hundred tightly printed pages. In a dramaturgical process of structuring and condensation, first in large parts, then in ever smaller parts, J.A.: 'I narrowed them down to their essence. The result is a monodrama in sixteen stations. Nothing is invented, hardly a word is added, hardly a sentence is changed, everything is covered by the lived and forfeited life of Rudolf H'- A radio play monologue from ORF (Austrian TV), 2012 Can be found in book form under the following ISBN: 978-3716026397. The reading is on YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s81KlpAyhPo
Feb.25,2024 An interesting text about Gray and Black Radio Propaganda Against Nazi Germany by Robert Rowen presented to the New York Military Affairs Symposium April 18, 2003 The CUNY Graduate Center https://bobrowen.com/nymas/radioproppaper.htm
March 4,2024 If you are interested in very early classical music, then go to marstonrecords.com, now also featured by longtime Marston supporter Tim Page who wrote an article about Ward Marston and Marston Records this past February for the Wall Street Journal which can be accessed via https://www.facebook.com/MarstonRecords/ . In addition to referencing many of their most recent releases, the article mentions a long-awaited project next in line: the 1938 Parsifal with Flagstad and Melchior planned to be produced later this year.
|
About the 'roots' of my collecting see the article in the IASA INFORMATION BULLETIN #56 of July 2006 (now available on the Net at-click down there- http://iasa-web.org/information-bulletin-no-56-july-2006).
If you want to get in contact with me either for comment or exchange
of sounds or information, do not hesitate to go to: |
March 4, 2024
THANKS FOR VISITING
(c) B.Wichert 2004-2024 - please do not reproduce articles or notes without informing me (thx).