Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds, writes:

In Disney’s The Lion King, the young cub Simba finds himself in the midst of a terrifying wildebeest stampede. Though our little hero survives the ordeal, a stampeding herd of wildebeest is certainly a force to reckon with.

Every year during the great migration, over one and a half million wildebeest leave the calving grounds of the Serengeti for the lush grazing pastures of the Maasai Mara. This journey from Tanzania to Kenya spans over 1,800 miles and is part of an endless cycle of movement that sees wildebeest, along with other animals such as zebra and gazelle, constantly on the move in search of fresh food and water. Though relatively sedate at times, it doesn’t take much to send this huge mass of bodies into a frenzied panic. All it needs is a whiff of danger.

In 1988, French field recordist Claude Chappuis recorded a herd of stampeding Blue Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) in the Maasai Mara. The accompanying recording notes make no mention of what caused the herd to take to their heels. Were they spooked by the presence of the recordist? Had a pride of lions or a solitary leopard been spotted nearby? And where was the recordist positioned while all of this was taking place? Was he in a nearby vehicle? Or on the ground? We assume that Chappuis and his equipment were safely out of harm's way, but with no contextual information to refer to, all we can rely on is our imagination. So sit back, close your eyes and picture the scene.

Stampeding Blue Wildebeest recorded by Claude Chappuis (W1CDR0000816 BD25)

This recording, along with tens of thousands of other wildlife examples, will soon be digitally preserved as part of the library’s Unlocking our Sound Heritage project.

This week's selection comes from Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Recordings.

Leonard Bernstein was born 100 years ago on 25th August 1918. In 1953 the young Bernstein made a series of LPs for the American Decca label. Already with aspirations as a music educator, Bernstein recorded lectures on the works concerned. In the UK the recordings were issued on the Brunswick label and below you can hear Bernstein conducting Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor. The whole series of recordings have been re-issued by Deutsche Grammophon in their Original Masters series including the talks (BL shelfmark 1CD0304588).

Symphony No. 4, op. 98, E minor

To explore more Classical recordings please visit British Library Sounds.

Follow @BL_Classical and @soundarchive for all the latest news.

Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s  (Unknown photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music

Leonard Bernstein was born 100 years ago this month.  During the second half of the twentieth century he was the one figure that brought classical music to the general public in a way never before attempted.  In the early 1950s he used the new medium of television to disseminate his passion for and knowledge of music to the widest possible audience.  Indeed, a whole generation of Americans grew up with a love and understanding of great music thanks to Bernstein.

Between 1954 and 1958 eight live broadcasts introduced by Alistair Cooke encompassed a broad range of music including classical, jazz, musical comedy and the art of conducting posing such questions as ‘What makes opera grand?’  The first programme on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is especially fascinating as Bernstein reveals the composer’s earlier ideas and sketches giving his own explanation for their deletion.  The opening page of the score is printed large on the studio floor with members of the orchestra standing on their appropriate staves.

However, it was Bernstein’s series of 53 televised Young People’s Concerts that opened up the wonders of music to a whole generation.  While the British Library has in the collections his later television appearances which were commercially produced (mainly by his record label at the time, Deutsche Grammophon), over previous years I have made an effort to obtain all of Bernstein’s early television material.

1DVD0010176 (BL Collections)

In 1959 the US State Department sponsored a tour of the New York Philharmonic which included 50 concerts in 17 countries.  Filmed records of the visits to Moscow, where Bernstein is seen with Shostakovich and Boris Pasternak, and Venice were available on DVD in Japan and can be seen at the British Library.  The tour ended on 10^th October 1959 when Bernstein and his orchestra gave a concert at the Festival Hall in London, parts of which were recorded directly to tape from the live radio broadcast in excellent sound by a private individual, Dr. Schuler, whose son donated his collection to the British Library in 1999.  The Times review was headed ‘Like burnished copper – New York orchestra’s fine tone’ and referred to Bernstein as ‘that paragon of brilliance and versatility.’  Here is an excerpt from the Second Essay by Samuel Barber.

 Barber Second Essay 10101959 extract

Bernstein and the New Yorkers returned to London in February 1963 and Dr Schuler recorded the Symphony No. 7 in D minor by Dvorak and Elgar’s Cockaigne overture, an extract of which can be heard below.

