View into the Archiv 5 (Song)

View into the Archiv 5 (Song)

Centre for the Contemporary Art DOX, The Small Tower

The era of song publishing starts along side the emergence and development of cabarets, occasional performances and small theaters, Tingle-Tangle (according to the dictionary of foreign words  “low level entertainment”). 

Book editions, such as works published by Josef Šváb-Malostranský or Josef Zeffi reach into the hundreds. Small double-sheets eventually became the chosen dimensions of 165  x 135 mm. They almost always contain a list of the past and upcoming popular songs. Therefore  published collections can be documented fairly reliably. Popular songs are regularly reissued. According to Václav Pletka and Vladimír Karbusický (Cabaret Songs, the State Music Publishing House, Prague 1961) three hundred editions with 25-30 thousand titles were published from the 1870’s until the Second World War. There are about 2 000 of these in the archives.

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