Introduction
This blog post is a translation from our French podcast series entitled Conversations. It documents the work of researchers and experts involved in preserving and promoting the recordings of the first Congress of Arabic Music held in Cairo in 1932.
We begin this series with Pascal Cordereix, head of the Sound Documents Department at the National Library of France until 2022. He sheds light on the preparations and negotiations surrounding the Cairo Congress, from the collection of recordings in 1932 to their full publication in 2015.
To do so, he welcomes me into his small Parisian flat, where he spent time listening to some of the recordings before our meeting, on 16 March 2024.
Interview
My name is Pascal Cordereix. I was head of the Sound Documents Department at the National Library of France between 1998 and 2022. Before that, I studied philosophy and then started working in a library.
I passed the curatorship exam in 1992 and joined the Department, which was then called the Audiovisual Department of the National Library of France. It has since become the Sound, Video and Multimedia Department. I held several positions in this department before becoming Head of the Sound Documents Department in 1998.
To summarise my activities within this department, I was responsible for collecting legal deposits, which is a requirement in France for publishers of books, records, videos, etc. to deposit a copy with the National Library. This was my main task, and I would even say my essential task.
In addition, I was in charge of the Department’s historical collections – the history of this Department can be traced back to the creation of the Parole archives in 1911 by the linguist Ferdinand Brunot. One characteristic of these archives is that they were created thanks to the very significant contribution of the Pathé record company, which invested heavily in the archives and supported them for several decades.
So these historical collections, which represent several thousand recordings, are archives in their own right. It is true that for a very long time they were ultimately withheld from public consultation for reasons of media preservation, for entirely good reasons.
But from the 1990s onwards, digitisation completely changed the situation, with the Department launching a vast digitisation programme for both conservation and dissemination purposes. This dissemination takes place via Gallica, the National Library’s digital library. Today, there are several thousand recordings online on Gallica, which are accessible to the general public.
In addition, on a smaller scale, the National Library also has a programme for publishing sound recordings from its archives. This is the case with the Cairo Congress, which was partially published in 1988 with the Arab World Institute (IMA), before the complete edition appeared in 2015, this time with the support of Abu Dhabi and on the initiative of Chérif Khaznadar.
FG: The sound recordings of the Cairo Congress were published by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 2015, but can we look back at the milestones of this long and fascinating experience between 1930 and 2015?
PC: Yes, absolutely. One can only understand the Cairo Congress if one understands the origins of the recordings. In fact, in a nutshell, I would say that the Cairo Congress as such was ultimately something of a French failure. Let me explain what I mean by that.
So, I mentioned that the spoken word archives were created in 1911 by Ferdinand Brunot, with significant support from the Pathé company. I’ll skip over the history fairly quickly, but these spoken word archives became the Musée de la Parole et du Geste (Museum of the Spoken Word and Gesture) in 1928. It was a slight change of direction, but an important one nonetheless, since Hubert Pernot took over as director of the institution in 1924 and steered it in a new direction towards what was known at the time as ‘musical folklore’.
In other words, in 1911, Brunot was a linguist primarily concerned with recording the spoken language, but from 1924 onwards, Pernot reoriented this position towards the recording of musical folklore, notably through three major phonographic surveys abroad, in Romania (1928), Czechoslovakia (1929) and Greece (1930).
Hubert Pernot was also behind the Musée de la Parole et du Geste’s recording of musical anthologies from the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition. This resulted in a very large collection, with around 360 recordings made by the Musée de la Parole et du Geste. Pernot initiated these recordings, but he left the Musée de la Parole before 1931 to take up a position teaching Greek at the Sorbonne. It was one of his assistants, Philippe Stern, who actually made the recordings at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition. So that’s the first important thing.
The second important thing is that these recordings of the Colonial Exhibition were made thanks to the significant contribution of Pathé. At the same time, from 1928 onwards, Baron d’Erlanger was in contact with Hubert Pernot with a view to making recordings in Tunisia (since Baron d’Erlanger lived in Tunisia in his magnificent palace in Sidi Bou Said). So the project to make recordings in Tunisia was already in place in 1928. This project never came to fruition, but contact was established between the two and there was a lot of correspondence, notably from King Fouad, proposing that the Musée de la Parole make recordings of the Cairo Congress, which was in the process of being set up.
