German broadcaster and sound recordist, an expert on recording animal sounds, he played a significant part in increasing the British public’s appreciation of wildlife.
Koch was born into a music-loving family, 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. As a child, he had been given an early phonograph and had recorded several animals, including the first-known recording of bird song, made in 1889.
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. 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 of 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 1936 Koch 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 More Songs of Wild Birds in 1937 and Animal Language in 1938. In 1937 he made recordings of the birds in the park of the royal castle in La(e)ken with the aid of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. These recordings were published only in 1952, due to the circumstances of war and the Kings 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. He never lost his strong German accent. His work was parodied by Peter Sellers. Koch retired in 1951, but continued to make expeditions to record wildlife sounds, visiting Iceland when he was seventy-one. Koch died on 4 May 1974 in London, aged 92.
He was the subject of a 2009 BBC Radio 4 documentary, Ludwig Koch and the Music of Nature. His recordings and manuscript papers are preserved in the British Library Sound Archive.
Link to Wikipedia biography