The Weekly Archivist interview: Team Leader and Music Request Archivist

Cate Jele
SABC Radio Archives

The SABC Radio Archives, which forms part of the SABC Media Libraries, has Archivists who focus specifically on requests and on servicing of our clients. This is part of a series of weekly interviews where they will all answer the same questions addressed to them.

It is a way of getting a better understanding of what an Archivist do, as well as getting a better insight into the scope of our collections.

The Archivist answering the questions this week is Cate Jele. She is the Team Leader for the Request Team in the SABC Radio Archives, and she focuses on music requests as well as Ikwekwezi fm requests.
She has been with the Radio Archives for 12 years. She works very close with the request archivists to coordinate the daily research and requests coming in.

Cate, please tell us a little bit about yourself. (Where you grew up, where and what you studied and your work experience before you joined the SABC Radio Archives)

I was born some years ago in a township called Namakgale in Phalaborwa. I am the first child in a family of four. I studied a lot of things, amongst them is music. I personally do not see it necessary to mention titles. I worked for Top Teach Tutor center which was a branch of the college called SACTE as a lecturer for three years. When the government decided to merge teachers colleges, ours was also affected. It closed down in Feb 1998.
I then by God’s grace landed a post in the SABC in July 1998 for Assistant Archivist, please do not ask what it meant. But, then that was my title.


Please tell us about a normal day in your studio. What type of requests do you receive?

A normal day starts with requests like “In 1957 the SABC came to our school and recorded our school choir and I was a member of that.  I need a copy”. This request is of sentimental value to the person and I need to share in the passion in getting it. I always put myself in the client’s shoes. How will a feel if I do not get the recording? This always pushes me to go an extra mile. My job has made me realize qualities that were hidden in me e.g. of being a servant. I get fulfilled when I have helped; just the sound of a thank you on the other side just raps my day.

Tell us more about the collection you focus on and the scope of material you need to preserve.

90% of my time is dedicated to requests as I do requests for music and Ikwekwezi fm. 10% is shared amongst cataloguing, data cleansing and other projects. Should I call them extra mural activities?I have been in charge of the 78’s collection in the archives which I enjoyed as I would make a great deal of discoveries e.g. when I got hold of other works by the honourable Enoch Sontonga which are very valuable. I had to restructure my work looking at the majority of requests I get and the types of recordings requested for. I am now cataloguing school choirs in a hope to bring more smiles onto people’s faces.
The genre came in handy last year December when RSG requested Christmas carols by school choirs. I had more than enough to provide.

Do you struggle with technical difficulties, and if so, what?

The fact that we need to keep recordings at the best quality possible especially music, it becomes a problem when certain mediums becomes obsolete or when music is recorded on sensitive mediums such as vinyl’s or acetate tapes and they need to be doctored first before you use them, sometimes the quality is lost in the process or the music is just unusable.

If you have an anecdote about a specific piece of interesting audio material, please share it with us.

I have shared some already in the other questions. The music collections are a treasure. I remember listening to “King Kong musical” which I found amongst the 78’s. Listening to documentaries of Dr Yvonne Huskisson about our African Indigenous music are also very rewarding. The original sounds of African instruments; the women singing in the field; all these just remind one of who you are and how rich our history is. 

Tell us why you enjoy doing the work that you do.

I already have. ;-)

Related posts:
The Weekly Archivist interview: News and Actuality requests
The Weekly Archivist interview: Sport
The Weekly Archivist interview: News and Actuality
The Weekly Archivist interview: Channel Africa

Questions and blog post by Karen du Toit, Afrikaans Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives. 

The Music Librarian – SABC Media Libraries

This is the third post of a series of posts of interviews with personnel in the SABC Media Libraries. I will be posing the same six questions to all of us.

We have five departments which fall under the SABC Media Libraries here at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It is the SABC Music Library, the SABC Record Library, the SABC Information Library, the SABC Radio Archives and SABC Audio Restoration.

We work with different types of collections and different formats, and we are not always aware of what our colleagues are doing on a daily basis. This is a way of getting to know each other a little bit better with regards the work we do, and the importance of our collections in the broadcasting sector.

This interview is with Suzette Lombard, the Principal Music Librarian at the Music Library. The SABC Music Library has musical instruments of the highest quality, as well as printed music scores which they rent out to professional orchestras or music organizations on a daily basis.

