Literatura académica sobre el tema "Phonograph collections"

A method for digital restoration of phonograph recordings contaminated by impulsive noise is proposed. Impulses are suppressed by applying median filtering on contaminated signal regions only, thus minimizing distortion of clean passages and loss of high musical frequencies. The algorithm can be implemented on a personal computer equipped with any inexpensive sound board, and thus it can be used for the restoration of damaged records in home collections. In experiments with old recordings the improvement in sound quality was dramatic. The restored audio signal can be archived in digital form on regular computer back-up tapes or on digital audio tapes, or it can be played through the sound board and stored onto an analog recording media such as high-quality cassette tapes.

Abstract Phonograph cylinders are the oldest commercially available recording media and are an valuable part of cultural institutions’ collections. Even though they are an essential part of sound history, they have long been overlooked as a relatively chemically stable media. The only degradation mentioned in the literature was a whitish cover, traditionally appointed to microbiological growth. In our study, we focused on unravelling the issue of these degradation products. A selected collection from the National Museum – Czech Museum of Music was subjected to microbiological and analytical examination via digital microscopy, FTIR spectroscopy, colourimetry and SEM-EDS analysis. From the results, some of the degradation pathways were proposed. The results also help us to focus future research and suppress the degradation so that the cylinders stay longer in conditions fit for digitisation and overall archivation.

AbstractThe Regordosa-Turull wax cylinder collection, held at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona, is unique among early recording collections. It contains 358 cylinders recorded by the textile industrialist Ruperto Regordosa, mostly at his Barcelona home, featuring prominent Spanish and non-Spanish singers of opera and zarzuela, as well as the composer Isaac Albéniz. This article aims to establish the significance of the collection for the study both of the amateur recording culture that existed alongside commercial phonograph recordings and of performance practices in opera and zarzuela. By examining the broader characteristics of the collection and textual sources from the period, and by closely analysing some of the cylinders, this article explores how Regordosa adopted (and in some cases adapted) certain generic conventions employed in commercial recordings of the time, and what the implications of this are when considering these early recordings as documents of performance practice.

This article deals with two activities of the Lithuanian Science Society (LSS, 1907–1938) and the history of the folklore collections it accumulated. Its members encouraged people to record folk songs, fairytales, stories, riddles, and other forms of folklore, and they tried to gather in one place all the older manuscripts that contained folklore. This way, the LSS’s folklore archive was formed at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, Eduard Wolter, a member of the LSS, made the first folklore sound recordings with a phonograph apparatus. The chair of the Society, Jonas Basanavičius, knew about the Phonogram Archives of Vienna and Berlin; therefore, he encouraged the establishment of such an archive in Vilnius. Another idea of the LSS, initiated by Mykolas Biržiška, was to gather all the songs in one place and to publish a national songbook. Unfortunately, these goals were visionary and utopian for this period of cultural development in Lithuania. In this study, the birth of these ideas and the path to their realisation are chronologically reviewed. The author discusses the reasons why they were not accomplished in the first part of the twentieth century, and gives explanations for why they were successfully implemented in the second part of the twentieth – beginning of the twenty-first centuries. The historical-political context as well as the actual digitisation of intangible heritage archives help clarify the process.

The subject of the study is the historiography of the study of Ossetian song folklore. The object of the study is mytho-religious songs. The purpose of the article is to systematize information sources reflecting the history of the development of research interest in the song folklore of Ossetians, paying special attention to mytho-religious songs. With the help of source research methods, handwritten collections, music collections, notes of individual samples in music publications, descriptions of audio recordings, research works were identified. This article discusses issues related to the activities of various collectors of Ossetian musical folklore. The author traces the stages of the formation of scientific thought, and the development of collecting activities. The most significant works are highlighted, including samples of mytho-religious songs of Ossetians. The main conclusions of the study relate to observations on the activities deployed in the 1920s - 1930s and related to various collectors. The analyzed data indicate an undoubted interest in the Ossetian song tradition. Thanks to folklore and ethnographic expeditions of the 1920s, an impressive set of materials of Ossetian song folklore was collected, but it is worth noting the careless attitude of collectors to the poetic text. Quite often it is presented in a distorted version, in the volume of one stanza, and sometimes it is completely absent. The breakthrough in collecting detail was the appearance of the phonograph. Phonographic recordings made in the 1930s. they still make up the main body of materials on the folk musical culture of Ossetians. A special contribution of the author to the study of the topic is the systematization of information sources on mytho-religious songs, which determines the scientific novelty of this research work.

