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DiscographyGroveMusicOnline
Cortesia do Prof. T. Moore.
WEBER, Jerome F. Discography. The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online ed. L. Macy, http://www.grovemusic.com Consulta em 10/02/2005
Entry for 'Discography' by Jerome F. Weber, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians [or Grove Music Online], 2nd edition, eds. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London, 2001).
Discography.
A systematic list of recordings. Despite its obvious association with the disc recording, the term is normally applied to lists of all types of recorded sound. Discography must be distinguished from cataloguing. Library catalogues describe the physical object, providing information found on the artefact and its accompanying printed material. Similarly, manufacturers' catalogues deal with the physical object offered for sale. The discographer goes beyond this information to establish all the facts that distinguish one recording from another or identify a recording issued in more than one format, and may also distinguish multiple recordings of a work by the same performer.
1. History.
The term seems to have first appeared in print in the Phonograph Monthly Review in January 1931, with 'A [Geraldine] Farrar Discography' by William Henry Seltsam. The list cited the singer's entire output of recordings by title, composer, manufacturer's issue number and (approximate) year of recording. Apart from the earliest recordings, made in Berlin in 1906, the list was divided into solos, duets, trios and quartets. In 1936 Charles Delaunay published Hot Discography, a list of jazz recordings arranged by performer, which appeared in several revised editions in Paris and New York up to 1948. The need for a systematic study of jazz recordings arose from the confusion caused by the reissue of recordings on various labels credited to different performers; the matrix number pressed into the shellac provided the key to establishing the identity of such discs.
The year 1936 also saw the publication of The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music, edited by R.D. Darrell, embracing composers of Western art music represented on electrical recordings since 1925 (a few acoustic recordings of unique interest were also included). A systematic arrangement and precise identification of each composer's work brought some order to the recorded repertory. In his preface, Darrell cited in detail the problems encountered in resolving the identification of certain composers and works not consistently identified on record labels. A second edition by George C. Leslie appeared in 1942 and a third by Robert H. Reid (with performer index) in 1948, but previously released records not available at the time of publication were omitted from all three.
In 1937 Roberto Bauer published Historical Records, a list of operatic singers and their output before 1909, and in 1946 James Dennis founded a monthly periodical, Record Collector, which from its first year included articles and discographies about singers. Other publications to appear during this period include Julian Morton Moses' Collectors' Guide to American Recordings, 1895–1925 (1949) and, from 1953, John Bennett's Voices of the Past, a series of label discographies with indexes, primarily devoted to classical vocal recordings. Some volumes of this series were limited to the pre-1925 acoustic period, but several embraced the entire 78 r.p.m era and included non-vocal entries.
The World's Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music, a compilation begun in 1940 and published in 1957, built on the foundation of Darrell's encyclopedia by listing most of the recordings of Western art music issued throughout the world from 1925 to 1950. This time current availability was not a criterion for inclusion. A bound-in supplement and two supplementary volumes continued the listings to early 1956. While the composers and titles of works were the subjects of extensive research, the performers were identified in abbreviated fashion, giving only surnames, and secondary participants were often omitted. The absence of dates eventually became a problem for users. The compilation of data continued on index cards at the National Sound Archive until 1987, but several efforts to arrange for the publication of additional volumes proved fruitless.
Early discographers were interested in performers; indeed, they focussed largely on performers of the past. Enrico Caruso was an early subject of discographic attention, both for his supreme celebrity in his own time and for the comparative ease with which discographies of recordings by his issuer, the Victor Talking Machine Company, could be made. As early as January 1934 Canon H.J. Drummond published a chronological list of Caruso's recordings in The Gramophone. Other discographers subsequently pursued the subject, but even the discographies of Aida Favia-Artsay in 1965 and John R. Bolig in 1973 (both books still indispensable) had still not resolved the dating of the handful of recordings made in Milan for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company and the Anglo-Italian Commerce Company.
