Ludwig Koch (sound recordist)

Koch was born into a music-loving Jewish family as Paul Ludwig,[1] and as a boy violinist, he was admitted to Clara Schumann's music circle. Later, he studied singing, and had a short but successful career as a concert singer. This was ended by the outbreak of World War I. As a child, he had been given an early phonograph and had recorded several animals. His 1889 recording of the song of a white-rumped shama (Kittacincla malabarica) is the first-known recording of bird song.[2][3]

Because he spoke fluent French, he joined military intelligence. After the Armistice in 1918, he became chief delegate for repatriation for the French-occupied zone of Germany. He worked for the German government until 1925. In 1928, he was commissioned by the German subsidiary of Electric and Musical Industries (EMI) to start a cultural branch of the gramophone industry; this coincided with a revival of his childhood interest in animals. Thus from 1929, he began recording animal sounds again using up-to-date equipment. He invented the sound-book: attaching gramophone records to an illustrated book. Nowadays we call this multimedia.

In January 1936, Koch went on a lecture tour in Switzerland. His return flight ticket was given to him by Hermann Göring, who, as a bird and animal lover, was a fan of Koch's work. After Koch's last lecture, he was approached by a man who introduced himself as the Third Reich's representative in Switzerland and told him that he had followed Koch's lectures and written a very good report about them. It turned out the man was Wilhelm Gustloff and he was assassinated the following day. Since Koch had been seen speaking to Gustloff just hours beforehand, he became concerned about his return to Germany, fearing that he would be accused of being involved in the assassination. He called the director of his recording company, a Nazi, who told him, "Just stay where you are. The air in Switzerland is much better than in Germany."[3] Koch then fled to Great Britain. Sir Julian Huxley helped him to interest the ornithologist and publisher Harry Witherby in a sound-book of British wild birds. In 1936, Songs of Wild Birds was published, followed by two other sound-books by 1938 (More Songs of Wild Birds in 1937 & Animal Language in 1938). In 1937 he made recordings of the birds in the park of the royal castle in La(e)ken (Belgium) with the aid of queen Elisabeth of Belgium. These recordings were published only in 1952, due to the circumstances of war and the Belgian Royal Question.

Early in World War II, Huxley introduced Koch to the British Broadcasting Corporation, and his distinctive, yet attractive and rather musical, voice accompanying his sound recordings soon became familiar to listeners. His sound recordings were acquired by the BBC and established the BBC's library of natural history sound.[3] He never lost his strong German accent.[3] His work was parodied by Peter Sellers.[3] Koch retired in 1951, but continued to make expeditions to record wildlife sounds, visiting Iceland when he was seventy-one. He was the subject of a 2009 BBC Radio 4 documentary presented by Sean Street, "Ludwig Koch and the Music of Nature".[3] In 2023 he was the subject of BBC Radio 4's biography series Great Lives, in which he was nominated by the musician and sound recordist Chris Watson.[4] His recordings and manuscript papers are preserved in the British Library Sound Archive.

Koch's visit to Epping Forest to record badgers is described in A Forest by Night, by Fred Speakman.

• Der Wald Erschallt (Verlag Knorr & Hirth, 1934)
• Im gleichen Schritt und Tritt (Verlag Knorr & Hirth, 1934)
• Stolz weht die Flagge (Verlag Knorr & Hirth, 1934)
• Gefiederte Meistersänger - 1st edition (Brühlscher Verlag Giessen, 1935)
• Songs of Wild Birds (H.F. & G. Witherby, 1936)
• More Songs of Wild Birds (H.F. & G. Witherby, 1937)
• Hunting by Ear - 1st edition (H.F. & G. Witherby, 1937)
• Animal Language (Country Life / Parlophone, 1938)
• Les Oiseaux Chanteurs de Laeken (Parlophone, 1952)
• Songs of British Birds (HMV, 1953)
• Ludwig Koch Remembers: 1 (BBC, 1957)
• Ludwig Koch Remembers: 2 (BBC, 1957)
• Hunting by Ear - 2nd edition (H.F. & G. Witherby, 1960)

• Dictionary of National Biography
• L. Koch, Memoirs of a Birdman (1955)
• J. Burton, ‘Master of nature's music: Ludwig Koch, 1881–1974’, Country Life, 157 (1975), 390–91
• J. F. Burton, ‘Our debt to Ludwig Koch: master of nature's music’, Recorded Sound, 74–5 (1979), 36–7
• C. Tipp, 'With an Ear to the Earth', Slightly Foxed, No. 43, Autumn 2014
• The Times obituary, 7 May 1974
• F. J. Speakman, A Forest by Night (1965), 45-51

• Wildlife recordings of Ludwig Koch - streamed audio from The British Library
• Wild Film History: Ludwig Koch - biography and photographs
• Ludwig Koch and the Music of Nature - BBC radio documentary
• Gefiederte Meistersänger (Feathered Mastersingers) 1935 - review of soundbook, published on The Field Reporter
• Animal Language - British Library Sound and Vision blog
• In Times of War - British Library Sound And Vision blog
• To a Skylark - British Library Sound and Vision blog
• https://www.academia.edu/21184874/La_e_ken_Revisited (Dutch, on the re-publishing of the songbirds of Laeken)
• https://laca.stackstorage.com/s/NJBzfLGfsiaITer : Laeken re-revisited (Dutch), 12 years after the former article
• Ludwig Koch at the National Portrait Gallery