In the collections of the earliest phonograph cylinders held by American memory institutions, a remarkable set of recordings with Czech content can be found under the title of Jedlička Records, derived from the name of Eduard Jedlička (1867–1944), a Czech immigrant to the US. The authors of the study present for the first time the story of the Moravian native who left his homeland in 1895 to pursue his American dream. Jedlička Records represent a valuable example of Czech (mostly traditional folk) songs popular among the Czech minority in the early 20th century. They also represent a significant contribution to the sound cultural heritage of the Czech community in the US and to the history of the recording and distribution industry.

The paper presents the interdisciplinary survey of the phonographic cylinders collection of National Museum – Czech Museum of Music. The text was created for the New Phonograph: Listening to the History of Sound project. The paper focuses on the characterisation of long-term storage of the collection and a common form of degradation – a fair overlay on the cylinder‘s surface. As for dealing with the wide spectrum of samples in the collection, the survey is focused on the most commonly occurring phonographic cylinders and their enclosures. A representative selection of samples was analysed to clarify the character of the degradation products and its origin.

Between 1905 and 1908 Percy Grainger made a major contribution to the corpus of British folk-song, collecting melodies and words of ballads, shanties and work songs, and devoting himself not just to the faithful capture of pitch and rhythm, but also the nuances of performance, with his pioneering use of the phonograph. These folk-songs became for Grainger a wellspring of compositional inspiration to which he returned time and time again. Yet while he was still a student in Frankfurt, Grainger had been making settings of British traditional tunes sourced from published collections. This article contends that these early arrangements hold the key to a deeper understanding of his later persistence in folk-song arranging and collecting, and that they prefigure the recurrent textual themes in the songs he later chose to arrange. It is argued that Grainger’s attraction to folk-song was textual and musical, tied to notions of purity, freedom and an unorthodox spirituality inspired by nature and shaped by the writings of Whitman, whereby Grainger perceived folk-song as a universal utterance. For Grainger, British folk-song was not simply a source of profound melody for appropriation; the window into a nation’s soul became a door into the souls of all humanity.

The article highlights for the first time the material connected to the sound recordings of Ukrainians from WWI Prisoner-of War Camps in Germany, that were made during 1915-1918 years by the members of the Prussian Phonographic Commission which included Carl Stumpf (the head of the Commission), Georg Schünemann, Wilhelm Doegen among others. This article is a result of the author’s personal research conducted at the Berlin Phonogram Archive and explores the factographic documents that include the data about the sound recordings themselves, the history and process of the creation of the documents and their digital versions made a 100 years after the Prussian Phonographic Commission’s project has started. The research also presents the first results of the analysis of the repertoire recorded from Ukrainian prisoners-of WWI, specifically its culture and genre characteristics.

Le miracle technique de la voix et de la musique enregistrées pour être écoutées dans le cadre domestique, se répandit plus tôt qu’on ne l’a admis jusqu’ici. Produits par dizaines de millions en France avant 1914, les enregistrements phonographiques sur cylindres et disques révèlent aujourd'hui qu’une puissante industrie s’épanouit dès l’aube du XXe siècle en France pour conduire, bien avant la radio, à une forme de banalisation de la musique. Ces phonogrammes sont désormais numérisés, accessibles et audibles en grand nombre. Avec d'autres sources naguère difficiles à exploiter, ils révèlent la richesse du répertoire enregistre et nous restituent une image sonore altérée mais suffisamment fidèle, de la plupart des genres musicaux alors à la mode, notamment les genres vocaux, alors les plus goutes. L'audition commentée des contenus enregistres ouvre de nombreuses portes pour conter l'histoire politique et sociale de leur temps. Cet ouvrage traite par ailleurs des circonstances de la première application du droit d'auteur au disque, ainsi que de l'identité, voire l'authenticité des personnes enregistres, liées aux contraintes techniques de la fabrication et de la reproduction des enregistrements. Sont également prises en considération la réception du phonographe dans divers milieux, ainsi que les pratiques des premiers acteurs de ce marche : artistes qui confièrent leur voix au phonographe, producteurs, auditeurs et autres usagers
The technical miracle of recording voices and music to be listened to within the home developed much earlier than anybody has ever acknowledged. Manufactured in tens of millions in France before 1914, phonographic recordings on cylinders and records reveal today that powerful industries thrived in France very early in the 20th century, thus making music quite commonplace long before the radio ever did. These recordings have now been digitized, and a great many can be accessed and listened to on line. Along with other source materials that not long ago proved hard to exploit, they show how rich the recorded repertoire was. These recordings offer a slightly distorted but sufficiently faithful sound and give us access to most of the music genres fashionable at the time, namely the much appreciated vocal genres. The recorded content of this repertoire with its detailed listening guide gives a new insight into the political and social history of their time. This work also deals with the circumstances in which the first copyright legislation was implemented, the identity and exactness of the recorded artists in connection with the technical constraints in the making and reproduction of recordings. How the phonograph itself was greeted is also examined in detail as well as the habits and routines of the very first players on the market : artists, manufacturers, listeners and other users

