Prolegomena to a new scientific discipline: musical discography and videography

Walter Benjamin's Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalt er seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,1 (1936) constitutes by now a canonical point of reference for any discussion of the relationship between mass media and works of art. Benjamin realised that there were forerunners for the technical reproduction of works of art before the 19th century. The Greeks knew about casting and mintage (in bronze, terracotta and for coins); the Middle Ages added xylography (the art of engraving on wood), etching and dry point; in the 19th century, lithography added the possibility of giving products "each day new configurations"2.- At the end of the 15th century the introduction of movable type had already delivered the possibility of reproducing writings ad infinitum. Benjamin however regards photography as the key innovation, which marks the beginning of the era of technical reproducibility. At the end of the century photography was joined by sound engraving on an equally and infinitely reproducible carrier3. Benjamin does not consider this technique in detail: he just mentions the "disc" and gives the example of a "choir which performed in an auditorium or in open air" that"can be listened to in a room"4. The fact is that Benjamin was most interested in the technical reproducibility of the work of art when this constituted an essential trait of the work of art itself, i.e. when this is originally born as reproducible, so that it would not exist at all without its technical means of reproduction. Unsurprisingly, Benjamin - at least in his essay of 1936 - considers photography primarily as a premise to films. In fact, films are a form of art that would not exist without its reproducibility, as they are based on the shooting of different sequences, not on the uninterrupted shooting of the whole picture: films are born during the montage of those clips (not all of them, and not in their shooting order). Also, in the Kleine Geschichte der Photographie5, published in 1931, where photography is observed in itself and not with regard to film, Benjamin clearly shows his interest for those outcomes of photography which in their autonomous creative qualities we may well term "works of art": particularly in the pages he devotes to Eugène Atget.6
Benjamin committed suicide in 1940 at the age of 48. He was on the point of being saved from Nazi persecution at the Spanish frontier, where the group of refugees he was with was turned back by a petty town official. (And it heightens our sense of horror and sorrow to know that his comrades were finally admitted to Spain and were saved; it was only a question of waiting, but maybe this was not in his nature). He was thus unable to consider television among the "new" art forms for which technical reproducibility was the basis for their existence, and if he foresaw the spreading of mass media, he did not see the purely consumerist - and thus not in the least humanely redeeming - orientation the phenomenon came to assume.
Notwithstanding the acute and penetrating analysis he gave of the phenomenon of technical reproducibility, there is one feature which Benjamin did not consider: that is, the distinction on the level of communication, and thus of perception, between performing arts and the other arts.The former need an interpreter (or a group of interpreters) to transmit them and they are perceived through the interpreter. The latter communicate directly and are directly perceived. For the former; such a direct mode is restricted to an elite who are in command of the respective codes of interpretation, which present moreover great differences in time and place. Today we consider music, theatre, dance, cinema, radio and television (this for the still unexploited possibilities it apparently has on the level of autonomous creativity) as "performing arts".7 In the past, however, literature, and not only dramatic works, was read, or even recited, in front of an audience (examples apparently include more than poetry or epic); only with the inventìon of print and with the diffusion of literacy did non-dramatic literature become directly readable, without intermediaries, by its final receiver, thus leaving the group of the performing arts (at least in the western world). Written tradition (whatever the time it started after the work of art was conceived).enables the receiver to read directly. Oral tradition always needs an interpretation or performance, therefore the piece has to be read by the holders of the specific interpretative code (it need not be professionals in a technical-commercial sense) in order to be transmitted to, and perceived by, its receiver. Literature then lies on the border: up to the invention of print and for all remaining oral traditions it too belongs to the performing arts; for all written traditions and for printed works it does not. Certainly painting, sculpture and architecture (with their whole train of so-called minor arts) do not belong to the performing arts: in these, the original is a physical object that can be copied but not reproduced in its authenticity; to be precise, even the technical reproduction suffers from a fundamental handicap, namely the loss of the original physical substance. In fact, the material of such works of art is always composite, and therefore impossible to reproduce, at least with the means - however refined - currently at our disposal. Painting, sculpture and architecture are visual arts, in the sense that they require the human eye for their perception. Benjamin rightly remarks that the appreciation of architecture requires in addition the sense of touch; I ask myself if the same remark can be made about sculpture, as sculpture too can be "touched" to get a sense of its physical essence. Surely the degree of "tactility" of sculpture in comparison to its "visuality" is far less than that of architecture, for which Benjamin employs the concept of "Gebrauch"8, that I would translate as "living usage".The technical reproduction of a painting, a sculpture, or of a work of architecture takes place thanks to photography, used statically or (in film or television) dynamically: communication and perception of the reproduction pass always through the eye, suppressing in architecture and (perhaps) in sculpture the second sense involved, the sense of touch, both in communication and perception.
