The main purpose of sound archives is the collection, recording and documentation of archive material. In opposition to this, the demands of radio archives are defined by the more extensive commission of a broadcasting station. This is formulated in general terms in the broadcasting act of Süddeutscher Rundfunk: the proposition of broadcasting is “the arrangement and transmission of performances of all kinds by using electric vibrations in word, sound and picture as far as they address the public”. Two essential aspects of radio archives’ work are highlighted in this proposition. Firstly the variety of the collecting field which includes the variety of archive material, and secondly the audience - millions of broadcast listeners who originate from very different social levels and who have various interests and expectations from radio programmes. The Süddeutscher Rundfunk has, therefore, established four types of programme which differ considerably from each other. A broadcasting archive must cater for all these different requirements with its material.
The sound archives are mainly archives for production and have to provide the material, which is necessary for everyday broadcasting use. Hence for many years the policy was to keep only those sound carriers of music or spoken word which would be repeated in other programmes. The main criterion for keeping a record was the possibility of repetition; in other words, its repertoire value. Only when the archive material grew old, an increasing sense of historical phenomena caused a slow change in the evaluation of archive material, especially when after one or two decades from the production day of a record, a more objective view of form and subject became possible.
Today the archives have a double function. Firstly they have to supply the daily programme, and secondly to prepare their material so that science, arts and research can all make use of it. The radio archivist has to collect the records and make them fit for use when they are needed of programme making. In addition he needs to determine whether the record is a document in itself and of value in the future because of its contents, which could be characteristic of the feeling and thinking of the time in which it was produced. Examples of the different types of recording which have to be examined and analysed would include: news, news analysis, parliamentary debates, public shows, news reports, interviews, statements, sports news, lectures, readings, poetry readings, radio plays, light entertainment programmes, school radio, programmes for special audience groups, and in the field of music recordings, all types of music including serious music, light music, pop and jazz.
The main problem in carrying out this work of appraisal lies in the great number of recordings, which enter into German radio sound archives every year. The figures for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk archive in 1980 were:
5000 commercial records of light music containing 33,000 individual titles
800 commercial records of serious music
4430 music tapes (commercial and radio recordings)
4200 tapes of spoken word.
How can master or even come to terms with such a flood of material? Shortly after broadcasting every production (commercial and radio production) comes into the sound archives where it is documented and catalogued by specially trained staff. In our case selection does not mean a decision to keep or to erase, for as a rule we keep nearly everything. Selection in relation to our daily work means making decisions as to how intensive the cataloguing must be, because with the intensity of documentation the quality of information and research about a recording increases.
This paper deals with the cataloguing of music recordings. For a description of the documentation of spoken word recordings, the reader is referred to the paper published by Hansjörg Xylander of Radio Munich, “Documentation of spoken word soundtracks in broadcasting”, Phonographic Bulletin no. 30 July 1981.
Music recordings of light music are primarily a commodity of every day broadcasting. Here it would seem sufficient to register the basics data such as composer, title, artists and licence rights. In every day practice it is the music title or the musicians, which are the usual search terms. Süddeutscher Rundfunk recently began using electronic data processing and we are now able to combine different data elements with each other and achieve more precise selection than by a conventional cataloguing system. This means, however, that we have to enlarge the input to cope with the various possibilities of combining formal, special musical, technical or artistic problems. We can now for example ask a computer to look for a recording of “Yesterday”, not sung by the Beatles, in an instrumental version, with a small group and no longer than three minutes. Such detailed questions may seem curious, but are quite common in the daily work of a radio archive.
In the field of serious music we started years ago to intensify the conventional working methods of cataloguing. Now we have a very efficient cataloguing system at our Disposal, which demands not only the documentation of formal dates, but also the contents of the work and certain aspects of music history, and musicology. When cataloguing of instrumental music the musical genre and musicians are also registered. Choral music, for example, is divided into sacred and secular music and, within the different types, into forms like oratorio, mass, madrigal and solo items. Important historical dates to be noted are the years of composition, dedication, literary or other subjects for the music and so on. For example, questions may arise about a piece of music which has been dedicated to the Emperor Napoleon, or about works which have been written between 1780 and 1800 outside the German musical world, or about a musical profile of works which were published in 1900, or a catalogue of works by women composers. All those questions are difficult even for an archivist with special training, and he will normally not be able to answer such questions from memory, but will need special catalogues, which are dependent upon the detail of documentation, put on to the database.
To put the issues in general terms: in radio archives selecting, collecting, cataloguing and erasing are directed by the needs of the radio station and its main purpose, namely the preparation and realization of daily programmes of all kinds. The process of planning which takes place before broadcasting and is often carried out by the programme maker and not the archivist, who may not even be concerned at this stage. The programme maker has to ask the questions: which available record has to be bought, which new productions should be made by the radio itself, or which artists should be asked to perform? The archivist will be confronted later with the result of this planning process. He has to decide whether a recording has documentary worth or not, considering the internal radio point of view as well as the artistic and scientific one.
There are quite a number of criteria of documentation that we have to keep in mind when looking at a recording. The worth of a recording may lie in its singular and unrepeatable character (for instance a concert with a famous artist, the speech of a public personality in a special situation, or a live recording from the first landing on the moon). Or it may lie in the content, which characterizes a special problem or situation (for example, an interview about the problems of the unemployed). In this case the topic of the recording is of importance. At the same time the structural criteria have to be taken into consideration, for example, the formal and artistic quality of a recording itself (the new recording techniques like quadrophonic or artificial head stereo sound, artificial recording techniques - like a radio play production using the collage technique, or certain pieces of contemporary music, which sometimes can only be performed through the technical means of the radio for which they were composed). These two fields-content and form-can easily overlap. An example might be the BBC radio speeches of Thomas Mann during the war, addressed to German listeners, or a concert with famous artists, which is broadcast on United Nations Day. Generally we can say that the more of these criteria which are to be found on a recording, the more this recording is worth documenting.
Selection and documentation in a radio archive needs a strategy and working method, which differs greatly from those of other archives where documentation is an end in itself. In a radio station the archive has to provide the daily programmes with repertoire material and therefore has to be prepared to offer a wide spectrum of recordings. The selection decision of the archivist is less a decision of whether or not to keep or to erase, than one of whether or not to increase the depth of the documentation. Radio documentation and selection are composed of three functions: the formal registration, the recording of the contents and the presentation of different forms and branches of programmes. Included are those records, which reveal that they can be used for programme purposes as well as for arts, science, culture and education outside the radio. It is the duty of the archivist to keep both these sides in mind, help and advice for the programme makers and adequate documentation of the actualities of the day. The radio sound archivist must try to avoid mistakes in his selection, a demand that possibly can never be fulfilled totally, but this is one, which he has in common with every other archivist.
Ulf Scharlau is Head of Archives, Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart.
This paper was first presented to the IASA conference in Budapest, 1981.