Behind the scenes, we have been working to preserve an extraordinary part of the castle’s history, long-lost audio recordings. Under the leadership of our Director of Collections, Beth Welin, our team has focused on digitizing our remarkable collection of original pipe organ recordings made in the Great Hall during John Hays Hammond Jr.’s lifetime.
These recordings capture the artistry and innovation of Hammond’s world, but in the more than sixty years since his passing, much of the knowledge of these recordings has been lost.
This support includes a $2,000 Essex Heritage Partnership Grant from the Essex National Heritage Area and a $14,547 Recordings at Risk Grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), made possible by funding from the Mellon Foundation. With this funding, additional recordings were digitized at The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC).
We wish to thank our partners for their generosity, including:
A $2,000 Essex Heritage Partnership Grant from the Essex National Heritage Area.
A $14,547 Recordings at Risk Grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from the Mellon Foundation.
This incredible support has enabled us to digitize more of these invaluable recordings at The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC).
Thanks to these efforts, these rare and once-silent recordings are now safely preserved through the Digital Commonwealth, a statewide initiative providing access to digital resources from Massachusetts libraries, archives, and museums.
This ongoing work ensures that these wonderfully historic sounds can now be enjoyed for generations to come. They capture not only Hammond’s voice and work but also the remarkable acoustics of the Great Hall itself.
Listen to history and step into the past through our curated collection, available both on the Digital Commonwealth. We now offer a newly released recording of a Marcel Dupre performance on most streaming platforms, including Spotify and iHeartRadio.
Up to this point, we had no recording of his voice. This is rather remarkable considering that one of Hammond’s main focus of experimentation was within the realm of sound-recording technology.
The excitement level within the staff on the day we received that clip was electric. In the clip, we can hear someone say “Mr. Hammond” and ask a question. Hearing his response was like striking gold for us.
