CHARM - Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music

CHARM is a useful way of accessing digital versions of older recordings. Visit the website to see what's there. Here's a quote from their website:-

Almost 5000 sound files are available via the Find Sound Files facility. All sound files are transferred from 78rpm discs held by the King's Sound Archive at King's College London, under the CHARM transfer project and the subsequent JISC-funded 'Musicians of Britain and Ireland, 1900-1950'. Apart from a special focus on Schubert songs, the CHARM transfers aimed to cover a broad range of performers in Classical repertoire, avoiding where possible tracks that were already widely available in CD or online reissues. ‘Musicians of Britain and Ireland’ focused on performers who recorded mainly in those countries and whose work fell out of the catalogues following the creation of EMI in 1931.

• CHARM homepage
• CHARM find sound files
• E-book - The Changing Sound of Music, by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. You'll find the entire book here, free access. Here's what the CHARM website says about it:-

An electronic book by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to the Study of Recorded Musical Performances. Integrating text, graphics, and sound files, this book offers both an introduction to research techniques for recordings and a historical interpretation of stylistic developments in Western 'art' music performance during the age of recordings.