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. (Where you grew up, where and what you studied and your work experience before you joined the SABC Music Library)

I grew up in Pretoria. My grandmother was a music teacher and my mother sang part-time for PACT opera, so I was always surrounded by music. I started taking piano lessons when I was 7, and completed a BMus (Performing Arts) and Diploma in Individual Tuition at the University of Pretoria. I taught music in Pretoria and Port Shepstone for several years. Piano and flute were my instruments at university, but during those years there were very few music teachers on the South Coast and I ended up teaching organ, recorder and guitar as well! Very aware of my technical shortcomings on those instruments, I practised and studied as hard as the students, believing (as I still do)  that it was more important for those kids to develop a love for music than to become music virtuosi.

When moving back to Pretoria, I joined the SAPS Band where I played piano, flute and piccolo, regularly performing for heads-of-state and royalty. We did some interesting gigs like police parades and street marches country-wide, but were also lucky enough to perform in Bremen, Germany at the Musikschau der Nationen in 2001. I also played flute and piccolo for the Pro Musica orchestra in Roodepoort for a few years, and loved every minute of actually playing the operas and symphonies I’d grown up with. One of the nicest jobs I’ve ever had was teaching piano and flute at the American International School in Diepsloot, just before joining the SABC.

3. Tell us more about your collection and the scope of material you need to preserve.

As we earn a modest income for the SABC, we believe that service delivery is extremely important, therefore every single query and request we receive is a priority. In any normal day we could receive repertoire queries or requests for quotes, search the catalogue, advise clients on choices of scores and instruments, do the necessary paperwork and dispatch the orders. We rent out orchestral instruments such as timpani, snare drums, tubular bells and tam-tams as well as double basses and pianos. We have a collection of music scores including orchestral, vocal and choral scores and chamber music.

4. Please tell us about a normal day in your office. What material do you give priority to?
 

With the music scores, instruments and equipment going out regularly, there is always something that needs to be repaired or cleaned or fixed-up. Great care must be taken when moving or transporting the equipment, as most of the instruments are valuable and hard to replace. It is also difficult to have some instruments repaired or serviced, as the skills as well as parts needed are not always available in South Africa, which means that we have to source it from overseas.

3. Do you struggle with technical difficulties, and if so, what?

Some of our sheet music collection is very old and fragile, and some scores are irreplaceable, especially some original scores handwritten by prominent South African composers. Due to copyright law, we cannot send out photocopies and thus the original sheet music is used by the orchestra or musicians on stage and there is always a risk that something might get damaged or lost.

We are looking forward to having a digital catalogue to replace the current old-fashioned card catalogue - it would save our clients and us a lot of time! I’m not even talking about the day we could have sheet music available as downloads…

5. If you have an anecdote about a specific piece of interesting music or musical instrument, please share it with us.

There are lots of interesting and funny experiences from when I was in the SAPS Band, but one of the weirdest times was when we opened a new border post on the border with Lesotho. We started marching and playing, probably something like Colonel Bogey March by FJ Rickets. The next moment the band members marching on my left got shorter and shorter and all but disappeared! Luckily after a few seconds they appeared again – it turned out we had marched right through the vehicle inspection pit!

6. Tell us why you enjoy doing the work that you do.

I love working in a music environment and dealing with musicians and composers. The work tasks are so varied that one is never bored, and there is the added bonus that one learns something new about an instrument, or a composer or composition every single day!

Questions and post by Karen du Toit.
Afrikaans Archivist (SABC Radio Archives)

The SABC Music Library – interview with the intern

This is the first post of a series of posts of interviews with personnel in the SABC Media Libraries. I will be posing the same six questions to all of us.

We have five departments which fall under the SABC Media Libraries here at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It is the SABC Music Library, the SABC Record Library, the SABC Information Library, the SABC Radio Archives and SABC Audio Restoration.

We work with different types of collections and different formats, and we are not always aware of what our colleagues are doing on a daily basis. This is a way of getting to know each other a little bit better with regards the work we do, and the importance of our collections in the broadcasting sector.

My first interview is with our intern that we have at the Music Library. Ignatia Madalane started to work with us just short of a year ago. She is unfortunately leaving us at the end of the month.
The SABC Music Library has musical instruments of the highest quality, as well as printed music scores which they rent out to professional orchestras or music organisations on a daily basis.