In the Kleine Geschichte der Photographie9 (1931) Benjamin had warned, "the methods of mechanical reproduction represent a reduction technique".The first reduction is in the very nature of reproduction: the medium always mediates the technically reproduced work of art it transmits and makes perceptible, and this as a result diminishes the universality of communication and perception typical of the original work of art, that universality which is constituent of its authenticity (and which, as Benjamin remarks, includes also the whole history of its "reception", a term usually including its factual and interpretative history10). Factual history implies the whole of the changes in collocation and surroundings of the work of art which are particularly important for painting, sculpture and architecture, whereas the interpretative history collects the whole of the communicative and perceptive judgements that marked the work's presence in different times and places.11
However, the second part of Benjamin's sentence from the aforementioned Kleine Geschichte der Photographie (1931) also deserves our attention:"In the end, the methods of mechanical reproduction... help Man to earn that degree of control over art works without which it would be impossible for him to utilise them".Today, we should maybe add to this statement the following: "except for a very restricted elite of the lucky few, by birth, profession, or census". But the addition would make very little difference in a mass society. This second sentence focuses the two main advantages of the technical reproduction of the work of art: the possibility to observe points of view and details of the art work imperceptible to the naked eye (and therefore never previously communicated) and the possibility of making the universality of the work of art known to people who would never have the opportunity to get in touch with the original - in spite of all "reductions" technical reproduction still implies today (bi-dimensional vs. tri-dimensional vision, suppression or change in perspective, shortening of the distance between observer and object, alteration of the surrounding as for collocation and ownership12).
In both cases ("reception" history and shift of the observer's viewpoints on the whole or on details) we are reminded of the basic notion that a work of art is everything it has become in its history, every interpretation being potentially present in it from the beginning. This is connected to my personal belief that art is an original means to gather information and re-transmit it in a fully autonomously and self-sufficiently organised way, a means to represent art itself as a model of society - each time a different one and always incomplete, but each one exhaustive -, and not just of the society that produced ít, but of any society that welcomed and transmitted it (the Italian word is "tradita").
For photography, among the non-performing arts, and for cinema, radio and television, among the performing arts, technical reproducibility is a constituent and primary factor, essential to their existence.They made technical reproducibility their fundamental means of communication, and therefore it is through the technical medium that reproduces them that they are equally basìcally and exclusively perceived. The medium, or to be precise, the characteristic media of these arts are the same used to reproduce technically the other arts, but their functions are different. To confuse the functions is a constant danger, in fact it happens far too often.
Within the performing arts, terminology mostly identifies the name of the genre with the medium: significantly, this applies to the arts born in the context of a technology: cinema, radio, television.13 Theatre is on the other hand designed by its appointed location.14 Thus, only music and dance offer an autonomous terminology. These are the performing arts we find in almost every known society, independently of time and place.
Dance, however, always was characterised by its "fleetingness" (Benjamin applies the same term to "reproduction"), due to its very "impossibility" of reproduction. Up to the age of video recording (with a few isolated but pioneering examples on film) dance could only be copied (by a student, by an onlooker) but not reproduced, so that its reception was always restricted to the small number of people present at its performance in a fixed time and place.Video recording enables the reproduction of what the recipient sees and of what the recipient hears: with video recording, dance also entered the age of technical reproducibility. The pre-eminence of the visual factor in communicating and receiving dance prevented this art form from benefiting from sound reproduction, which by itself would have translated the resulting record into a musical document (communication and reception of a "sound track"15). The lack of one (or more) graphic codes, besides, had deprived dance of the possibility of using writing, first, and then print.
Theatre and music, on the other hand, profited from both writing and print; theatre had literary codes at its disposal, music developed special reading codes,which grew less and less specific and increasingly widespread.16 Both literary and musical codes permitted theatre and written music to spread to an ever-enlarging area, but a global technical reproduction of the theatrical or musical performance came only with video recording (notwithstanding some pioneering examples on film17).