This dissertation examines the early history of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv (Berlin Phonogram Archive) and its role in the institutionalization of comparative musicology. The Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv was established in 1900 by psychologist Carl Stumpf in order to collect and preserve the phonographic recordings of non-European musics that would serve as the primary research materials for the then nascent discipline of comparative musicology. I situate the formation of the Phonogramm-Archiv and the emergence of comparative musicology within the historical contexts of the German cultural sciences and colonialism, and argue that both archive and discipline were informed as much by this immediate intellectual and political background as they were by the arrival of sound recording technologies in Germany. I explore how the other cultural sciences, primarily anthropology and ethnology, served as a model for comparative musicology’s methodological and epistemological framework, as well as for the strategies employed for expanding the Phonogramm-Archiv’s collection. As a cultural science, comparative musicology was governed by the tenet of scientific objectivity, and in sound recording, Stumpf found a means with which it was possible to engage with non-European musics objectively. Yet the scientific method also required the comparison of many different examples in order to determine laws through induction, which necessitated the collection of recordings of as many different musics as possible. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how the Phonogramm-Archiv’s mission to amass recordings and the comparative musicological project these recordings facilitated were both enabled by and dependent on the German colonial apparatus.

O presente relatório teve por base as atividades que foram desenvolvidas no decorrer do estágio do mestrado em Museologia no Museu Nacional da Música no âmbito da coleção de suportes fonográficos. O relatório começa, numa primeira parte, por sintetizar as linhas caraterizadoras do Museu Nacional da Música com destaque para o seu campo histórico, funcional e temático, salientando a sua missão. Após esta breve apresentação da entidade museológica, é realizada uma abordagem dos primeiros anos da indústria fonográfica em Portugal e no Mundo. Este ponto é essencial para compreender o desenvolvimento do colecionismo dos fonogramas e qual o seu papel como objetos museológicos. A reflexão visa compreender a sua relevância como peças de Museu partindo de uma realidade generalizada para um caso mais específico, o do Museu Nacional da Música. A segunda parte centra-se no diagnóstico do acervo fonográfico tendo por base a sua documentação e conservação. Para isso foi importante analisar os progressos que o Museu tem revelado nos últimos anos nestas áreas, assim como definir o ponto de situação em que se encontra. Em cada área é realizada uma pequena reflexão sobre a execução de alguns procedimentos. O último ponto é reservado para uma reflexão sobre a importância de reunir e preservar os fonogramas. A existência de um Arquivo Nacional Fonográfico seria uma possibilidade que poderia não só contribuir para a conservação deste património, mas também para a fruição do público, a partir da criação de um arquivo virtual que proporcionasse um acesso facilitado a estas peças. O relatório termina com algumas considerações relativas à análise desenvolvida sobre os fonogramas em contexto museológico.
This report is the result of the activities that were undertaken throughout the Master's Degree training in Musical Studies at the N. M. M. The first part of the present discussion paper synthesizes the main guidelines followed by the N.M.M. emphasizing its historical, functional and thematic aspects, namely the Museum's mission. Next to this introduction, a detailed account of the early years of the phonographic industry in Portugal and all over the world will be given. This aspect is essential to understand the evolution of the process of phonograms collecting and to assess their role and relevance as Museum objects, particularly as part of the N.M.M.'s collection. The second section of this essay focuses on the diagnosis of the phonographic collection according to the information provided by the existing documentation and the conservation. For this purpose it was extremely important to analyze the progress made by the N.M.M. in these areas during the last few years, as well as to evaluate where it stands now. A reflection on some management procedures used in each field of study will also be carried out. The last part of this paper is a reflection on the possibility of a virtual National Phonographic Archive being created which might not only bring together and preserve phonograms, but also make them available to the public for its own enjoyment. Some considerations about the study of the phonograms in a Museum context will be conducted as a final conclusion.