Iggy Madalane:

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. (Where you grew up, where and what you studied and your work experience before you joined the SABC Music Library)

Hi, I, Iggy, grew up in Witbank, now called Emalahleni (Place of Coal). I studied Business Practice at TUT for a year, then did Cost and Management Accounting, which I never finished because it was choking me. So I went to Wits where I studied music, majoring in classical voice.
Before coming to the SABC, I worked as a tutor at Wits. I also did some office admin work occasionally for the Music department. For the 4 years of my undergraduate studies at Wits, I worked in the SRC office as an office admin assistant. I have done a lot of performing, also as a solo artist. I joined a marimba band in 2005 and with this band we did a lot of performances, such as concerts, theatre productions, workshops, etc. We’ve just returned from Mexico, from participating in the international Marimba Festival which took place in Chiapas in November, 2010. I also had the privilege of working with some of South African’s most revered artists such as Professor Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph, with composer, story-teller, ethnomusicologist, Pedro Espi-Sancis, as well as Jeff Maluleke and world renowned and award winning percussionist and composer Lukas Ligeti. 

2. Please tell us about a normal day in your office.

Providing our clients with the best service are our main priority, therefore we do our best to ensure that we provide them with their requests as effectively and efficiently and as promptly as possible.

3. Tell us more about your collection and the scope of material you need to preserve.

I think I can safely say that we need to preserve everything we have, and we need more material. One of these days, I am hoping that we will be able to digitize out collection seeing that everything and everyone is going digital. Companies like Apple and Blackberry are inventing digital music stands, which means that musicians will be moving away from the conventional way of reading music from a piece of paper, to downloading the music directly to their music stands. It’s only a matter of time before the frenzy hits South Africa and I am afraid if we do not get on with the programme we might be left with no business to run.

4. Do you struggle with technical difficulties, and if so, what?

Struggle? Are you kidding? I can go to campus square, buy groceries, come back and bake a cake while the computer is trying to log on.
Secondly, since our catalogue is not digitized, we always find ourselves having to either keep our clients waiting on the phone, or call them back (an expense which can be avoided), because we need to put the phone down and go search the carded catalogue to see if we have the music they require. 

5. If you have an anecdote about a specific piece of interesting music or musical instrument, please share it with us.

Did you know that The Ride of the Valkyries, which is a music except from Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walkure was apparently used by some German soldiers during World War II. They played it just before they attacked in the Battle of Memel. This story was incorporated into the 1979 film Apocalypse Now where the music accompanies the ride of the helicopters while they attack a Vietnamese village. Therefore you might want to think twice before playing Wagner when having your Jewish friends over for dinner. 

6. Tell us why you enjoy doing the work that you do.

It is only in this field where you can learn something new every single day.

Questions and intro by Karen du Toit (SABC Radio Archivist)

Workshop: “Music in Digital Libraries and Archives”: Stuttgart Media University, 3-8 May 2010

My visit to Germany to attend the workshop “Music in Digital Libraries and Archives” was made possible by Bibliothek & Information International (BII) which is the standing committee of Bibliothek & Information Deutschland. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to them as well as the following people who organised the workshop and attended to our every need while in Stuttgart: Professor Ingeborg Simon, course manager of the M.A. Course Library and Information Management and Ms Katrin Sauermann, Coordinator of International Affairs, Department of Library and Information Management, both from the Stuttgart Hochschule der Medien. I am also grateful to my employer, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and my manager, Ms Ilse Assmann for giving me the chance to attend this workshop.

My expectations for this course were mainly to gather information about the latest programs and working methods in safeguarding and digitally preserving sheet music for the future. The SABC Music Library where I work is a fairly small library which was started as supporting library for the National Symphony Orchestra of South Africa. We house approximately 24 000 different music scores which include orchestral scores and vocal scores as well as choral music and chamber music. At present we have no permanent orchestra at the SABC and the scores and orchestral instruments are hired out to professional orchestras and musicians.

Some of these unique and valuable scores are becoming very old and worn and the ideal would be to digitally scan and preserve them for the future. A digitisation development program is in progress at the SABC and I felt sure that I would obtain some valuable information regarding the subject at this course.

On the first day of the workshop I met some of the university personnel, the two teachers, Jürgen Diet from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Silke Sewing from the Deutsches Musikarchiv of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and my fellow students. We were 9 course attendants from 9 different countries – Canada, Dominican Republic, Poland, Estonia, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Kenya and South Africa. Because the workshop was presented in English, language didn’t present a problem and we got along easily from the start. With all of us coming from music, library or information science backgrounds, it was soon apparent that we had similar interests, problems and questions regarding the digitising of print and sound collections.