One factor must be pointed out: that in traditional performing arts (theatre, music, dance) the technical reproduction never concerns the work of art, but an interpretation of the work of art. The authentic original is not a physically determined object (as in painting, sculpture, architecture), but a "text". A text is needed because theatre, music and dance are temporal, they have a "duration", and cannot be fixed on an object having a collocation or pertinence, a place and a context where it can be observed by anybody admitted to it, without intermediaries reading it to make it accessible, and thus able to communicate and be received.These are called "performers".18
A performer is required to interpret the text, a term which underlines the subjective component of the performer's intervention in communicating it to the recipient. As long as the performing arts were committed to oral tradition, that is before writing,19 the text's factor of variance between recipients (or between groups of recipients) was very high (we all know that today's recording of an orally transmitted text just reflects its present configuration, certainly not the one that gave origin to it20). Written tradition also maintained a considerable degree of variance in texts due to the greater or lesser accuracy of the copyists: and that accuracy was bound to deteriorate as the chain of copyists unfolded. The degree of variance diminished with the advent and spread of print, although it does not disappear. Photocopying the autograph is, as we know, an illusory solution: the manuscript needs in most cases a long series of tests and collation with other older or younger manuscripts, autographs and not, printed and published copies (also incomplete ones), before what is conventionally (more than convincingly) termed the authentic original of the literary, theatrical or musical work of art can be established.21
From this, however, we may not infer that the text of a work of art does not exist. It may be that there is more than one.22 But, except for variations of detail, we may ask if there are many texts of a single work of art or rather a text for each of many different works of art. Otherwise we risk losing sight of the basic fact that the text is not the texture of the work of art, but the translation of it in a code permitting it to be reproduced by someone (specifically the performer), in order that it may be communicated and perceived to accomplish its functions of information and representation.
There can be no doubt that theatre, music and dance performances should be seen and heard live: even in theatre and in music, where respectively word and sound predominate, the surrounding elements (location and pertinence) and gestural ones (action and acting, action and singing, action and physical interplay with the instrument/playing23) are important and cannot be excluded: were it so, communication and perception would be altered.
Now, in my opinion, technical reproducibility cannot be regarded in the same way if it is applied directly to the work of art (as is the case with painting, sculpture and architecture) or instead to the reading of a work of art by a performer or a group of performers. It is precisely to this reading that technical reproducibility is applied.24 The reproduction - even if ***it is thoroughly made, i.e. a video recording - has to be influenced by the performers' subjective intervention. There will therefore be many technical reproductions of different interpretations of the same work of art,-5 not a potentially infinite number of technical reproductions of the original work of art
However, until video recording, the technical reproduction of the performing arts could count ori media (disc 2' and radio) allowing the recording of the sound component, but not of the visual component of a performance.The first by now more than one hundred years old, is globai and has greatly influenced the perceptive modalities of the performing arts. Also radio broadcasting, though it has a shorter history, contributed to the change in the perception of the performing arts, but iu influence was mostly felt in dramatic literature, whereas the influence of disc can be even considered as progressively pervasive in music, as the unit cost of a disc decreased and at the same time its bulk was reduced and the reproducing machinery became easier to handle. This does not mean that radio was not relevant to the establishment of a purely auditory reception Cf music, but simply that its influence was less widespread and less lasting, as broadcast programmes - having a fixed timetable - are listened to at a fixed time, whereas for discs the listening time is chosen freely by the recipient-'
The past hundred years have thus seen the graduai establishment of a purely aural perceptive habit of music. It is a wholly new phenomenon, for listening to music had never been separated from the visuai perception of the surroundings (location and pertinence) of the performance .-'The rare possible cases of visual absence of the performers were always functional to the destination of the performed music and therefore invisibility acquired in those cases the value of a gesture.-9 With disc recordings, surroundings and gesture are cancelled in the technical reproduction of the original performance. Even when the liner notes give details about the circumstances, piace, date or even the time of performance," listeners, even those with fervid imaginations, will never be able to recreate the original surroundings, nor resuscitate the gestures of that actual technically reproduced performance, even though they may he have personally known the performers and witnessed other performances by them of the same music. Moreover, the listeners act "by themselves"", choosing the piace, the time (day and hour) and the method of Iistening.The vision of the surroundings and live quality of the original performance is substituted by a vision of an imaginary piace and playback equipment, such as a disc of variable diameter turning at a variable speed and read by a stylus or a laser beam. If I may refer to personal experience, this particular vision does not supplement the listening experience; on the contrar-y, it encourages the listener to concentrate on aural perception alone.