Dissertação de Mestrado em Ciências Jurídico-Forenses apresentada à Faculdade de Direito
“There’s only one great occupation that can change the world: that’s real rock and roll.” A frase é de Lou Reed, célebre compositor e membro fundador da banda The Velvet Underground. É provocatória, apesar de o seu alcance ser mais conceitual do que realista, na verdade. Inquestionável é que outras forças motrizes podem mudar e fazer avançar o mundo, mas o músico norte-americano referia-se a uma muito particular forma de mudança: aquela que tem lugar dentro do indivíduo. Lou vinha de um tempo diferente. Os ventos mudaram, a tinta no papel transformou-se em pixéis e os discos em bits, mas o espírito do rock ‘n’ roll perdurou e continua a personificar o mesmo pedigree que é comum a todas as grandes obras de Arte: a capacidade de desafiar o status quo e adaptá-lo às exigências da modernidade, incitar ao pensamento, defender a liberdade de expressão, promover ideais de justiça, igualdade de oportunidades, tolerância, e acima de tudo, liberdade. O código genético da Música (aqui epitomizada pelo rock, mas de que são exemplos tantos outros géneros) não é, afinal, assim tão diferente do do Direito. Apesar de diferirem quanto à escolha dos instrumentos de trabalho, carregam ambos em si a urgência de procurar e disseminar valores profundamente democráticos, numa tarefa que pretende ser o mais inovadora possível. O Direito sempre foi, e sempre será, uma parte integrante da Cultura, e é neste ponto de convergência que surge esta dissertação. A Música é uma forma de Arte que há muito nos acompanha enquanto seres sencientes. Reflexo directo da forma como o Homem se vê e vê o mundo que o rodeia, é possível traçar uma fidelíssima linha cronológica da História da humanidade ao estudar a evolução dos movimentos e tendências musicais ao longo dos tempos. E enquanto forma artística particularmente etérea, cuja existência no plano físico é bem mais subjectiva do que as restantes formas de expressão artística, questões jurídicas muito particulares se levantam, desde o momento em que a obra musical sai da "mão" do autor e chega ao ouvinte. Estamos, no fundo, a colocar dimensões jurídicas num som, e em qualquer som, que algures, alguém, estará interessado em ouvir. Esta dissertação partirá deste mote para se focar nas especificidades dos direitos de autor musicais, e mais concretamente, nos mecanismos a que se recorre para a protecção dos mesmos. E a Música, como sempre, enfrenta hoje os mesmos desafios da restante sociedade: uma sociedade de informação que não conhece fronteiras. Nos dias que correm, mais do que nunca, todos conseguimos, remotamente, ter acesso a um inacreditável arquivo de obras musicais, de todos os tempos e de todos os autores. Um feito notável para todos nós consumidores, mas onde pelo meio, perdido algures nas invisíveis ondas de rádio ou bits num qualquer servidor, ficou um emaranhado de direitos autorais. O desafio que aqui se propõe é precisamente o de deslindar este novelo. Percorrer os regimes contratuais de edição mais (e menos) comuns para compositores e autores, aludindo não apenas ao nosso sistema nacional pautado pela europeização, mas também a figuras jurídicas características de ordenamentos jurídicos estrangeiros. Questionarmo-nos sobre o papel das editoras discográficas nos dias de hoje: na mesma medida em que podem ser uma rampa de lançamento para muitos autores, podem também agir dissimuladamente contra os mesmos, subvertendo o espírito dos direitos de autor, e recorrendo a expedientes legais duvidosos para sequestrar para si mesmas lucros pelo trabalho dos artistas. Áreas cinzentas, onde há a necessidade de proteger os direitos do autor, mesmo contra aqueles que os deveriam proteger a princípio. Ainda, uma oportunidade para abordar a questão dos desafios da transição digital na música, e do decrescente papel das grandes "labels" nesta área, com o advento das novas tecnologias, em que cada vez mais se dilui a necessidade de um intermediário. Também uma ocasião para questionar os problemas suscitados por esta realidade de uma perspectiva crítica, e compará-los com as vantagens dos modelos tradicionais de distribuição. É que, afinal de contas, os serviços de streaming vieram fazer-nos repensar o conceito de "ter" e de "comprar" música. O que se agrava ainda mais se ponderarmos os perigos que a acessibilidade imediata, potenciada pelo streaming, acarreta para uma possível desvalorização da obra artística em si, com consequências danosas para a protecção do autor. Por fim, questionamo-nos (ou melhor dizendo, adensamos a discussão…) sobre o papel que terão as famigeradas entidades de gestão colectiva numa sociedade cada vez mais digital e intolerante à falta de transparência. Tudo isto, sempre num prisma dinâmico, retrospectivo e prospectivo, olhando para a frente sem esquecer o passado, nesta bissectriz entre a intangibilidade da Arte e a concretude do Direito, e harmonizando o emocional com o racional.