That didn’t happen, in fact. The Musée de la Parole et du Geste would not go on to make recordings of the Cairo Congress. So, why? Here too, we are somewhat in the realm of speculation, but still, I think there are several reasons. First of all, I think there is an economic reason. As I just mentioned, Pathé made the recordings of the Colonial Exhibition. It’s a huge collection of sound recordings, and Pathé probably didn’t have the resources to go back to Egypt to make another huge collection, in this case of the Congress, since the recordings of the Cairo Congress also represent about three hundred and sixty recordings. Which is considerable for the time. So, there was probably an initial economic reason why Pathé could not afford to return to make such a large collection.
The second reason, I think, is that Pernot probably did not fully grasp the significance of the Cairo Congress, or at least what was being prepared as the Cairo Congress. So, I think that in his correspondence with Baron d’Erlanger, we can sense that Pernot did not fully understand the scale and importance of the Congress.
The third reason: we know very well that the editorial policies of record companies at the time were still subject to a certain geopolitics, linked to state policy. What I mean by this is that Pathé was very well established in the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria) and much less so in the Middle East (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq), to use current names, whereas the British Gramophone Company was very well established in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt. So I think that played a big part in the final decision to entrust these recordings to Gramophone, since the Gramophone Company, which made the recordings of the Cairo Congress, was already very well established in Egypt.
So, I think there are a number of reasons why, in the end, it was not the Musée de la Parole et du Geste that made these recordings, but Gramophone (a commercial company), on the condition, set by King Fouad, that these recordings would not be commercially distributed. So that was one of the limitations.
After that, we can also ask ourselves other questions, since one of the very first heritage institutions to be created in Europe for sound recordings was the Phonogramm-Archiv in Berlin. One might have imagined that the Phonogramm-Archiv in Berlin, as it had done on other occasions, would also make these recordings. That too was not the case.
So, I think we should – and this is precisely the point of this research programme – really delve into the archives of EMI, which holds the Gramophone archives in Britain, to see if there are any documents that explain more precisely how Gramophone ultimately made these recordings. I think researchers are very keen to find out what happened there at that time, in terms of recording and preparing the recordings.
FG: To return to the milestones, after the Pernot era in 1930, Pathé ultimately decided not to record the Cairo Congress. To cut a long story short, decades passed during which the recordings of the Cairo Congress were apparently only available in three countries: Egypt, France and Great Britain
PC: …and Germany, since there is a collection there. I learned this recently. One of the Cairo Congress collections is held at the Phonogramm-Archiv in Berlin.
FG: …and since these recordings are not commercial, for decades in these four countries these collections have been kept in archives and are not accessible to the public. So, coming back to France, to my knowledge, it was in 1988 that there was a first breakthrough when some of the recordings became accessible. Can you explain how this happened?
PC: So I’ll add a small detail because it’s quite important. When we look at the milestones, the Cairo Congress took place in 1932, and so there were a certain number of representatives per country. On the European side, there were luminaries such as Béla Bartok and Paul Hindemith, and on the Arab side, there were leading Arab musicologists. And then there were representatives from heritage institutions, and for France, there were representatives from the Musée de la Parole et du Geste, with two attachés at the time, Madame Hercher-Clément and another person whose name I have forgotten (editor’s note: Madame Lavergne).
In any case, there were two attachés from the Musée de la Parole and one representative from the Musée Guimet, Phillipe Stern, whom I have already mentioned. Phillipe Stern was responsible for the recordings at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition. At the time, he was still fully attached to the Musée de la Parole. He left the Musée de la Parole in 1931 to become assistant curator at the Musée Guimet. He also participated in the work of the Cairo Congress. This explains why a collection of recordings from the Cairo Congress ended up at the Musée Guimet relatively quickly, around 1933.
