Musical Heritage Organization

The Musical Heritage Organization is an association that collects musicological worth protecting analogue and digital sound recordings. Our goal is the free availability of public domain related content like music, sound or voice recordings.

Background

After the activities of Carl Flisch-Aghayan as an entrepreneur between 1988 and 1998 in the film- and music industry, he have founded after the millenium an Internet Radio Service to broadcast parts of his music collection which he built up since 1977. The focus was on the purchase of rarities that are significant in musicology. The collection contains today 2'000 phonograph cylinders, 36'000 78 rpm gramophone records, 25'000 vinyl discs, 15'000 compact discs and 500 laserdiscs. After long time spending to discuss with the collecting societies to create a contract for amateur broadcasters, the next step was to set up the Swiss Internet Radio Association. In 2009 he founded with a friend (expert of copyright law) the Public Domain Project, today a music archive and online library with 70'000 gramophone records. He left the Swiss Foundation Public Domain in the end of 2019.

Collection Overview

The main part of the collection is classical music between the baroque era and the 21st century in their variety of musical forms: chamber-, dance-, orchestral music, performing arts, piano pieces, sacred and secular vocal music. The 2nd largest part is jazz and swing music. During Carl's business activities in the 1990s in the Middle East and West Africa he have started to collect rare ethnical vocal recordings and folk music. In the 2000s he began systematically to buy the earliest sound recordings, mainly phonograph cylinders of Edison and Pathé. His collection of phonograph cylinders was classified by Memoriav in 2016 as particularly valuable and therefore worth protecting. He found all kinds of oddities on record fairs and flea markets in Australia, Canada, England and the United States. His attempt to export a custom-made salon horn to Europe for an Edison Triumph phonograph failed due to local airline regulations in Amarillo, Texas.

Archive in Hinwil

The main archive is located in Hinwil ZH and contains mainly Classical music.

Last Larger Collection Expansions

Relocations in April 2020

• The special assorted collection contains 18'000 Choral-, Orchestral- and piano works in "excellent" quality. It means the recordings are not often played. Many are rarely to find

Relocations in 2021

• The Swissjazzorama donated us over hundred rare discs of Enrico Caruso and Swiss folk music of the Duo Marthely Mumenthaler and Vrenely Pfyl, Rudolf «Ruedi» Rymann and Lys Assia
• More than 500 gramophone records and 2000 vinyl discs were delivered by a friend in the Bernese Oberland that owns a wholesale distribution
• Over 2400 gramophone records arrived from various donations and 2000 gramophone records are purchased
• Approx. 4000 vinyl discs of classical music were donated from a retired professor of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis
• Approx. 1000 vinyl discs of classical music were donated from the Swiss Foundation Public Domain in Rüti ZH

Relocations in January 2022

• 500 grammophone records were purchased from a shop in Zurich. We received a collection of 400 records from Latin- and South America in alphabetical order from an inheritance. The shop owner is a friend of Carl and have gifted us also many hundred records, including of operatic soprano Amelita Galli-Curci and of operatic tenors Enrico Caruso and Benjamino Gigli. Some records of Yma Sumac, two very rare Ngoma discs of the Belgian Kongo, some discs of Brazillian and Argentinian musicians and various Rock 'N' Roll discs were donated to our sound archives.