The ever-growing DDB is presenting the public with a multimedia array of cultural and scientific content that is a feast for the ear as well as the eye. The Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB), for example, is already providing DDB users with access to unique items in its media library, including material from the ‘Archive of Voices’ project.

The project was conceived as one of a number of building blocks leading to the creation of a European discography of historical music recordings - an archive that has yet to be set up – and is playing an important role in the preservation of audiovisual cultural heritage. Yet these collections of rare phonograph records are precious not simply for their relevance to conservationists and historians; they allow us to rediscover the history of music through the ear – thanks to the digitisation of these recordings.

As an example, even with the passage of 100 years, listening to a gramophone record from 1910 remains an exquisite aesthetic experience when the item being clicked on is a recording of Enrico Caruso. Likewise an unusual but no less exciting recording of the famous ‘La donna è mobile’ aria in Rigoletto. There is also the moving 1925 recording of the ‘Nessun dorma’ tenor aria from Giacomo Puccini’s opera ‘Turandot’, a work frequently covered today by young pop hopefuls striving for recognition. No surprise, also, to find a Ludwig van Beethoven composition among the rare recordings now available online, to say nothing of Richard Wagner, represented by a passage from ‘The Valkyrie’.

The pieces listed above form only a small, if impressive, selection of items from Paul Wilhelm’s song-record collection, which has been stored in digital form in the SLUB. It is a happy confirmation of the DDB’s multi-disciplinary approach that the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, too, is now making these recordings from the past available to researchers and listeners alike.

Website:

Mediathek of the SLUB Dresden