The New York Philharmonic played its first concert on December 7, 1842. Since then, it has merged with the New York Symphony, the New/National Symphony, and had a long-running summer season at New York's Lewisohn Stadium. This Performance History database documents all known concerts of all of these organizations, amounting to more than 20,000 performances. The New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives provides an additional interface for searching printed programs alongside other digitized items such as marked music scores, marked orchestral parts, business records, and photos.
In an effort to make this data available for study, analysis, and reuse, the New York Philharmonic joins organizations like The Tate and the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum in making its own contribution to the Open Data movement.
The metadata here is released under the Creative Commons Public Domain CC0 license. Please see the enclosed LICENSE file for more detail.
- A program is defined as one or more performances or presentations in which the same repertoire, conductors, and soloists are EXACTLY the same (dates, times, locations may vary within). For example, if a soloist plays an encore one night but not another, the concert with the encore becomes a different program.
Only complete titles are included. If an excerpt or movement is performed, this will not be indicated in the database at this time. We are working to include this in the near future.Movements are now included as cataloged by NYP. Keep in mind that we do not necessarily catalog every movement in the work, only movements that we have ever performed.- To see detailed information about our internal descriptive standards, please go to http://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/help-performancehistory.
The data is currently available as both XML and JSON. In the Programs directory, you will find two directories, xml and json, each with a series of XML. The file called complete.xml (and `complete.json) contains every concert from December 7, 1842 to the present (it's possible that it could take up to a week for the latest program to be included). To allow for easier downloading and use, also available are segmented files determined by date ranges (each segment contains about 1,000 records).
The XML is structured in the following way:
<programs>
<program>
<id/> // GUID
<programID/> // NYP Local ID
<orchestra/>
<season/>
<concertInfo> // A program can have multiple concerts
<eventType/>
<Location/>
<Venue/>
<Date/>
<Time/>
</concertInfo>
<worksInfo> // a program will usually have multiple works
<work ID=""> // e.g. "1234*1" - first part is the Work ID, second part is the NYP Movement ID
<composerName/>
<workTitle/>
<movement/>
<conductorName/>
<soloists> // included only if there are listed soloists
<soloist>
<soloistName/>
<soloistInstrument/>
<soloistRole/>
</soloist>
</soloists>
<interval/> // intermissions are listed among works, but with a distinct interval tag
</work>
</worksInfo>
</program>
</programs>
The JSON is formatted almost the same, with a few small differences in naming:
{
"programs": [
{
"id": "38e072a7-8fc9-4f9a-8eac-3957905c0002", // GUID
"programID": "3853", // NYP Local ID
"orchestra": "New York Philharmonic",
"season": "1842-43",
"concerts": [
{
"eventType": "Subscription Season",
"Location": "Manhattan, NY",
"Venue": "Apollo Rooms",
"Date": "1842-12-07T05:00:00Z",
"Time": "8:00PM"
},
/* A program can have multiple concerts */
],
"works": [
{
"ID": "8834*4", // e.g. "1234*1" - first part is the Work ID, second part is the NYP Movement ID
"composerName": "Weber, Carl Maria Von",
"workTitle": "OBERON",
"movement": "\"Ozean, du Ungeheuer\" (Ocean, thou mighty monster), Reiza (Scene and Aria), Act II",
"conductorName": "Timm, Henry C.",
"soloists": [
{
"soloistName": "Otto, Antoinette",
"soloistInstrument": "Soprano",
"soloistRoles": "S"
},
/* more soloists, if applicable. If no soloists, this will be an empty array */
]
},
/* a program will usually have multiple works */
{
"ID": "0*",
"interval": "Intermission",
"soloists": []
},
/* Intermissions will also appear in the works array */
]
},
/* more programs */
]
}
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| General Info: Info that applies to entire program | |
| id | GUID (To view program: archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/GUID/fullview) |
| ProgramID | Local NYP ID |
| Orchestra | Full orchestra name Learn more... |
| Season | Defined as Sep 1 - Aug 31, displayed "1842-43" |
| Concert Info: Repeated for each individual performance within a program | |
| eventType | See term definitions |
| Location | Geographic location of concert (Countries are identified by their current name. For example, even though the orchestra played in Czechoslovakia, it is now identified in the data as the Czech Republic) |
| Venue | Name of hall, theater, or building where the concert took place |
| Date | Full ISO date used, but ignore TIME part (1842-12-07T05:00:00Z = Dec. 7, 1842) |
| Time | Actual time of concert, e.g. "8:00PM" |
| Works Info: the fields below are repeated for each work performed on a program. By matching the index number of each field, you can tell which soloist(s) and conductor(s) performed a specific work on each of the concerts listed above. | |
| worksConductorName | Last name, first name |
| worksComposerTitle | Composer Last name, first / TITLE (NYP short titles used) |
| movement | Movement title as cataloged by NYP |
| worksSoloistName | Last name, first name (if multiple soloists on a single work, delimited by semicolon) |
| worksSoloistInstrument | Last name, first name (if multiple soloists on a single work, delimited by semicolon) |
| worksSoloistRole | "S" means "Soloist"; "A" means "Assisting Artist" (if multiple soloists on a single work, delimited by semicolon) |
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The writers of these guidelines are deeply indebted to the Tate, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum, and Europeana.