Within the first couple of days’ classes I came to realize that, even in today’s technological environment, the safest way to preserve information is probably to have a properly published and preserved hard copy or book which is stored in ideal conditions. Similarly, vinyl or shellac discs or records in a pristine state and kept under ideal conditions still seem to be the best way to preserve sound recordings. The current problem is similar in all mediums - software incompatibility and the speed with which computer and other technology is developing are becoming their own enemy, as equipment and media become obsolete or unusable. Jürgen Diet quoted the following tongue-in-the-cheek saying from the digital library environment: “Digital documents last for five years or forever, whichever comes first.”

Herr Diet presented the first few days’ classes. Because he comes from a computer science background and is a musician himself, he was well qualified to introduce us to MusicXML, Parsons code, SharpEye software (making use of OMR – Optical Mark Recognition) and composition and notation programs such as Finale and Sibelius. He dealt with digital music formats including uncompressed audio formats such as AIFF, WAV and BWF, and compressed audio formats such as mp3, AAC and WMA as well as image formats for sheet music and music manuscripts. Entity-relationship modelling, FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and digital projects such as Probado and Variations2 and Variations3 were discussed in detail.

We were given practical exercises for every chapter of work finished, which meant that we could immediately obtain experience in working with some of the concepts and programs introduced. He also presented lectures on the Bavarian State Library, the audio material in Europeana, ViFaMusik and mentioned the plans to integrate RISM (Repertoire International des Sources Musicales) and Probado with ViFaMusik, and the Nestor competence (Network of Expertise in long-term STOrage of digital Resources).

After Wednesday morning’s classes, we strolled through the Schlossgarten and down the ‘Culture Mile’ of Stuttgart, past the Opera House to the impressive and modern State University of Music and Performing Arts where we enjoyed a hearty lunch before tackling the Stadtbücherei Stuttgart.

Shelves in the Stuttgart City Library

What I found interesting at the City Library is the fact that music scores, books and cd’s are not separated, but actually kept right next to each other, as can be seen from the photograph above. This makes it easier to find for example a music score together with sound recordings of the same work, as well as books about the same work or composer. Their on-line catalogue is supported by Bond Library systems and software. Members can take out up to fifty items at a time for a very reasonable annual membership fee. Their collection is at present already too big for the current accommodation but a new library is being built (close to the Stuttgart Media University) and should be completed by 2011. The library personnel members are excited and very involved in planning the layout of the new library.

Next on our list was the Württembergische Landesbibliothek or State Library Stuttgart, also on Konrad Adenauerstrasse. This is a legal deposit library which means that by law, the library must receive two copies of every work that is published or released in Baden-Württemburg. Legal deposit libraries therefore receive a large amount of material every week which needs to be classified and catalogued.

In this library we were not only impressed by the sheer size of the collection, but also fascinated by the impressive apparatus used to make digital copies of the books. The first consists of a machine designed by Hensel StudioTechnik which allows the pages to be perfectly photographed by a normal camera while the book is not completely opened. This prevents damage to the spine of the book, which would be a risk when using a normal flatbed scanner. Physical handling is kept to a minimum. The photographs are then edited and stored on computer. The program used for this storage is called Goobi digital library modules. Goobi stands for Göttingen online-objects binaries.

 

The pages are photographed …

and saved to computer.


Another fascinating machine is the line scanner below, called a “Grazer Kameratisch", which automatically turns the pages of the book once they have been scanned, thus also minimising physical handling and the risk of damage to old and delicate books.

Scanner at the State Library

We also visited the music library section in the State Library, where the personnel went out of their way to show us some valuable original scores from their collection, ranging from works by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach to an opera score by Paul Hindemith.

Conductor’s score of a Paul Hindemith opera with remarks handwritten by the composer

Silke Sewing started with her presentations on Thursday. She dealt with the difficulties in digitising and preserving sound, discussing Edison cylinders, Berliner discs, shellac and vinyl discs and the problematic cd-family (including DVD-Audio and Blu-ray discs). A part of the work program consisted of studying and discussing the IASA guidelines. Other subjects presented by Ms Sewing included long-term preservation, metadata and persistent identifiers, PREMIS and Dublin Core, the Theseus-Projects Contentus and Alexandria as well as a license model from Denmark. Also the XML Schema METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard)

An interesting aspect for me was the project being developed in Switzerland called VisualAudio whereby audio discs can be photographed by a special camera. The films/photos can then be stored as digitised images which could be transformed back into sound.