From about 1951 many record review magazines began to publish discographies that focussed on individual composers, generally as part of a critical evaluation. Consequently, the lists were limited to recordings currently available in only one country. In the USA, High Fidelity and Stereo Review published critical discographies of many composers. Similarly, The Gramophone (Gramophone from March 1974) in the UK, Fono-Forum in Germany and Diapason in France have regularly published discographies of single works and individual performers.
From 1961 the British Institute of Recorded Sound (now the British Library National Sound Archive) published in its quarterly review, Recorded Sound, with many discographies devoted to individual modern British composers and performers, and, from 1966, the Danish Nationaldiskoteket and the Finnish Institute of Recorded Sound published series of discographies. From 1970 J.F. Weber edited the work of several contributors in the Discography Series, consisting of monographs devoted to composers. The ARSC Journal has published discographies of many types since 1973. In 1979 the Greenwood Press established a continuing hardcover series, Discographies, which considers labels, performers, composers and other categories of recorded sound. Some of the label discographies fill several volumes.
The inclusion of a discography as appendix to a book-length biography of a composer or performer was exceptional until the late 20th century. Among the few early examples were Cesar Saerchinger's biography of the pianist Artur Schnabel, which appeared in 1957 with a discography, albeit without dates, and Emile Vuillermoz's biography of Gabriel Fauré, published in the USA in 1969 with a complete discography compiled by Steven Smolian that included approximate dates.
As the number of published discographies grew, so too did the lack of uniformity in their content, accuracy and completeness. Some questioned whether a list of recordings that lacked label names and issue numbers could be called a discography at all. A number of attempts to define discographic standards evolved, and both David Hamilton and Steven Smolian wrote on the subject in the ARSC Journal. Two jazz symposia that included discussion of discographic requirements, in 1968 and 1969, were published in book form in 1971. Panel discussions were held at the annual conferences of the ARSC in 1971 and the IASA in 1975, and subsequent conferences of both organizations have continued to discuss the issues. A number of important articles on the subject have been published, such as those by J.F. Weber, Alan Kelly and others and William R. Monroe printed in Recorded Sound during 1975. Reviews in Notes, the ARSC Journal and elsewhere have pointed out the deficiencies of published discographies.
As discographies proliferated, bibliographic control emerged. Recorded Sound published a bibliography of discographies of classical music in 1962. Lewis Foreman supplemented it with Discographies in 1973, and this was followed in 1974 by David Cooper's International Bibliography of Discographies, which included classical music and jazz. The ARSC Journal began publication of a bibliography of current discographies of all types in the same year, eventually embracing the years from 1972 to 1985. It laid the groundwork for the three-volume Bibliography of Discographies (1977–83) and its supplement, Classical Music Discographies, 1976–1988 (1989). Vincent Duckles listed selected discographies in his Music Reference and Research Materials in 1974 and subsequent editions.
2. Sources.
Sources of discographic information may be primary or secondary. Among primary sources the most valuable are the archives of record companies. Recording sessions are invariably documented in detail, dating back as far as May 1889 in the case of Edison, although some companies' files no longer exist. William R. Moran and Ted Fagan obtained access to the files of Victor and RCA Victor in order to compile a detailed discography based on the matrix numbers of every recording from 1900 to 1950, though only two volumes of this have been published.
A large quantity of recording logs of the EMI labels were microfilmed and deposited in the British Institute of Recorded Sound. Alan Kelly used them, as well as other files found at EMI's offices, to compile label discographies of His Master's Voice from 1898 to 1929. He arranged his work by issue number, however, rather than the more precise chronology of matrix numbers, which he also cited. His work supplanted John Bennett's series Voices of the Past, which was based on secondary sources.
Some performers have kept detailed accounts of their recording activities. These are particularly useful in the case of orchestras. The American Federation of Musicians and unions in other countries have kept files of contracts affecting their members. Discographies of the Philharmonia Orchestra, the LPO, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cincinnati SO have been published using primary sources. Discographies have also been compiled for many other orchestras.