The possibility of receiving exclusively on an aural basis the technical reproduction of one or more performances of a musical work of art caused visual perception to be annulled, a reduction in the communication and perception of the interpreted work of art certainly of greater impact than that effected in the field of painting, sculpture and architecture. But it also enabled a series of operations that can be used to intensify the capacity of communication and the possibility of perception in the musical world of art: variability of point of view (sound optics), more detailed penetration into details, and most of all, the possibility of repeating ad infinitum the reading of the technical reproduction (not only as a whole, but also in sections) and, the possibility of comparison between technical reproductions of different performances of the same work of art
These are decisive advantages to create the reception history of each musical work of art, as it can now be supported by tangible examples and no longer just by the oral or written testimony of the few who could be present at a performance.
These advantages of the technical reproducibility of music are the basis of recognising a scientific status to a discipline called "discography' :" In fact, the discipline as such exceeds music in its scope, but concerns anything capable of technical reproduction and to being communicated and perceived exclusively through the sense of hearing, thus not only the performing arts. It is however beyond any doubt that the technical reproduction by means of disc has mostly concerned music, in terms of number of products and area of diffusion .34 This accounts for the fact that most publications concerning disc talk about music, so that disccgraphy is in the first piace musical discography, and it is in this field that the first attempts to build a system and organise the discipline took piace.''
It is worth pointing out that the beginning and spread of video recording brought with itself an enlargement of the possibilities of the technical reproduction means defined as disc: the videodisc actually reproduces aural and visual aspects of communication and perception, thus presenting an indisputable advantage over disc, as the characteristic reduction of technical reproductions does not imply cancelling one of the trvo senses invested in the original performance.Thus "videography" can be placed next to "discography" having much in common but also many differences."Videography", however, can only count on a number of performances, reproduced works, products and an area of diffusion much smaller than that of disc,and not only because the history of videodisc is much shorter than that of disc.'S
This should not prevent us from placing the study of visual-aural supports and the study of aural ones side by side. Put them side by side without confusing or mixing them, for the characteristics that differentiate them are more significant than their points in common.We must talk therefore of "discography and videography" and not of "disco-videography", as sometimes happens for the sake of brevity."
The phrase "musical discography and videography" appears therefore to be in agreement with both scientific requirements and the history of the new discipline, and under this name it was registered in the list of disciplines at Italian Universities.'e
As a scientific discipline, discography is divided in documentary and historical discography.
The name"documentary discography" was preferred to"philological discography", proposed for its analogy to other branches of the Humanities, but quickfy became obsolete.
The name "historical discography" can be grouped with "annotated discography" and "comparative discography". My personal preference for the name "historical discography" derives from observing how the adjective "historical" covers a reference to a concept both linear and non-linear of time (present as future of the past and past of the future, in an uninterrupted continuity, vs. present as an absolute, including past and future, both revived in itself, and instead of continuity with a sort of instantaneity)."
Be that as it may, historical discography cannot be at once annotated and comparative, just as any comparative discography cannot be both annotated and historical.°°
Documentary discography posits the disc as the starting point of its research and as the object of its analysis. It starts therefore with the physical description of it (or of other possible sound carriers), identifying its format and the materia] it is made from. It then verifies if the carrìer is engraved or recorded on both or on just one side. It then reads the surface of the disc and the labels attached to it (or the printed, sometimes even engraved words) at its centre. It verifies the possible existence of the hole used to insert the disc in the disc player.°' The label is a source of various kinds of information, according to the type of disc and the time it was recorded and pressed.All information gained up to now (i.e., during the thorough scrutiny of the object) establishes - sometimes loosely, sometimes more precisely - the limits in time (possìble period) and space (possible geographic area) of the engraving or recording from which the disc was reproduced and of its publication.
To complete the information acquired by the direct analysis of the carrier, documentary Aiscography can resort to a whole series of books, essays and papers, that permit access to comparative data, generally in the perspective of the history of disc, but sometimes - quite often - included in researches of historical discography.'
