Archive

What the estate contains

A treasure still waiting to be unearthed. By far the largest part of the estate has not even been looked through yet. Stored in Hernstein are reel-to-reel tapes, compact cassettes, DAT and ADAT tapes, home-burned CDs from the CD recorder, MiniDiscs, hard disks with hard-disk recordings and floppy disks holding the sequencer files (.SON) of his Atari computer, along with sheet music, sketches and printed scores.¹ Pepl captured his music with the equipment of each period, from the Atari ST1040, which could print MIDI data as notation, to the ADAT digital multitrack system and on to hard-disk recording.² Even in his active years he constantly recorded his concerts and practice tapes; once he no longer performed, he played and recorded in the Hernstein studio for several hours almost every day until his death, “by the kilo”, as Daniel Pepl puts it.³⁴ Then there are recordings held by broadcasters: according to Pepl himself, the ORF archive “must contain thousands of recordings”.⁵ So far about 31 hours of music have been made accessible digitally, a fraction of what the original carriers are likely to hold.

Audio archive. The oldest audio document is a single by the Austrian Evergreens from 1960. Concert recordings go back to 1973: on 12 March 1973, Ö3 recorded a programme with Erich Kleinschuster at the Amerikahaus in Vienna, followed on 5 March 1974 by an ORF session there. From the 1980s there are, among others, recordings of the Jazzzwio from Montreux (1981), Langenthal (1981) and Innsbruck (1984), of Air Mail at the Jazzspelunke in Vienna (1985) and a cassette recording of the composer portrait concert at the Musikverein (1990), as well as demo tapes such as “Kling Klang” from May 1982 and an interview from June 1986.⁶

Studio and home-studio recordings. Besides the masters of the albums released in his lifetime, there are the recordings from Pepl's studio in Hernstein, Lower Austria, where from the mid-1990s he played and recorded every day. He stored them on CD, ADAT, minidisc and hard disk; for many pieces only the stereo mix exists, not the individual tracks.⁷ The releases of the Lonely Single Swinger Band come from this holding (Music).

Videos. The most important holding is the recordings of the Jazzzwio at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1981, along with recordings of “Air, Love & Vitamins”, an ORF programme from 1983 and a film about the tape concept of the Lonely Single Swinger Band (2020).⁸

Scores. Around 20 lead sheets of jazz pieces such as “Dinozzo”, “Radlbremser”, “Air, Love & Vitamins” or “Halley's Comet Light Blue Blues”, newly typeset in 2020, plus scans of manuscripts and full scores from the Real-time Composing, for example “Grogos”.⁹ The works are listed in the Catalogue of works.

Programme booklets, posters and press. Programme booklets of the Vienna Musikverein from 1989, 1990 and 1993, a poster from 1984, reviews, portraits, interviews and obituaries from 1988 to 2025. The Press archive summarises each document in its own words.¹⁰

Photographs. Portraits and stage photos, pictures with Benny Goodman (1980) and with Jack DeJohnette, Dave Liebman and Mino Cinelu (1987), photos of the Bösendorfer project of 1989 and pictures of the current live band. Where the photographer and year are known, they are given beneath the picture (Photos).¹¹

How the estate is being processed

What exists in digital form is reviewed, dated and entered into the catalogues with sources: Discography, Catalogue of works, Chronology, People, press and Literature. Every release and every work receives a permanent identifier so that details remain citable (Citing). The original carriers from the home studio, including tapes, cassettes, data storage media and floppy disks from the Atari years, have not yet been fully catalogued. How many hours of music they contain can only be stated reliably afterwards.¹² The catalogues are continually extended; corrections and pointers are welcome.

Access for research, media and teaching

The catalogues, the chronology, the press summaries and the open data are freely accessible. Anyone who needs more for research, reporting, teaching or a performance, for example listening copies of recordings, scans of scores and programmes, or photos in print quality, can apply for personal access or make an enquiry (Research and archive access, Press). Each request is assessed individually. For many recordings and images, rights also lie with third parties, such as the ORF, labels, promoters, fellow musicians and photographers; what can be passed on depends on this.

What is not public

Correspondence, contracts, statements of account and the family's personal papers belong to the estate but are neither published nor made available for inspection.

Contributing material

Anyone who owns photos, recordings, programme booklets or memories of Harry Pepl and would like to make them available to the archive can reach us via the contact form.