However, the Cairo Congress collection from the Musée de la Parole arrived later. It arrived at the Musée de la Parole in 1935, after the museum had expressed interest in acquiring a collection. So there you have it, it’s just a small but important piece of information to know. And indeed, these archives remained as archives for several decades, until Marie-France Calas, at the time, set up this partial publication project with the Arab World Institute (IMA) and two specialists in this music, Christian Poché and Bernard Moussali.
Marie-France Calas’s idea, in fact, was broader than the Cairo Congress. At the time, she was really keen to promote the Department’s historical collections, mainly through publications. So she produced this partial publication, just as she had produced partial publications of other collections, notably the archives of Felix Quilici on Corsican polyphony, for example, which was really one of the driving forces behind the rediscovery of this polyphony. So we owe this edition to Marie-France Calas in 1988, with the release of a selection of recordings from the Cairo Congress on two compact discs. And that’s where things will remain.
On the one hand, because it must be acknowledged that the National Library of France has been somewhat cautious in terms of audio publications all along, and so things remain as they are, linked also to the difficulties – or rather the technological limitations of the time – since digitisation had not yet appeared. So copies had to be made on magnetic tapes in order to produce an edition. This was a technically cumbersome and costly process until the 1990s, when digitisation became the norm in the Audiovisual Department (at the time), both as a means of preserving the most fragile media and as a means of dissemination via Gallica, the digital library of the National Library of France.
And the Cairo Congress was one of the very first collections to be digitised. Even though it was not published on Gallica, simply because – and I take responsibility for this – we wanted to produce a first-rate scientific work on the Cairo Congress, and at the time, the conditions were not right.
So, digitisation already allows consultation within the National Library of France, but not yet beyond. So here we are in the 1990s and 2000s. Then Chérif Khaznadar arrives with this project for a complete edition, with significant funding from Abu Dhabi. And in 2015, we arrived at a co-publication between the National Library of France, which owns the collection and has the expertise in terms of editing, digitisation and publishing, and Abu Dhabi, which has both the cultural commitment and the funding that the National Library of France clearly did not have at that time.
So we arrive at this publication in 2015 with the scientific contribution of Jean Lambert, Bernard Moussali’s testamentary legatee, which allows us to use passages from Bernard Moussali’s work. And I think that what we have here is ultimately a combination of a heritage approach and a scientific approach, which continues today in the ongoing project.
FG: Can we return for a moment to Chérif Khaznadar’s contribution to this project as such, because he is mentioned in certain publications, but is not always visible?
PC: I believe that Chérif had a plan to publish a thematic collection, in a manner of speaking, of Arabic music in the broadest sense, and the Cairo Congress was somewhat the cornerstone of this publication project. I don’t know if it was pursued afterwards, because difficulties may have arisen, but in any case, the Cairo Congress was part of a desire to publish and disseminate as widely as possible a musical heritage that is often little known because it is poorly disseminated.
And Chérif, with his interpersonal skills, was also an indispensable link between Abu Dhabi and the National Library of France. In any case, he was the initiator of this project and a facilitator of relations between the two countries and the two institutions.
FG: I believe that during Chérif Khaznadar’s time, there was talk of creating a centre for traditional world music in Abu Dhabi. Do you know anything more about this?
PC: No, I don’t think that happened. But what I was trying to say, albeit clumsily, was exactly that. I believe there was another publication on lullabies throughout the Arab world, but to my knowledge, that’s all. And there was a symposium in Morocco four or five years ago now, to try to build on the legacy of these publications.
FG: Can we return to the technical but extremely important role played by Luc Verrier, who worked in your department at the time, before the publication of this corpus in 2015, and who was entirely responsible for the sound processing of these digitised archives? Can we return to this technical – and probably aesthetic – process of digitisation and sound processing of these archives?
Yes, I think it’s important to say that we were very fortunate to have someone like Luc Verrier to do this work, who, in my opinion today, is, dare I say, the best specialist in France in the digitisation of 78 rpm records. So we were very lucky to entrust this collection to him, as well as others. He will be able to explain the technical process much better than I can. But what I can say, having seen him work and having worked with him, is that it was a surgical process.