At this point,the direct analysis of disc has already become an indirect analysis,as the source of information is no longer the object alone. It is necessary to add to the direct source a panoply of external information sources that may complete the data acquired through direct observation of the disc. In some cases analysis is able at this point to answer all the questions of documentary discography. But in most cases it is not. Then the sources of possible information must be enormously enlarged."
The thoroughness of documentary description cannot in any case leave aside the identification of the disc contents (the performed music and the performers), which is the very reason for the existence of discography, and it is essential that this identification be controlled through the direct listening to the disc by the researcher.'a
The field of historical discography begins more or less where documentary discography ends. Historical discography cannot always benefit from the work of documentary discography There are fields of research as yet unvisited by it, be it because of objective diffìculties in finding a source of information (if not the documents themselves), be it because of the preferences of researchers for one field rather than another. Without the aid of documentary discography, historical discography must incorporate some of the work of descriprion and identification that would have been the task of documentary discography. indeed, there is a fundamental research base that no discography can do without.The object of the research distinguishes the two discographical fields: for documentary discography it is the physical object, the carrier'S, for historical discography it is the recorded content. Not all the information required to compile an exhaustive documentary discography is essential to historical discography." The information historical discography can acquire without reference to a specific and finalised work of documentary discography can be a lot or a little, but the essential data depends on the type of historical discography in hand."
The criticai moment in the compilation of any discography remains the identífication of the concents of the disc; this normaliy implies that you have to listen to it.',
Discographies can be encyclopaedic, thematic or selective.
An enqclopaedic discography which embraces everything containing music that was engraved or recorded has so far not been attempted, nor to my knowledge is any similar project planned: it would be an enterprise lasting for many years and would require the combined effon of all discographers in the world."
All excant discographic encyclopaedias are partial: for example, everything engraved or recorded in the field of jaa.s° The vastness of the field covered distinguishes encyclopaedic discography from thematic discography. A discography of all engravings and recordings of opera is stili an enqclopaedic discography.'' A discography of all engravings and recordings of operas by a single composer is a thematic discography.
Possibly the most extensive sectional encyclopaedic discography to have appeared so far is the World's Encyclopaedin of Recorded Music by Francis F Clough and G. J. Cuming, published in three volumes between 1952 and 195T'.This is dedicated to symphonic, choral, chamber, instrumental,voca! and operatic music engraved and recorded up to December 1955 (March 1956 for the British Isles).
The characteristic drawback of encyclopaedic discographies is that they are usually little more chan lists of recordings: I think it would be an improbable, not to say impossible task to compile a comparative (and therefore annotated) enqclopaedic discography. But it i$ a drawback that is only apparent: the listing in a sectional encyclopaedic discography is a precious resource for those who wish to dedicate themselves to compiling a related thematic discography.
The largest corpus among musical discographies is, therefore made up of thematic discographies.The planning out of a musical discography can be very different, and I doubt any listing can be free from the necessity of continuous updating.
Conscious as I am of its pedagogic, and in any case practical usefulness (certainly no less than a selected discography), I cannot free myself from a certain diffidence towards selective discographies.This is by definition a discography where the editor chooses the records to be included, accepting some and leaving others out. It is a discography that from its start chooses not to be complete and exhaustive.This bereaves it, in my opinion, of any scientific character, whatever the respect or even the appreciation of the possible coherence of the choices made by the editor, based on principles founded ori the greatest possible objectivity.''
The state of the art, which certainly is not very advanced in the study of scientific discography (be it documentary or historical) offers a vast gamut of possibilities to the specialist in this discipline, as far as the object and the structure of his research is concerned. As in any other discipline, success is associated with precision and diligence, supplemented by patience and obstinacy. All of these qualities are required especially at the preliminary stage of data collection and systematisation of primary and secondary sources (a fact in common between discography, videography and all freshly founded scientific disciplines).

Notes

1	Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeic (in Zeiachrift fiir Sozialforschung, I Band, Paris, 1936; paperback ediúon Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 19M
2	Das Kunstwerk, p. 10: "in t~glich neuen Gestaltungen" (my translation).
3	To be precise, this result was obained for the first time by Emil Berliner in 1888, using a disc with a zinc matrix. Only in 1901 did a similar procedure become possìble for cylinders.
4	Das Kunstwerk, p. 13:"das Chorwerk, das in einem Saal oder unter freiem Himmel exekutiert wurde, hfit sich in einem Zimmer vernehmen".