Elgar Cockaigne 13021963 extract

A selection of Bernstein video materials at the British Library

Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts 1DVD0005845

Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts Volume 2 1DVD0010018

The Unanswered Question - Six talks at Harvard by Leonard Bernstein 1DVD0009993

Archive of American Television presents Leonard Bernstein Omnibus 1DVD0009994

The Love of Three Orchestras 1DVD0010180

Historic Television Specials Moscow; Venice; Berlin; The Creative Performer; Rhythm 1DVD0010176

The Joy of Sharing - The last date in Sapporo 1990 1DVD0010178

For all the latest Classical news follow @BL_Classical

This week's selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English.

The Oxford English Dictionary categorises the use of while [= ‘until’] as northern dialect and, as this contributor to the Evolving English WordBank explains enthusiastically, such subtle distinctions in the way dialects assign prepositions can cause both confusion and amusement.

WHILE (C1442, uncatalogued)

We say nine while five and when I go to other places no one ever really knows what this means and what it means is nine until five o'clock. I remember I worked in a multinational company once and I left on my, well, it was a voicemail that said this, "office hours are nine while five", and I got so many complaints because nobody knew what the hell was going, what was meant to be said. "Nine while five, what does this mean?" I've no idea where it comes from, but when I say it where I come from in Yorkshire people understand it, but when I go out of the area people never really seem to understand it and I think it's quite funny."

I was a student in Leeds in the 1980s and frequently grateful that corner shops stayed open eight while late and delighted when, in 1985, the Leeds band The Sisters of Mercy released Nine While Nine, a song that includes the line nine while nine I’m waiting for the train.

My favourite encounter with the Yorkshire meaning of while, however, was the road sign (presumably still there) on the Otley Road in Headingley which advised drivers of the correct procedure at a filter lane for turning right: the sign read 'Do not turn whilst light is red' – presumably while would send completely the wrong message locally.

Follow @VoicesofEnglish and @soundarchive for all the latest news.

Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds, writes:

There are plenty of positives when it comes to digitising archival sound recordings. Long term preservation and improved access are top of the list, however the opportunity to easily explore thousands of freshly digitised files is a curator’s dream.

The library’s Unlocking our Sound Heritage project has digitised an impressive 18,000 wildlife recordings over the past 12 months and this has brought a range of interesting content to the surface. One of our recent favourites is a nocturnal recording of Golden Plovers in the highlands of Scotland. The recording is wonderfully atmospheric, with Red Grouse and Snipe adding to the moorland soundscape. Yet this isn't the only thing that caught our attention. The accompanying metadata, provided by the recordists Charles and Heather Myers, demonstrates the difficulties of recording wildlife in the dark, especially when you encounter unexplained sounds.

Though our Golden Plover recording is dominated by bird calls, it also contains the grazing sounds of an unidentified animal. Charles & Heather were both accomplished naturalists and could identify the songs and calls of British wildlife with ease. Non-vocal sounds however, such as movement or eating, could leave even the most talented individual stumped.

You may be thinking "But couldn't the recordists just take a peek in the direction of the sound?" The answer is, not easily. The recording was made on remote moorland in the dead of night. In addition, the microphones had been placed over 45 m away from the camper van where their recorder was being operated. The only thing left to the Myers' was the power of deduction, as can be seen in the following recording note:

"As I was unsighted it is all guess work. But one thing is certain: the birds were very close. There were Red Deer about so I assume the grazing sound was made by one of these (was it a swishing tail that caused the bump on the mics?) You can hear him stop grazing & trot away to the right (3 min. 13)" 

Golden Plovers with possible Red Deer grazing nearby, recorded on 28th April 1989 in the Scottish Highlands (BL ref 20173)

 Could a hungry Red Deer be the source of our unexplained grazing sound?

We'll never know whether the Myers' did record a Red Deer grazing on the moorland turf. Unidentified sounds are often part and parcel of the field recording process, so it's down to the recordist (or the curator!) to fill in the blanks. But, at the end of the day, that's all part of the fun.
 

Follow @CherylTipp for all the latest wildlife news.

This week's collection comes from Jowan Collier, Acquisitions Support Officer.

