CHARM discography help

Search help

Simple search

SEARCH CRITERIA: Enter any suitable text under the ‘FREE TEXT’ tab in ‘Composer’ and/or ‘Work’ and/or ‘Performer’. Text in more than one field will be combined as an 'AND' search. Alternatively, choose the ‘BROWSE’ tab, start typing, and then choose from the list that appears.

AUDIO: Tick the box to restrict the search returns to items having a sound file available for download.

SUBMIT SEARCH: In case of difficulty use ‘Reset Form’ and retype your search terms.

Free text search

SEARCH: Enter any text and/or numbers. AND, OR and NOT may be used between search terms. ? (replacing one character) and * (replacing several) may be used as wildcards, except at the start of a word. To search for exact strings enclose them within " ".

Field names may be specified in Free Text Search using the syntax fieldname:searchterm or fieldname:"search string". The following field names are available:

  • cat-num [will normally find single side numbers]
  • catalogue [e.g. catalogue:italian will list the complete Kelly Italian catalogue. Available catalogues are Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Grey, Lehl, Werm. For further information on the catalogues included see the introduction to the CHARM discography data]
  • composer
  • date [without separators, using the format yyyymmdd]
  • has-sound-file [has-sound-file:true returns all the items that have sound files]
  • label
  • matrix-num [when specifying a prefix try it with no space between prefix and number (e.g. matrix-num:Bb6978-2; failing that, include the space and use " " for the complete string (e.g. matrix-num:"2EA 12322"]
  • page [finds the entries on a page in WERM]
  • performer
  • producer-engineer [try with and without first names and initials]
  • venue [including cities, halls, studios]
  • voice [voice designations may be in various languages]
  • work
  • year

SUBMIT SEARCH: In case of difficulty use ‘Reset Form’ and retype your search terms.

Advanced search

SEARCH WITHIN: choose ‘All catalogues’ unless you are familiar with the individual catalogues. ‘Kelly’ contains Gramophone Company (HMV) data. (Alan Kelly’s data is also available, as separate HMV series catalogues on CDR, from akark [AT] dsl [DOT] pipex [DOT] com.) ‘Gray’ contains data collected from a wide range of archival sources by Michael Gray. ‘Lehl’ is Karsten Lehl’s discography of Schubert songs on 78rpm disc. We thank all three discographers for allowing us to include their data. ‘Werm’ is Clough and Cuming’s The World’s Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music (1952-7).

SEARCH FOR: Enter text in up to four categories. Use the down-arrows to choose the categories and to choose how to combine them with AND, OR or NOT. (Note that Date requires a full date in the format yyyymmdd. Use Free Text Search with the field name year to specify year only.)

FILTER BY DATE: Optionally, you may enter a range for the dates of recording.

AUDIO: Tick the box to restrict the search returns to items having a sound file available for download.

SORT RESULTS BY: Choose how to sort the search returns. Note that many discographical records have no information on the recording venue or date: these will display first if you sort by ‘Rec. Location’ or ‘Date’.

SUBMIT SEARCH: In case of difficulty use ‘Reset Form’ and retype your search terms.

Browse help

BROWSE -BY CATALOGUE allows the discographers’ complete data lists to be browsed by date. Note that data records without dates may not display.

BROWSE –BY COMPOSER and BROWSE –BY PERFORMER await an authority file with standardised names: this requires further funding. Therefore there may be various forms of some names (e.g. Chaikovsky, Chaikowski, Tchaikovsky, Tchaikowsky etc). Use a Free Text Search with wildcards (see above) to find several variants at once. Note that performer names may begin with Dr, H, Herr, Frau, M, Miss, Mlle, Mme, Monsieur, Mr, S, Signor, etc.

BROWSE –BY DATE shows up some format errors before 1897 and after 2001. Try a Free Text Search specifying field names date or year (see above). Or apply to charm [AT] kcl [DOT] ac [DOT] uk for correct information. Note that data records with no date information may not display.

Using search results

Your search terms are listed above the results. Move between the pages of results using the numbered buttons. Or enter a page number in ‘Jump to Page’ and click ‘Go’.

‘Show all data’: click here to expand all the search results (this has the effect of clicking ‘+’ on each). Or click ‘+’ only for those results you wish to see in full.

The full results list the contents of all available fields for this data record. Note that catalogue issue numbers are usually listed in ‘Issue_78_45’ in a Gray data record and ‘Note’ in Kelly. ‘Num’ contains matrix numbers. In Kelly data ‘CatNum’ is generally a side number and in Gray data generally an issue number. In Kelly data, performers’ names and other information may also be listed in ‘Head’ and in ‘Note’. Also in Kelly data p inducates piano accompaniment, o orchestral accompaniment. (Much of this could be regularised with further funding; but bearing in mind how hard this data has been to access until now, we chose to include more data rather than to make its presentation perfectly consistent.)

Data returned from the WERM catalogue shows only the first item reliably. To see full data from WERM, note the page number in your search results and find it in the relevant PDF available from Discography > Resources or the Download Area. (Again, this could be greatly improved in the future.)

Downloading search results

Use CSV Downloads to export your search results. Special characters (e.g. accents) may not display correctly in the basic CSV format. Use one of the Excel formats if you have Excel-compatible spreadsheet software.

Bugs and errors

Please notify charm [AT] kcl [DOT] ac [DOT] uk of any bugs or errors you find. Thank you.