5	Kleine Geschichte der Photographie (in "Die licerarische Welt", Berlin, September 19th and 25th, and October 2nd, 1931; paperback edition in Das Kunstvrerk, p.45-64).
b	In Das Kunstwerk, p.56-58.
7	I shall not enter the debate about whether television is a form of cinema or not.Although I am personally convinced ic is able to be arcistically autonomous (with a language of its own, differenc from the language of cinema or theave), it is difficuh to puc such a question here, as it would take us far from the basic issue of this paper.
8	Das Kunstwerk, p. 40.
9	"Im Endeffekc sind die mechanischen Reproduktionsmethoden eineVerkleinerungstechnik und verheNen dem Menschen zu jenem Grad von Herrschaft iiber die Werke, ohne welchen sie gar nicht mehr zurVerwenduhg kommeri', in Das Kunstwerk, p. 61.
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10 Lionello Venturi preferred talking about "storia del gusto" (in Storia della critica d'arte, Edizioni U, RomaFirenze-Milano, 1945, pp. 18-24,3 1-40 and passim).The term "storia del gusto" ("history of tasté') apparently stresses only the interpretative side."Storia della fortuna" ("history of reception'7 is more comprehensive.
I I	Difference is their rea[ connotation, apart from its possible greater or [esser distance.
12 We could add the intrusion of a generally talkative and tiresome presencer or commentator for cinema and television. But the list is illustrative and not exhaustive.
13 Radio and television are included for the sake of completeness, as the artistic outcome of works conceived and written to be broadcast by radio and not liable to be transferred to other media - usually theatre - are a very small minority, and as for television - as wc have seen - we may, at the most, talk about potential and hopes.
14 Is not the piace in this case also the medium?
I S With the cerm "soundtrack" I do not wish to lessen in the least the geneticaln, creative importance of music written for the greatest ballets in the history of dance.
16 It is a process to be found most of all in music of the western world.
17 These are rarely conceived as proper reproduttions of theatre shows and concert perlormances.
I B The implications of the lalian term "interprete" exceed those of the English "performer", for which there is no Iplian equivalent You could in fact translate "performer" with "esecutore". but in this use the Italian term's field of meaning would be reductive as compared to the English one.
19 With the aforementioned exclusion of dance: this had to wait for video recording.
20 This dces not prevent its being authentic, for authenticity lies in its communicative power, and consequencly its faculty of being received, after the recording "set" it"incerrupting" the contunuity of ora] tradition.
21 It is worth keeping in mind that this applies to the text and not the work of art itself.
22 Lincoronazione di Poppea attributed to Monteverdi, Mozarci Don Giovanni,VerdYs Macbeth and Simon fioccanegra, Musorgsky's Boris Godunov are among the besc known of the innumerable cases that have been discussed at length, in the field of theavical-musical creation. But in the end, are not rhese five examples tather texts of different works o( art than two texts of the same work of art? Not to be neglected is the tendency of dance historians to consider the choreographer, and not the musician, as the author of a ballet In this use, would there be on the same musical "sound track" as many "texts" as choreographers, pertaining to an equal number of dance art works? The quescion is fascinating, though it exceeds the scope of the present paper.
23	In Italian there is no noun corresponding to "canto" ("the singing") which designates the action of an instrumenc player.
24 ft would also be possible co consider the photograph of a painúng, sculpture or architectural work as a "reading", but the photographer is more an observer than interpreter; or would we be ready to accept the multiplication of a painting, a sculpture or an architectural work in as many works of art as there are photographs of them? Evidently not as we would rather consider the differences between the photographs as deriving from different poinu of view.This implies that the photographer of a work of art is an observer and not an interpreter, a fact that does not preventhim from possibly convibuting essentially (and originally) to our understanding of that work of art

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25 These then require a double comparison: an absolute comparison, as they were contemporaries, and a comparison relaced to the different times and places of reproduction, Le. to the recepúon history of the performed and reproduced work of art
26 By "disc" I mean hencefonh any carrier used for sound reproducúon by means of engraving or recording and of freely and individually usable, purposely designed equipment.