To me, sea shanty singing is as nostalgic and drippingly lovely as a freshly pulled pint of real ale. As a teenager, I used to huddle into the back room of the Jacob’s Ladder Inn in Falmouth with a few friends as part of our own sea shanty group. Taking in turns to be the lead vocalist (or ‘shantyman’) we ran through a whole repertoire of maritime songs that had been preserved (mostly) faithfully from the crews on board British sailing ships throughout the 19th Century.

With this in mind, today's Recording of the Week is the tune Bold Riley (Roud 18160), a traditional tune from the sea shanty group The Press Gang as part of the International Sea Shanty Festival that takes place every year in the height of summer. Like each of the 88 acts involved in the festival, The Press Gang approach shanty singing in their own unique way, mixing traditional British sailing songs with rock 'n' roll guitar.

Bold Riley (BL shelfmark DD00010580)

While acts travel to the festival from all over the world to perform and raise money for the RNLI, The Press Gang also organise their own smaller Sea Shanty festivals nearby in Cornwall for equally good causes. Thanks go to The Press Gang for allowing us to feature this recording and to the organisers of the festival for helping us record a large chunk of the whole festival.

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Anwar Brett (1966-2013) was a freelance film critic and the author of the book Dorset in Film (Dorset Books, 2011). For around 25 years, from his early 20s onward, he wrote for a broad range of different national and regional newspapers and magazines.  He also contributed to The International Directory of Film & Filmmakers and the 1995 edition of Children’s Britannica.

It is clear he was passionately interested in film and also devoted to his home county of Dorset (he lived in Wimborne). His other interests included boxing and football.

Anwar Brett's wife Tracey donated his massive archive of tapes of interviews and press conferences to the British Library in 2016. The collection numbers approximately 1500 tape cassettes, covering the period 1989-2006; and approximately 900 CD-Rs, covering 2007-2013. This unique set of recordings features film actors and directors, mainly in a press conference setting but also sometimes in more informal settings - on-set or in telephone conversations (a 2001 telephone interview with Rita Tushingham is almost wholly concerned with the fortunes of Liverpool Football Club!). 

Speakers include major international and British stars such as Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson and Helen Mirren; and directors Kathryn Bigelow, Beeban Kidron, Spike Lee, Mike Leigh, Barbet Schroeder, Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders -  to give a more-or-less random sample from this hugely varied collection.

The tapes are currently being catalogued by my colleague Trevor Hoskins. Trevor is about a quarter of the way through at the moment but it will be a long while yet before the end is in sight.

To follow progress and to see the tapes catalogued so far please go to our Sound and Moving Image catalogue and type in 'Anwar Brett tapes'. All are available to listen to on request via our free Listening and Viewing Service. You will need a British Library Reader Pass though.

To whet your appetite, here is a short clip of the then 23-year-old Danny Dyer, recorded on-set by Anwar Brett in June 2001, during the filming of the The Mean Machine.

Please note that this recording was made outdoors on a windy day, with consequent very noticeable wind noise. Contains strong language.

Listen to Danny Dyer

With thanks to Trevor Hoskins and Nick Churchill.

This week's selection comes from Rowan Campbell, former PhD placement student who worked on the VoiceBank collection.

Cataloguers shouldn't have favourites... but it's hard when one person sums up so beautifully what a collection is about! That's how I feel about this woman from Oldham, who contributed the following words at the Evolving English exhibition in 2011:

Lancashire dialect (C1442/6017)

As well as preserving some of her father's dialect words for future generations, she draws a link between modern English and that used 600 years ago in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - words such as 'layke' are still used in Northern dialects today.

Image from Four Anonymous Poems in Middle English: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (BL Shelfmark Cotton Nero MS A X) 

I also love how proud she is of her accent and identity, and that she refused to change this despite being told that she had to in order to be a teacher in the South of England:

Lancashire accent (C1442/6017)

Unfortunately, this type of accentism is still alive and well in the 21st century, but this collection shows how important and valid all accents and dialects are.

This recording comes from the Evolving English Wordbank, an extensive collection of recordings that capture English dialect and slang from around the world. The collection was created between November 2010 and April 2011 by visitors to the British Library exhibition, Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices and includes local, regional and vernacular forms and idiolectal expressions used within families or friendship groups.

Follow @VoicesofEnglish and @soundarchive for all the latest news.