‍To our intense collective surprise, we have just discovered an online portal into recordings of Breton musical competitions that we were completely unaware of. Sonotek Sonerion is a delightful website with a rich archive of downloadable musical files with material dating back to the 1940s! Some of the material also contains links to downloadable sheet music files in PDF. 

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‍This is a beautifully done, incredibly impressive resource for those interested in Breton music, particularly, of course, of the bombard-biniou variety. Of significant interest to the English-speaking world is the multi-lingual capacity of the site. Yes, an English version is available amongst several other languages including, as one would expect, Breton. What follows is therefore a light rewrite of material taken right from the English and French versions of the site itself:

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‍Sonotek is a collection of recordings of musical competitions: in bagad, in couple (sonneurs de couple or duo format), in small ensembles, soloists... It testifies to a musical history, that of Bodadeg Ar Sonerion (BAS), born in 1943 to preserve a popular heritage of traditional sources and especially to continually promote and advance it and “make it evolve without forgetting its roots”. This is the story of thousands of Breton musicians, mostly amateurs and volunteers, many trained by the BAS, recently redubbed simply as Sonerion, who have, at some point made their contribution to this impressive body of work.

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‍The story

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‍The BAS organized their first musical competition in 1949, in Quimper. During this first event a recording was made by the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions (MNATP) in Paris. This archive is available to listen to on this platform thanks to the kind permission of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (MUCEM). Then, over the years and various competitions, recordings were made by the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) or by individuals with recording equipment, then by the BAS through its own means or by partners; local radios and associations for example. 

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‍In the early 2000’s, a collaborative project between BAS and the local government, the Département du Finistère, began with a view to collate, catalog, analyze, and preserve these recordings with the aim of releasing the collection to the general public.

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‍In agreement with the Conseil Départemental du Finistère and its archiving service (AD29), Sonerion has created a web-served database that allows the user to search by various criteria. Sonerion opened this database on April 22, 2021 by giving access to documents recorded between 2000 and 2015. Since then it has been regularly enriched with new material from annual competitions as well as work carried out on archival material.

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‍The content

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‍In this repository of information, you will find archival recordings of events organised by Bodadeg Ar Sonerion, which constitute a rich heritage of Brittany, sources of repertoire and examples of the region’s musical expression and culture in both traditional and evolving formats.

‍• Breton Duet Championships

‍• Bagad Championships

‍• Various trophies for duets, soloists or ensembles

‍• Also some radio interviews

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‍The recordings can be downloaded in mp3 format for private use. The recordings remain the property of the performers however, who must agree to any form of public use in accordance with French legislation.

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‍Research base

‍For each event the portal offers all participants, but sometimes some recordings are missing, and are therefore indicated as unavailable. Designed for easy search, the interface offers simple and effective multi-criteria filtering. In the future, more filter options will be put in place to facilitate detailed searches.

‍Brittany is composed of many terroirs, each having its own specific dances; there are a hundred in total. The championships of sonneurs and bagadoù are organized taking into account these specificities. For the pairs of sonneurs, the qualifications for the final event organized in Gourin in September are made during local competitions and for the bagadoù, each year during the first round of the championship the competitors must present a suite based around the repertoire of a particular region.

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‍- Fañch