(Inter)national Recording Histories of Central Europe

Abstract The early international record companies considered Central Europe to be a more or less unified market, both before and after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Gramophone Company created a separate catalog for the “non-German” language recordings of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and some neighboring states, and assigned the territory belonging to this catalog, with frequent changes, to the Berlin, Vienna and Budapest Branches, so that in several cases the company's Budapest General Agency was responsible for organizing recording sessions in Bosnia, Serbia and even Bulgaria. With the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, this common market was also fragmented. However, the links have not disappeared: most of the gramophone records of the Hungarian Sternberg company contain recordings by a Czechoslovak record company, a Polish record label is known to have gained rights to reissue some Hungarian recordings, and a close examination of the Edison Bell International Ltd. matrix numbering system reveals that the company's Yugoslav, Hungarian and Romanian recordings are closely linked. In my article, I will present some of the links in the record company network of Central Europe before and after 1920 through short case studies based on archival documents, contemporary printed sources and the repertoire. I will argue that it is not possible to understand the events and recording history of the Central European countries in isolation, without knowledge of the recording history of the surrounding countries. Furthermore, I raise the possibility that, in comparison to written documents, more complex aspects should be taken into account when defining patrioticum in the field of audio media.