FW04175.pdf

4Hungary in 1892. Z By the turn of the centurystudies based upon phonograph cylinder recordingswere being published in both theUnited States and Europe.Fewkes used a cylinder recorder thatwas operated by a foot treadle. He laterused equipment driven by an electric motorpowered by storage batteries. By 1890lighter. portable. spring driven phonographswere on the market. These became the standardequipment for ethnologists interested inrecording sound.Although the Gramaphone. a disc recorder.had been invented by Emil Berlineraround 1887 and was in full production tenyears later. it did not compete with thecylinder phonograph in field work until thelate 1930·s. when battery powered electronicdisc recorders became available for thispurpose. Until this date the cylinder recorder-lightin weight. requiring no electricsupply. and equally useful for recording andplayback-reigned supreme.The development of a mechanical meansof recording sound and the growing interestin the study of these records promted numerousgovernments and universities toestablish archives in which recordings couldbe properly preserved and studied. The firstof these archives. the Phonogramm-Archivof the Austrian Academy of Science. wasestablished in Vienna in 1899. The foundingof similar archives in France. England. andGermany followed rapidly.3 Collections ofphonograph cylinders were also soon developedin the United States. the earliest at theAmerican Bureau of Ethnology. However.the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv soon achievedpre-eminence among the repositories of recordingsof traditional music through theextensive activities of von Hornbostel and ofa large circle of other competent scholarswho formed what has been called the" BerlinSchool."Although commercially made cylinderrecordings were often of fairly high fidelity.wax cylinders cut in the field rarely were.They frequently suffered from high surfacenoise. badly cut grooves. or from otherdeficiencies caused by poor storage conditionsor improper handling of the extremelyfragile wax tubes. It is therefore not surprisingthat Abraham and von Hornbostel intheir classic work on transcription techniquesoffer the following suggestion: .. If the phonographis at fault. place (?) over the note inquestion. ,,4 Those who listen to these recordingswith some historical perspectivewill develop a lively respect for the patienceand perseverance of the scholars who. workingwith such relatively crude instruments. builtthe firm foundations of a new discipline.Recording OvimVundu drummers bycylinder phonograph. Angola. 1929.G. L.Das Aufnehmen der Ovimbundu Trommlerauf Walzenphonographen. Angola. 1929.Notes1. J. Walter Fewkes. .. Contributionsto Passamaquoddy Folk-lore." Journal ofAmerican Folklore. III (October -December1890). 65-91.2. Walter Graf ... The Phonogrammarchivder Osterreichischen Akademie derWissenschaften in Vienna." The Folkloreand Folk Music Archivist. IV (Winter 1962). 1.3. Ibid.4. "VorschHige zur Transkription exotischerMelodien." Sammelbande derInternationalen Musik-Gesellschaft. XI(1909-1910). 6.