In any case, it was done with the computer tools he had at his disposal, Pyramix and SEDA. It was a job that was done by hand, track by track, minute by minute, second by second, I might say. So, it involved both the corrections necessary for listening to the recordings, while respecting those recordings, i.e. limiting the correction and editing phase of these discs as much as possible.
For me, it was absolutely fascinating to see sound through computer tools, to finally be inside the mass of sound. So today, we’re no longer just dealing with waveforms, etc. We’re inside the sound, with frequencies and everything. Luc will explain it much better than I can, but at a certain point, you hear the sound of a car passing in the background or a door closing, things that are almost inaudible to the average listener, but which are present, thanks to Luc’s work. Once again, it’s really very, very beautiful work. Very precise, very respectful, which is something we often forget. There is a real respect for the archive, [and the desire] not to sacrifice quality for the sake of listening.
FG: Similarly, how would you explain or describe the role played by Jean Lambert in the scientific part of the Cairo Congress recordings?
Jean Lambert is known as one of the leading specialists in Arabic music, particularly Yemeni music, but not exclusively. So I think Jean has made a double contribution. First, there is his own long-standing expertise, or rather his own scientific background. And then, once again, there is the fact that he inherited the work of Bernard Moussali, who died prematurely, but who also had this understanding. It’s not just a matter of compiling, but of interpreting and probably reworking these archives.
And here too, I think that if, in my opinion, this edition is a great success, I dare say, it’s precisely because we had Luc Verrier on the technical side, and for me that goes far beyond the technical, it’s really something else. And from a scientific point of view, someone like Jean Lambert, I think that bringing together this set of skills and expertise enabled this project to succeed in the way that it did.
FG: One last question. In one of your articles, you talked about the phonograph, memory and death, and as I read it, I realised that this was probably, with the creation of the National Sound Archive in France, the moment when, for the first time, the mechanical reproduction of the voice would annihilate the physical death of the individual and probably immortalise the artist’s voice. So, decades later, what does the digitisation and sound processing of recordings bring, and what will their possible publication in full on Gallica enable?
PC: I believe that this dimension of transcending death has been present since the very beginnings of sound recording. There is this desire – it is very striking when you read the press from the late nineteenth century – to see to what extent sound recording is expected to free us from death. And so here, I think we really have this situation on several levels. On the one hand, there are the repertoires that were played, many of which would ultimately disappear or be profoundly transformed in the years following the Congress. Here we have a trace that will remain indefinitely…
So, it’s complicated to talk about digitisation in the end, because digitisation itself is only one step. Where we will truly achieve preservation, almost eternal dissemination of these recordings, these voices, these repertoires. It’s the whole process that will follow digitisation, the whole process of preserving this digitisation. And that’s where, in my opinion, the National Library, in France and in other countries, plays an absolutely fundamental role.
The fact is that, beyond digitisation, it has given itself the means to preserve this digitisation. And that is something that is both complicated and technically costly, but which is part of a very long-term process. So we need to be careful when we talk about digitisation. Digitisation is a step that must be followed by plans to safeguard that digitisation. And that is what is happening for the Cairo Congress, as for other collections. And that is what will allow us the pleasure of listening to or studying these recordings again without any time limit. This is ultimately a very new parameter, linked to digitisation, but also to what will happen after digitisation.
FG: …and their publication on Gallica?
Their publication on Gallica, indeed… So, once again, I think that a project like the one currently underway was needed to produce a beautiful publication on Gallica. Something that is both scientific and accessible to all audiences. I think that’s the challenge. That’s where I am now. I’ve passed the baton, so now it’s up to you to do the work.
But I think the challenge is really to produce what I would call a beautiful publication that ultimately appeals to both the general public and scientists. And I am convinced that this is what will happen. But until I left, we weren’t in that position. On the one hand, the conditions weren’t right, and on the other hand, as the publication was still fairly recent, we had to give it time to live as a publication before moving on to free distribution on the internet, which, it must be said, is as wide as possible.