The Gramophone Archive
Mon, Mar 7 2011, 12:31AM
#2
RE: The Gramophone Archive
I have been working my way through the archive almost since its inception.
There are a number of problems: the page appears but is impossible to access on some issues and I wish I had kept a record of the worst offenders.
There is one very old issue where nearly all the review pages cannot be accessed.
some reviews run, inexplicably, into each other. A review of an opera, for example, will suddenly change to one on a completely different work in, I assume, the same magazine. Likewise, a review will follow on, without indication, from the previous.
lastly, the headings of individual reviews are cut off so that one, sometimes, has no idea of what is being reviewed.
None of this deters me from finding the archive not only a wonderful resource (it helps, by the way, if you have old Gramophone catalogues) but of great entertainment value. The controversy over the introduction of the LP is all there. Did you know some regretted the demise of the 78 because they liked to turn/change the disc every five minutes? I kid you not!
Mon, Mar 7 2011, 5:48PM
#3
RE: The Gramophone Archive
There are a number of issues which appear not to have been indexed, particularly the Awards issues, but also other discrete monthly editions. However, while I had always appreciated Gramophone for the insight of its reviewers I do draw the line at referring to Ravel's music in this pejorative manner from the 1980s.
http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/December%201987/51/812527/Manure+Ravel
Wed, Mar 16 2011, 5:52PM
#4
RE: The Gramophone Archive
Yes the Gramophone Archive has its technical hitches, the main one being for me its inconsistencies, for example you can look at the records list for some months but not for others, it´s completely random, but all of this is massively outweighed by its wealth of information, erudition, and sheer entertainment. The old straight talking is sadly missed. Today I read a review that started "this piece of music is as cheap, vulgar, and repetitive as anything I have heard for a long time", and from Lionel Salter "unlike British audiences whose zest for fortissimo coughing and dropping of spectacle cases seems unquenchable". It´s interesting that Gramophone was accused of being in cahoots with the record companies particularly EMI as far back as the early fifties. As for Mahler there is an article from January 1950 and December 1949 that compares and contrasts him with Bruckner containg the line "like most geniuses he was slight of build".
Fri, Mar 18 2011, 9:05PM
#5
RE: The Gramophone Archive
I don't deny that the Archive is a treasure trove of riches. However, there are a few little issues which should get addressed:
The ubiquitous "&Apos" for every apostrophe or quotation, which makes reading some articles extremely tough going.
"Hoist" for "Holst". I can't understand this one. The letter "l" is reproduced accurately throughout the rest of the archive but, for some reason, invariably becomes the letter "i" in Holst's name. I've now taken to typing "Hoist" into any of my searches if I want to find an article relating to him.
Many issues are just not indexed. I suspect this is due to some lazy tyke of a summer student or "intern" that did not scan certain issues thoroughly. May 1985 is a case in point where Tippett's "The Mask of Time" had its first review, but cannot be accessed.
Several reviews are cut short or lumped with other reviews where they continue overleaf. This is extremely frustrating in those instances where one is awaiting the reviewer's final verdict!
Finally, I would like to communicate these errors via the archive, but the facility only allows one to report typos in individual articles. Therefore, if an article hasn't been scanned in, then one has no way of reporting this!
Sat, Mar 19 2011, 1:20PM
#6
RE: The Gramophone Archive
Timor12 - I can assure you that scanning errors are not to do with laziness of any sort, as the system was automated (with so many issues going back to 1923, that was how we chose to do it). If you find a whole article has not been scanned, then please send the link to gramophone.online@haymarket.com and we'll try to get them fixed.
Mon, Mar 21 2011, 7:13AM
#7
RE: The Gramophone Archive
Martin, it's difficult to know where to start! Practically, every article has a typo of some sort: the issue of "&Apos" for every apostrophe for example.
However, I will make a note of the most egregious errors and omissions (ie the missing issues, reviews) and try and pull something together. Although I think if you were to get one of your staff just to spend some time searching articles on the archive they would soon encounter the problems I mentioned in my previous post (eg "Hoist" for "Holst"; "Cohn Davis" (sic); "Dvolik" (sic).
The latest unindexed issue I have found (latest in the sense of I have just found it, not in the chronological sense of the last issue to be unindexed) is July 1987 where the first 19 pages of reviews are all lumped together, while any review after this is completely omitted. Try searching on "Dufay; Hilliard Ensemble" to see what I mean. There is an article in September 87's issue in which the original reviewer, the late Mary Berry, refers to her original review (of the LP only) from July of that year. However, whatever search items one enters this review is not returned by the search engine. Browsing by issue (as the only other alternative to find an article) reveals that none of the reviews are individually indexed. As the archive appears to cut off after 19 pages, this means that all but the first orchestral reviews are omitted. By my reckoning, there are at least 20-30 similar instances (and possibly many more). Unfortunately, until now, I have not kept a record of these.
In respect of sending an email with the links, my experience of emailing this address is that it is a universal mailing address and that individual emails are not always responded to, or directed within Gramophone to the most appropriate staff member. Perhaps you can reassure me on this point that my efforts would not be in vain?
Tue, Mar 22 2011, 6:49PM
#8
RE: The Gramophone Archive
The entire January 1955 issue is missing, any reason why? Today I came across the amusing and rather apt typo of refering to the composer of a Symphony on a French Mountain Air as Vincent Windy, December 1954 page 34.
Thu, Mar 31 2011, 10:05AM
#9
RE: The Gramophone Archive
Likewise, the July 2000 issue is missing in its entirety. Noted this when trying to track down a review of the reissue of Walton's own recording of his film music with Olivier.
I would like to urge someone from Gramophone to go through this thread and act on the recommendations made and omissions noted by myself and others.
Mon, Apr 25 2011, 9:29AM
#10
RE: The Gramophone Archive
Although most of the comments on the Archive are positive, I have to say I am overall disappointed with what is on offer. All I can see are blurred thumbnails of pages from the magazine. If there is an article as such, then the text is reproduced (in approximate form, as noted above), but otherwise there is no way of actually reading the magazine. Part of the fascination with old magazines is in the extras, such as old advertisements. I'm sure that when it was first launched it was possible to see the pages in more detail.
Partly because of the launch of the Archive, I disposed of many years back copies of the printed magazine. I am slightly regretting that now, despite the space they took up!
Can you not improve the display? or am I missing a technical trick?
A great number of the search results do not actually link to the original article: "sorry Page not found" is a typical result. When one tries to locate the article concerned by "Browsing by Issue" one invariably finds that the article has not been indexed. The August 2003 issue is a case in point where a whole issue does not appear to have been indexed, and none of the reviews or articles for that issue can be found. Moreover, the Awards issues appear to have been overlooked completely. This appears not to be an isolated instance either; there are several other issues over the decades which have not been indexed.
Another recurring problem is the failure of OCR to recognise apostrophes (appears as "&apos") and other punctuation marks, which makes for difficulty in reading the archive. A further characteristic of the software is its failure to identify foreign language accents, which makes searching for composers such as Dvorak and Bartok a hit and miss affair (usually miss).