“There’s only one great occupation that can change the world: that’s real rock and roll.” The quote’s author is Lou Reed, famous songwriter and member of the band The Velvet Underground. It’s a provocative statement, despite the fact that its scope is more conceptual than realistic. It is unquestionable that other driving forces can change the world, but the north-american musician was referring to a very particular form of change: the one that takes place within the individual. Lou came from a very different time. Meanwhile, the winds have changed, ink on paper became pixels, and records turned into bits, but the rock ‘n’ roll spirit has endured and it still embodies the same pedigree that is common to all great works of art: the ability to challenge the status quo, to adapt it to the needs of modernity, to provoke thought, defend freedom of speech and promote ideals of justice, equal opportunities, tolerance, and above all, freedom. Music’s genetic code (here described as rock music, but of which so many other genres are equally great exemples) is, after all, not so different from that of Law. Despite differing when it comes to the choice of working materials, both carry the urgency in seeking and disseminating democractic values, in the most effective and innovative way achievable. Law has always been, and always will be, an integral part of Culture. This dissertation is born in this convergence point.Music is an art form that has been with us, as sentient beings, for a long time. Being a direct reflection of the way Man looks at Himself and sees the world around Him, it is possible to sketch a very faithful timeline of the History of humanity by studying the evolution of musical tendencies over time.And as a particularly ethereal artistic form, which’s existence on the physical world is much more subjective than other forms of artistic expression, there are very particular legal questions that arise from the moment the musical work leaves the artist's "hand", to the instant it reaches the listener. We are, at heart, attributing legal dimensions to a sound: to any sound, that somewhere, someone, will be interested in listening to.This dissertation will start from this motto to focus on the specificities of musical author rights, and more specifically, on the mechanisms used for its protection. And Music today, as it always has, faces the same challenges as the rest of society: a society of information that knows no borders. These days, more than ever, we’re all able to remotely have access to an incredible archive of musical works, from all times and from all authors. A remarkable feat for all of us consumers indeed, but in between, lost somewhere among the invisible radio waves or the bits stored on any server, a tangle of author rights was left behind. The challenge proposed here is to unravel this skein.We’ll go through the most (and the least) common contractual regimes for composers and authors, alluding not only to our national laws, inspired by european tendencies, but also to foreign legal systems. Then, we’ll ask ourselves about the role of record companies and publishers today: although they can act as a launching pad for many authors, they can also covertly act against them, subverting the spirit of author rights, and resorting to dubious legal tactics to hijack profits from the artists' work. Gray areas, where there is a need to protect author’s rights, even from those who should be protecting them in the first place. Furthermore, the present dissertation serves as an opportunity to address the challenges posed by digital evolutions in Music, and by the decreasing role of the so-called “big labels”, caused by the invention of new technologies, diluting the need for a middleman. It is also an occasion to question these topics from a critical standpoint, and to compare them to the advantages of the traditional distribution models. After all, streaming services have made us rethink the concept of "owning" and "purchasing" Music, which can be problematic considering the dangers that immediate accessibility (enhanced by streaming) entails for a possible devaluation of the artistic work itself, with harmful consequences to the protection of the authors. Finally, we ask ourselves (or rather, we deepen the discussion…) about the role that the infamous collecting societies will have in an increasingly digital society, intolerant to the lack of transparency. All this, in a dynamic retrospective and prospective approach, looking forward without forgetting the past, in this bisector between the intangibility of Art and the concreteness of Law, and harmonizing the emotional with the rational.