Shellac discs can also be played with a laser beam, but the playback equipment is very expensive and the sound is very bad, as the laser picks up dust and every little imperfection.

Ms Sewing also gave two of our colleagues a chance to tell us something about their work and projects – Tiina Tollonen from the Oulu University of Applied Sciences in Finland talked about the university’s digital score library “Notelibrary” and “eConcerthouse”, and Polina Proutskova who is completing her doctorate in ethnomusicology in England spoke about her field research into rural Russian folk-music.

On Thursday evening I was privileged to attend an amazing Meisterkonzert in the Beethoven-Saal of the Liederhalle, Stuttgart. The Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by the Estonian maestro Neeme Järvi performed a stunning Richard Strauss programme, opening with “Walzerfolge Nr 1” from “Der Rosenkavalier”, followed by five songs – Rosenband op.36 nr 1, Ständchen op.17 nr. 2, Waldseligkeit op.49 nr.1, Morgen op.27 nr.4 and Allerseelen op.10 nr.8, all beautifully sung by soprano Christiane Oelze. After the interval the orchestra performed “Also sprach Zarathustra” Op. 30 and both at the end of Ms Oelze’s lieder and the end of the concert the audience were on their feet demanding encores. It was definitely one of the highlights of my week in Germany!

The workshop was not all work and no play, however. Amongst other memorable occasions we went out to a Schwäbische restaurant in Stuttgart to have typical Maultaschen, Rostbraten and Käsespätzle. We also met at a lovely small Greek restaurant to enjoy some superb Greek food and good company. This gave us time to get to know each other, to share some experiences and for some lively discussions!

The best outing was on the Friday night –we were invited by Professor Simon to a cheese and wine farewell party at her house, and we went up the mountain by zahnrad (an electric rack railway). This railway, which is affectionately called Zacke by Stuttgart residents, runs from the Marienplatz in town up to Degerloch, along the Alte Weinsteige. It climbs a height of 205 m and afforded us a lovely view of Stuttgart by night.

There was also just enough time to visit the Frühlingsfest at Cannstadt and for a quick walk and lunch in Leinfelden-Echterdingen. My visit to Germany was complete with a visit to the nearby university town of Tübingen with its little shops and the lovely Neckar river.

When I arrived at Stuttgart airport to return to South Africa, my flight to Paris had been cancelled because of the Eyjafjallajokul volcano in Iceland! I therefore had an extra night in Stuttgart and was fortunate to fly back to South Africa via Schiphol and landed in Johannesburg only 12 hours later than originally planned. I was totally overwhelmed by all I experienced but very grateful for the chance to have been in Stuttgart

to attend this workshop.

Neckar river in Tübingen

Please find some useful links below:

Stuttgart Media University http://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi/startseite

Probado http://www.probado.de/en/home.do.htm

ViFaMusik http://www.vifamusik.de/

Nestor http://www.langzeitarchivierung.de/eng/

Europeana http://www.europeana.eu/portal/

Theseus http://www.theseus-programm.de/en-us/about-thesues/default.aspx

Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum http://www.digital-collections.de/index.html

VisualAudio http://visualaudio.project.eia-fr.ch/publications/IASAjourn.pdf

IASA http://www.iasa-web.org/tc04/audio-preservation

Goobi http://www.goobi.org/

Report by Suzette Lombard, Principal Music Librarian, SABC Music Library

Live concerts is the way to live!

For those of you who have never attended live concerts, let me share some of the joys of attending a live performance. Firstly, there is the wonderful experience of getting close and personal with your favourite musicians; then there is of course the pleasure of getting goose pimples when that sound of the violin, horn or guitar pierces through your skin, or when your most admirable soprano hits that very high note and you can feel it cruising through your veins.

Well, for me, I recently had an addition to my list of thrills for attending a live performance. I recently took three friends to the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance, two of whom were seeing a symphony concert for the very time. When they told me it was their first time, I remembered my first symphony concert attendance - I fell asleep about ten minutes into the programme. When I went back the second time, I managed to stay up a little bit longer, and now I’ll do anything to get a ticket! What I found amusing was the fact that people held their coughs and sniffs until the end of a movement. It turns out my friends also found this very peculiar, but now being the more informed one, I explained to them why.

