Examples of CHARM discography searches

Simple search

Composer Haydn
Work Schopfung
Performer Chor

Recordings of ‘Die Schöpfung’ will be found even though the accent and the first word have not been specified. The German word ‘Chor’ has been used (for ‘Choir’) in order to find recordings by German performers. Searching on ‘Die Schöpfung’, however, will not find recordings of the same work with its English title, ‘The Creation’.

Advanced search

Search within All catalogues
Composer Bach
and Label HMV
and Rec. Location London
Filter by date From 28/07/1914 To 11/11/1918

Finds all the music by Bach recorded in London by the Gramophone Company (HMV) during the First World War. (Changing ‘and’ Rec. Location to ‘or’ Rec. Location produces more results, although in many cases these are London recordings not specifically listed as such in the source data.) Similarly,

Composer Bach
and Rec. Location London
not Label HMV
Filter by date From 28/07/1914 To 11/11/1918

returns recordings of Bach made by other companies in London during the First War.

Free text search

(catalogue:german OR catalogue:french) AND composer:Schubert AND year:1928

Finds all Schubert recordings in the French and German HMV catalogues made in the composer’s centenary year. Note that without the parentheses the search will find only the French catalogue entries because in Boolean logic all the ANDs are processed before the OR. Note also that with AND in place of OR the search will find nothing, because no items are tagged in the database as belonging to both the German and French catalogues.

composer:Schm?t

Finds works by Schmidt and Schmitt. Composer:schmi*t, however, would find those and also Schmit. Composer:schmi* will add Schmid, but also Schmidseder and others. For Schmid, Schmidt, Schmit and Schmitt it is necessary to enter either composer:Schmi*t OR composer:Schmid, or alternatively composer:Schmi? OR composer:schmi?t.

For further information

Discography Help

An introduction to the CHARM discography data

Examples of how Alan Kelly's data was coded (pdf file)