Early Recordings have RISM: Redefining Early Recordings as Sources for Performance Practice and History

It is interesting to note that RISM, despite hosting an incredible array of musicological research sources, do not include early recordings in their extensive catalogue. This may be due to the technological requirements of hosting such recordings, or copyright restrictions on their use. More likely, however, it is simply because early recordings – by which we mean anything from wax cylinders in the 1890s up until the invention of magnetic tape in 1945 – are not yet a staple of the musicological research diet; even though they attract the attention of scholars in multiple music disciplines (including those in musicology, ethnomusicology, performance, composition and technology) the use of such recordings is patchy, and there are but a few standardised methods for engaging in sonic forms of research evidence. This paper summarises a range of emergent research methods that involve early recordings, as discovered during an AHRC-funded research network Redefining Early Recordings as Sources for Performance Practice and History (2021-2023). The network’s primary mandate was to discuss, evaluate, and quantify contemporary methods for early recordings research, and to make those methods accessible to a wider academic and public audience. The findings do not merely highlight some of the central approaches to early recordings as a research source, but signal their increasing popularity and importance within contemporary musical research more broadly. Now that we have reached such a point, the authors argue, it is time to include sonic forms of evidence alongside their text-based counterparts, and celebrate the era in which musicological sources are enriched by sound.