The Phonographic Archive of the Brussels Instrumental Museum (1899)

Inventory of Phonograph Cylinders 1960.1512/1–43

In 1899, Victor-Charles Mahillon (the first curator of the Instrumental Museum of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, today’s MIM) conceived the project of assembling a “collection of graphophone cylinders reproducing popular music from different countries.” As early as January 1900, after receiving recordings from Kolkata, Beijing and Tianjin, he began seeking phonograph cylinders from across the globe: Quimper, Vannes, London, Istanbul, Madrid, Dublin, Jakarta, Tokyo, and beyond. This undertaking was exceptional not only in its scope, but also in its precocity, as it coincided exactly with similar initiatives launched by the Vienna Academy of Sciences and the Anthropological Society of Paris.

Because it was not inventoried at the time of its creation, this early Brussels phonographic collection quickly fell into obscurity. Recent research, however, has led to the rediscovery of part of the collection, which was digitised thanks to the support of the Friends of the Royal Museums of Art and History. The group of cylinders now brought together under inventory number 60.1512 has clearly undergone significant alteration over time (losses, destruction, and the addition of extraneous elements). Although very incomplete when compared with what the archival sources suggest, the collection documents a wide range of musical traditions dating from 1898–1900 (Provence, the Mashreq, China, India, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom, and North America). Alongside well-known commercial productions, it also includes recordings made by local distributors (such as Lehner in Istanbul or Bevans & Co. in Kolkata) as well as by non-professional actors. Some of these appear to be among the oldest locally produced sound recordings preserved anywhere in the world.

Our thanks go to the Friends of the Royal Museums of Art and History for funding the digitisation of this collection, and to Professor Nidaa Abou Mrad (Université Antonine, Lebanon) for the transliteration and translation of the Arabic texts and recordings.