CHARM

CHARM (AHRC Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music)

The traditional musicological approach is to see music as a written text reproduced in performance. But much music does not exist in the form of a written text, circulating purely in the form of recordings. And even when music does exist as a written text, performers play an essential role in creating the experience that, for most people, is the music. CHARM was established to promote a musicology that better reflects the nature of music as experienced in the twentieth century and beyond.  It was a five-year project funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

CHARM has been successful in obtaining grants to support the creation of digital sound files from recordings and has created 5,000 to date.  Its most recent grant was from the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).  The official launch of CHARM's sound files will take place at 2.30 on Wed 7 July in the Safra Lecture Theatre at King's College London, prior to the start of the DH2010 conference.   Conference delegates who wish to attend this launch are warmly invited to do so.

The first part of the 'performance' element of DH2010's opening session will feature an illustrated dialogue on performance and research involving the Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (Associate Director of CHARM and Professor of Music at King's College London) and Andrew Halifax (an independent classical music recording engineer and the Recorded Music Transfer Technician for CHARM).  The illustrations will be extracts from the CHARM sound archive.

Details of CHARM and access to its sound files are available on the project website.