Considering my first experience, I had warned my friends that sometimes the slow movements can hush one to sleep. I told them how they must dress and that they should not clap until the end, etcetera. I have to confess, I was expecting them to dose off at some point, considering the fact that we share the same background, i.e. of complete non exposure to such music. I was so curious about how they felt that I asked them if I could interview them for an article to which they agreed.

To my astonishment, both first comers, Jimmy and Nokwanda said they enjoyed the concert so much they would come back again. Jimmy, who was sitting next to me, could not stop starring at the pianist, Katya Apekisheva, who played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Opus 37 in C minor. He was simply taken aback by her performance. Nokwanda related that she loved the performance because it was not something she was used to. For her, it was the beauty of experiencing something different. Wilson, who said it was his third symphony concert attendance, said it was the sound of the instruments that took his breath away.

When asked what it was that they didn’t like about the concert, the first thing that came up was the fact that there were very few black people, both on and off the stage, an observation which I have also made throughout the years. To this my response was that it is not because black people don’t like the music, it is because for a long time it was reserved for a few and therefore most were never exposed to it. It is only now that more young black people are starting to get involved with serious music as the subject of music is introduced into more black schools and communities.

In conclusion, just as it will take a long time for South Africa to undo the damage caused by apartheid, it will also take a long time for black people to get more involved in serious or classical music, but the journey has already begun.

By Iggy Madalane
SABC Music Library

Celebrating Chopin

When it comes to western classical music, the first names that anyone can easily shout out are Mozart and Beethoven. Only connoisseur listeners of the music would go further to mention someone like Frederic François Chopin, whom we are paying tribute to this year. Born on 1 March 1810 in the village of Zelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist and is famously known for his piano works. Though born in Poland, Chopin immigrated to France due to the Polish November Uprising in 1830.

Extremely talented people usually have something odd we remember them by. Beethoven went deaf, Alexander the Great was apparently an alcoholic, and Schoenberg was terrified of the number 13. Chopin was the one of the frailest people I have ever heard of. Even as a youth Chopin suffered from ill health and showed early signs of tuberculosis – both his sister and father died of this illness. He eventually succumbed to this chronic lung disease on 17 October 1849.

Chopin also requested for his heart to be taken to his home town Warsaw when he died. His sister, Ludwika, fulfilled this very strange request. Some believe he did this due to the fear of being buried alive, so taking his heart out would ensure that this would not happen.

Despite his poor health (which some believe he inherited from his father) Chopin left a legacy that will last for as long our planet exists. A lot of his music has been used in movies, such as The Pianist (one of my favourite movies). Others include Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (if you haven’t seen this one, go hire it!!); Walk Hard: The story of Dewy Cox; The Prestige and The Contender, to mention just a few. So you may prick your ears when you hear his name, because you are wondering who this man is, but you will have heard some of his music somewhere.

My favourite Chopin piece is his Nocturne in E Minor, Opus 72 No. 1. The music is mellow, tranquil, and melancholic. It reminds me of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata. It was also used in the movie The Pianist. He wrote this piece in 1827, at age 17. He never intended for it to be published, which is why it was only published in 1855, after his death.

The SABC Music library is proud to have most of the maestro’s compositions, including the Piano Concerto No. 1 in e minor, Opus 11 and Piano Concerto No. 2 in f minor, Opus 21. Virtually all his piano solo works are to be found in the catalogue including the famous Fantasie-Impromptu in C Sharp minor and his Ballades, Barcarolles, Berceuses, Impromptus, Mazurkas, Nocturnes, Polonaises, Preludes and Waltzes.

In addition to all these magnificent works, we recently discovered that we also have his 17 Polish songs, Opus 74, published posthumously. These have been translated to German and include titles like Mädchens Wünsch (The Wish), Frühling (Spring), Mir aus den Augen (Out of my sight), and Das Ringlein (The Ring).

Though Chopin was Polish (with a lot of French thrown in), music was his first language. As one author said, “the piano was his means of communication”. In a letter he wrote to his father, Chopin said “I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into notes of music”. Therefore, next time you hear an inexplicably beautiful piece of piano music in an ad or movie, it might just happen to be Chopin’s. His “voice” will remain with us forever.

Ignatia Madelane, SABC Music Library