27 I would exclude from the "obligetions" of radio the listening piace, because radio (just as disc) is designed to be "used" by the liscener on his own (and thus in a freely chosen place). I won't menúon the case - to avoid complex implicaúons, not perúnent to the objecc of this wriúng - the phenomenon of reproducúon from disc or from a radio programme, that promotes the diffusion of disc (spreading its influence) but also permits the reproducúon of radio programmes.
28 Even the performance of music incended to accompany rite (or ceremony) prevenúng the listeners from seeing the performers is nevertheless inseperable from a visual percepúon of the performance space.
29 If you wish, a negative instead of a positive gesture.
30 Ic is an all buc non-existent cendition for wax and shellac discs, stili rare for vinyl, more frequen4 though not constant, in opcically read laser discs.
31 I choose on purpose Benjamin's expression.
32 Benjamin describes and gives examples for it in Das Kunstwerk (p. 60-61).
33 This cerm has prevailed, notwithsanding its ambiguity, over the term "discology", which was proposed by Martin Elste during the "Colloquio internazionale di discografia e videografià", Roma, October 25ch-28th, 1992 (cf."Atti del Colloquio internazionale di discografia e videografià', Quaderni delfLR.TEM., no. 17, Roma, 1995, recte 1997, p. 169) and subsequently withdrawn by its proponenc
34 In this contexc, we understand under "music" "a co-ordinate'. group of sounds, organised in a more or less complex, significanúy self-sufficienc struccure".
?5 Cf. (in chronobgical order): L FOREMAN, Systemaúc Discography (Clive Bingley, London, 1974); C. MARINELLI, Discografia e cesto dell'opera registrata, in "Atti del Colloquio internazionale di discografia e videografia. Roma, 25-28 ottobre 1992" (p. 89-93); J.F.WEBER, Formulaúng Guidelines for Discographíes (in "ARSC Journal", vol. 28, no. 2, Fai] 1997, p. 198-208). For a history of sound supports and reproducúon equipment d. R. GELATTThe Fabulous Phonograph. 1877-1977 (2nd revised ediúon, Cassell, London, 1977).
36 Also in this rase, wich "videodisc" we designate any recorded carrier liable to video-aural reproducúon by means of freely and indivìdually usahle, purposely designed equipment (induding video-cassette; however,we poinc out thac the only support thac can hold comparison with the most advanced sound support, the laserdisc, had a very limiced producúon and diffusion, due to its high cosG the DVD - Digitai Versatile Disc -, which alchough jusc at its beginning, seems to promise a positive future).
37 The term "videography" for the discipline studying video-aural carriers (also called "audiovisual", though I find this term misleading for the extension of its cechnological implicaúons) is certainly more meaningful than the cerm "discography" for the discipline studying sound carriers, as "videography" denotes exhaustively any kind of video-aural carrier, whereas "discography" denotes just one of the many sound formaa.The corresponding cerm could be "audiography". But the long prevalence of disc (prevalence that was often exclusive) in the
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history of sound wrriers and the already conspicuous number of studies dedicated to disc reproductions of music works have by now established the term "discography" as all-embracing in the study of any kind of sound urrier. Indeed, a term "tape-ography" for tape sound records (of arry kind) did not establish itself in use, and in any case no scientiFc study has ever been dedicated exclusively - not together with discs - to this sound carrier.
I have never come across a term for the study of another sound carrier, the cylinder, that has been of enormous importance to the history of sound reproduction (cylinder-ography?).
38 Decreto del Ministro dell'Università e della Ricerca Scientifica no. 152, June 23rd, 1997,"Ridecerminazione dei settori scientifico-disciplinari', published in Supplemento ordinario della Gazzetta Ufficiale no. 175,)uly 29th, 1997, omissis, Elenco dei settori scientifico-disciplinari, omissis, L27B "Musicologia e Storia della musica moderna e contemporanea".
"Musical discography and videography" is present for the first time among the 23 listed disciplines.The new discipline will be activated in the aademic year 1998-1999 in the faculry for Literature and Philosophy of the Universities of L'Aquila and Bologna (here in the Course in Art, Music and Performance Disciplines).
39 Similarly, ít refers to a concept of space which is both linear and non-linear (being here as a consequence of corhing and premise for going vs. being here contemporaneously with being elsewhere, thanks to long-distance communication media).
