[78-L] 78 Album Sets outside the US & Canada

[Steven C. Barr]

From: <goldenbough at arcor.de>
> Does a set of cylinders qualify as an album?
>
ONLY if they were issued specifically (and sold likewise) as a SET!
> One of the most important European albums is  'Musik des Orients', 
> published in Berlin by
> ethnomusicologist Erich von Hornbostel.  It contains 9  10-inch records 
> and 3  10 3/4 inch
> discs, some on Parlophon, others on Odeon. The album covers early exotic 
> music recordings
> from North Africa to Japan (ca. 1908-1928).
> The set was originally published in May 1931 by Carl Lindström AG, and was 
> subsequently
> re-issued on 10 inch Parlophones in the UK and on Decca in the USA.  The 
> accompanying
> 24 page large booklet with many photos makes this set historically 
> valuable.
>
> However, Erich von Hornbostel and the Phonogrammarchiv in Berlin had 
> published and sold
> a similar set about two decades before. It was a large 'multi-storey' 
> crate containing about
> 200 cylinders with early ethnographic music recordings from Europe, Africa 
> and Asia (I do
> not know if any American recordings were included).
>
> Only about 5 or 6 of these sets may have survived. The wooden crate is of 
> natural wood color.
> As it is not painted in white, I do not know if the crate qualifies as an 
> 'album'. ;=)
>
IF (as your post suggests) these were sold specifically as a set of 
recordings, they would
logically qualify as an "album set!" The concept of a "set" of related sound 
recordings
would seem to have emerged c.1910 or so, originally from Columbia?

Steven C. Barr