This chapter draws upon the five major surviving collections of Spanish early recordings in order to attempt to reconstruct who bought wax cylinders in Spain around 1900, what their motivations were and what their listening and collecting practices looked like. It discusses how record buyers were still a small, privileged minority in Spain at the time, and examines how collecting might have helped developed ways of listening focused on music appreciation rather than on purely replicating a collector’s live music experience. It also analyzes home recording practices, which were a significant part of phonograph marketing strategies at this time.

Abstract Buckner telephoned the day after Christmas; he was on his way to New River, North Carolina, for boot training as a Marine, and he had a short layover. Yes, naturally, he would be right out. I had not seen Buck for fifteen years. When I was teaching at Lincoln University, in Missouri, Buck needed money to get through school and I needed some-body for odd chores. The rambling old house that I had rented was not easy to keep straight, especially since I had started my hobbies of collecting theme papers, books, and phonograph records. Buck liked the records and was a curious reader of whatever books looked interesting. He was probably most indispensable, however, for the yarns he spun and the characters he guided to the front door. The two most startling madmen were Revelations, the garrulous preacher, and an escaped patient from Kankakee, Illinois. The latter told me a pitiful tale of how his foot had been purposely broken in the hospital. He talked so coherently that I had no suspicions of him; later I learned that he had been captured across the river and returned to the asylum as a dangerous lunatic.

The eased access to new digital technologies allowed for new possibilities, with content streaming being one of the most expressive digital consumption and business models in the phonographic industry. Following, brand-new discussions regarding the consumption habits of its users took place. What is not yet clear is the consumption dynamics on these new platforms, particularly, when referring to exploration scenarios, the most relevant tools and what role factors such as familiarity and taste play in the discovery process of the existing catalogue. The intent is to comprehend the expressiveness of these music streaming platforms, what dynamics come to play referring to exploratory behaviours, and which tools or mechanisms are the most important in this process. Following data collection of 264 respondents through a survey, the results indicate both the popularity of streaming platforms and the respondents' high exploration tendencies, with existing features like playlists being the most significant tools to discover the catalogue.

Abstract The past few decades have seen a rapid increase in the availability and use of large music corpora. However, most music corpus studies remain limited to Western music, limiting our ability to understand the diversity and unity of human music throughout the world. I argue for the potential of cross-cultural corpus studies to contribute to comparative musicological studies in domains including music classification, evolution, universals, and human history. I highlight and discuss a number of important cross-cultural corpora, including the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, CompMusic Project, Essen Folksong Collection, Cantometrics Project, Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Natural History of Song, and Deep History of Music projects. In the process, I discuss the pros and cons of music notation vs. recordings, automatic vs. manual analysis, regional vs. global analysis, and associated challenges regarding choosing appropriate analysis methods that can allow meaningful comparison across cultures. I argue for the need for bigger and better global music corpora and more emphasis on integration within and beyond academia, including to domains such as the music industry and cultural heritage organizations.

The "Cancioneiro Feminino do Pará" is the inaugural work for the creation of the entitled "MUSA-Mulheres na Música da Amazônia" (MUSA-Women in the Music Collection of the Amazon), an ongoing institutional research project linked to the School of Music of UFPA. The objective is to research women in the space of the musical arts of the Amazon of Pará, recovering their identities, practices, memories, experiences, knowledge, and artistic productions through the publishing, critical review, phonographic record, and dissemination of handwritten songs of female authorship in Pará until the middle of the twentieth century, never before edited. The methodological path adopted is divided into four stages: the first refers to documentary research, the second to bibliographic research, the third consists of the description and musical study of the collected material, and finally, the fourth stage consists of the discussion and dissemination of results. The preliminary results point to the understanding of these productions of female authorship from the practices of consumption of cultural goods, social relations, and institutional structures of the time.

In dialectology, the phonogram archive represents a corpus of dialectal texts recorded with the aid of technical means (phonograph, gramophone, pathephone, tape recorder, etc.) and stored on various media such as tapes or discs. It is a way of presenting and preserving dialectal facts. From 1899, sound archives were created in Vienna, Zürich, Paris, Bucharest. The Chisinau „Phonogram Archive of Dialectal Speech” was made up between 1957 and 1965, during the „Moldavian Linguistic Atlas” survey. The archive’s collection, including dialectal speech samples recorded in Romanian-speaking communities of the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, contributes to complete the image of the Romanian language, considered under the aspect of its diatopic, as well as diastratic or diaphasic variation, but it can also be used as a documentary source for the research of many other problems of linguistics, ethnography, folkloristics, history, etc. These sound documents are elements of Romanian and European cultural heritage that need to be protected, exploited and highly valued.