40 To think cf an annotated but not implicidy historical discography means to think of a discography regarding a single engraving or recording of a single work and studying it for itself without any reference to either the hiscory of the recorded work or the collocation of the recording in the history of disc or co other works of the same author (and their possible recordings) or other recordíngs by the same performers.A staicjacket for whoever wishes co produce a scientifically grounded resuitAnd even if there were some virtuoso capable of chis, it would be an exceptional case that would not jusúfy an all-inclusive maaning of "annotated discography" in preference to "comparative discography" and "historical discography".
41 This statement can appear self-evident, and the verification supertluous; but in cylinder and tape recordings the hole is not in the crrier but in its holder: the hole in the centre is typical of disc formats.
42 I refrain from defining the task of the documentary discographer, as it exceeds the bounds of the present writing.
43 Primary indirecc sources are producers' origina] documentation (thac is often lost or even non-existent, and then possible copies or correspondence abstracts where the disc is mentioned), distributors' documentation, publicity leaflets, adverts in specialised magazines or daily papers, the testimonies of producers, technícians, performers and their heirs (ora[ and written), occasionai testimonies by biographers, reporters, onlookers, trade union documenation, and even tax polis; we could go on for ever, as there are no Iimits to the nature of the sources from which to ake gap•filling informacion.
44 The several di}ferent ways to compensate for the material absence of the studied carrier would need a long and sometimes complex exposition, that would in any case never be exhaustive, as the short hiscory of discography shows the fantasy of researchers to be limitJess.
45 The last aim of a documenary discography is ultimately the history of the disc (meaning the history of any exclusively aurei format).

46 I expressly avoid using the word "definitive" because in the field of sound and video-aur-al documents there never is someching definitive: there is always an unexpected source of information coming up, there is always another recording nobody knew abour, or everybody thoughc lost; discography is a typical continuous, neverending, ever re-srarting "work in progress", wich the characceristic, however, that each "station" is not superseded by the next, but remains a live reality, that can be progressivefy enriched and completed but never substituted.
47 Again, the rype ci discography envisaged determines the data essential co the recognition of its scienúfic status. There are, however, some fundamental data that cannot be facking in any discography.Among these are the cime and piace of engraving or recording; if the recording was live or in studio; time and piace of at least its first publication, the trade mark, the label and the matrix and wtalogue number; the title of the engraved or recorded work, wich name and surname of the author(s) and the date of composition; the name and designaùon ci the performers, possibly wich the name of the characters; the timings, partial and complete. This lisc is purely illustrative and by no means exhaustive.
48 In the ideai case, listening should ake piace while following the score.There is, however, much music wichout written texc because of its nature (all music in ora] tradition, for which texts are only transcriptions from live performantes, and do not exist as points of reference, independent lrom a single performance) or because they are difficult to find (contemporary music, ancient unpublished music in first recordings). In any such case, verifying the texc is only possible through comparison with engravings or recordings of ocher performances different from the recording in hand. lt may happen rhat a musical tex4 though in existence, may not be available co the compiler of the discography: in this case, discography can be supporced by a whole panoply of indirect information sources (musicological publications, music and recording reviews, artisti and authors' biographies, annals, repertoires, chronologies etc.) In vocal and choral works, an essential aid to texc verification may come from the literary text, if available.
49 Furthermore, its many volumes would need a sequel of yearly or biennial supplements.
SO jazz is the most advanced field in discography. jazz Records 1897-1942 by Brian Rusc is an exhaustive, specialised, encyclopaedic discogaphy: the two volumes of its first edition were published in 1961 (first volume) and 1965 (second volume).
51 Opera Discography, published in 3 volumes as part of "The Mellen Opera Reference Index" (vol. X, XI, XII;The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiscon/Queenscon/Lampecer, 1990), edited by Charles H. Parsons, is an eHorc in this direccion, chough ic lacks accuracy in detaíls.
52 Francis F: Clough 8 G.J. Cuming,The World's Encyclopaedia of Recorded Sound + First Supplement Aprii 1950 co May-June 1951 (The London Gramophone Corporation & Sidgwick and Jackson Limited, London, 1952); id., Second Supplement 1951-1952 (Sidgwick and Jackson Limited,The Decca Record Comparry Limited and London Records Inc., London, 1953); id.,Third Supplement 1953-1955 (id. id. id., London, 1957).
The limit WE.R.M. is in the selectiviry of recordings prior to 1950.
53 It is a premise surprisingly hard to find among the selective discographies published up to now.