Secondary sources of information include catalogues published by the record companies, national catalogues and other publications. Even the record label and packaging constitute a secondary, if not entirely dependable, source. Victor De Sabata's Mozart Requiem, which provided the date and place of recording on its original issue, was reissued on Heliodor as an LP with those details printed incorrectly. Clemens Krauss's Schubert 'Great' C major Symphony was reissued on a Teldec CD with a stated recording date somewhat later than the published reviews of the original issue.
Before about 1955, the principal record firms published annual catalogues and monthly supplements. Several major record archives and libraries have sizable collections of these catalogues. Since then, company catalogues have been published less regularly, while the proliferation of record companies has complicated the task of collecting them. National catalogues published independently of any record company have become a principal source of information. The USA, the UK and Germany have seen continuous publication of such catalogues since the beginning of the LP era, while national catalogues for France, Italy, Spain, Japan and other countries have appeared more or less regularly. Like company catalogues, these catalogues list only records currently available.
Record reviews provide much more information than any catalogue. Monthly magazines have been published in all major countries, starting with The Gramophone in the UK in 1923 and Phonograph Monthly Review (continued by its successors) in the USA in 1926. Most magazines have annual indexes, while Gramophone, Disques, Diapason and Harmonie (the last three in France) have been indexed in the national catalogues published by each magazine. The Rekōdo-geijutsu and Stereo geijutsu, published monthly in Japanese, are a dependable source for detailed information on all new issues. K. Myers's Index to Record Reviews has indexed a large number of reviews of Western art music published in the USA and other countries; nine volumes were devoted to reviews from 1948 to 1997.
Similar to record reviews are buyers' guides, which evaluate the recorded repertory comprehensively. B.H. Haggin, David Hall and Irving Kolodin each compiled such a treatment of Western art music between 1938 and 1941, and each published several revised editions. By 1955 the publisher Knopf required three authors to cover the same repertory on LPs alone. Similarly in the UK, Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor compiled The Record Guide annually from 1951. Later Edward Greenfield and others compiled The Stereo Record Guide annually from 1960. Arthur Cohn in 1981 was the last compiler to attempt to organize the entire body of serious music into one critical survey.
Discography
3. Classification.
There are three basic types of discography. One organizes a group of records by the intellectual content of the recorded sound. Composers and their works are a significant part of this type, but the content may be music, speech, public events or sounds of nature. Another type, the performer discography, organizes the records according to individuals and ensembles; a third is organized by record label. There are also general discographies.
From as early as the preface to R.D. Darrell's encyclopedia of 1936, the uniformity of citations has been recognized to be a problem, and an element as simple as the form and alphabetical listing of a composer's name can easily cause discrepancy. Josquin des Prez, for example, has been listed under the letters J, P and D, and Shostakovich will be found in French catalogues under C. It is the discographer's task to address these issues, as well as more common problems such as that of distinguishing between individuals who may have similar or identical names.
The titles of works, too, are not always cited uniformly. Certain symphonies by Haydn, Dvořák and Schubert, for example, have undergone a change of numbering systems since they were first recorded. As in the case of Schubert's lieder, some works have been identified incorrectly because the same texts were set more than once. Darrell aptly described the inconsistent ways in which operatic arias are identified on record labels. Some works, such as the Bruckner symphonies and Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, have been performed and recorded according to several different editions. Other works have been attributed to the wrong composer; the Toy Symphony once appeared in a Haydn list, though is now attributed to Leopold Mozart or to Angerer.
The second type of discography treats performers. The identification of performers was the first problem faced by jazz discographers, who found that recordings were sometimes reissued pseudonymously. Even the first issue of a recording may be pseudonymous; in such cases the performer may have been contracted to another firm, or the recording may have been issued without the performer's knowledge or consent. It is then, of course, necessary for the discographer to ascertain the performer's identity.
Another problem is the incomplete listing of performers. On early recordings, performers were not always identified by full name; and accompanying musicians, if mentioned at all, were often cited merely as 'piano' or 'orchestra', and the orchestra's conductor might not be mentioned. Subsequent citations in catalogues of various kinds may truncate the identification of the performers even further.