M~ic education in sociegbonne opened the Archives de la Parole in Paris, which was, however,
devoted to speech rather than to music.
Sound libraries on the Vienna model were in due course opened in
Rome, Dresden, Zurich, Frankfurt, Zagreb, Budapest, etc. and lists of
those in existence were published by the Institute of Intellectual Co-
operation in 1934 and later in 1940.
Today sound libraries are becoming still more numerous, and range
from the Discoteca di Stato in Italy to the Music Section of the Library
of Congress in Washington.
Sound libraries-fed in this instance with commercial musical issues
-have been formed for their own use by the major broadcasting
systems of both hemispheres, and universities in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile
and Argentina are co-operating in the establishment and maintenance
of others. In France, the International Association of M&ic Libraries
has likewise become the International Association of Libraries of
Recorded Music. Now that the movement is expanding, it must be
given the necessary unity and cohesion.
The vital factor here is the principle of legal deposit. This has been
in force in France since the promulgation of the decree of 8 April 1938,
from which date all gramophone records and long-playing recordings
of music published by any manufacturer have been deposited at the
national sound library. The International Association of Libraries of
Recorded Music has undertaken a study of the whole question of legal
deposit and of its extension to other countries, which can be effected
only through the appropriate State machinery.
Legal deposit ensures that the sound library acquires all the major
musical items published, but the library’s activities do not end there.
The Phonothtque Nationale of Paris will serve as an example. This
library has a sound laboratory equipped with the most up-to-date
recording apparatus, disc-playing machines and magnetophones ; in a
word, the national sound library is combined with a national sound
recording studio. A major advantage of this is that we can supply
ethnographical and other scientific expeditions all over the world with
recording apparatus enabling us, and other institutions which have
adopted this procedure, to build up little by little, alongside archives
of classical music, corresponding collections of folk music.
An acquaintance with folk music is, in our view, a necessary part of
any programme of musical education for the masses. Our personal
experience has shown us that the growth of powers of musical appre-
ciation in the novice follows very much the same pattern as the growth
of musical knowledge in the human race, working from the primitive