[MEI-L] Freedman Renaissance Music Book Project launches
Richard Freedman
rfreedma at haverford.edu
Mon May 31 09:29:28 CEST 2010
Dear Friends,
Just a short note to bring you up to date on the electronic Du Chemin
project I've mentioned during our various MEI discussions. First the
good news: the site is now available to the public. I have been here
in Tours since early May working with Vincent Besson and other members
of the CESR staff to put finishing touches on editions, commentaries,
and the web site itself, which we at last completed on Friday. This
week the CESR is hosting five days of reports and conversations on its
various electronic projects, including the Du Chemin site. In
addition there are projects on the Mass, a chanson database, a new
project that aims to create critical editions of the literary texts
from the Du Chemin series, projects on singers, and on the emotions in
relation to music. It is a healthy array, and we hope to learn from
each other about ways to bind these initiatives together.
To date, then, the Du Chemin project has managed to meet the goals set
out in our Digital Humanities Start-up Grant from the NEH. The site
is fully functional, with lots of interesting features for browsing,
searching, displaying, downloading transcriptions, and reading
commentaries. We have mounted a full book of transcriptions, several
books of facsimiles, and all the commentaries, editorial policies, and
related instructions. We have two other books of transcriptions that
are in the final stages of editing, and should go up by the end of the
month of June. Three more books of transcriptions are in the works.
The site devoted to reconstructions of pieces with missing voice parts
will now be sustained as an allied project at the CESR--the Atelier
virtuelle de restitution polyphonique. Our colleagues here plan
another week-long session devoted to this (in various repertories) in
October.
With help from some of the IT folks at Haverford, I have also been
able to link two blogs to the site--one will be a public face of the
project, inviting readers to ask questions, explore pedagogy, tell us
about research projects, and generally let us know how they are using
the resource. The other blog will be for editors and advisors, and
will serve as a way for us to keep track of important questions and
discussions as we manage such projects.
Now the rest of the news: I just learned on Friday that our
application to the NEH for $110,000 to support the Du Chemin project
was not successful . I have asked for reader's reports, and will let
you know what they said about the proposal. We will consider other
funding sources, and also strongly consider applying to the NEH again
in the fall. Meanwhile all of our work will continue in the years
ahead. Philippe Vendrix has secured considerable funding (in the
region of 300,000 Euros) to keep all of these initiatives (including
Du Chemin) moving forward over the course of the next two to three
years. I hope to bring members of the CESR to the US during the
2010-2011 academic year to report on our work (perhaps we'll be able
to gather at the AMS meeting in some way).
What's in this for MEI? I know that Philippe Vendrix (dean of the
CESR) is very interested in the possibilities offered by MEI for the
presentation of critical editions and other digital representation of
music editions. He has a technical team that is already familiar with
TEI (through their Bibliothèques virtuelles humanistes), and he has
the resources to sustain such work over a multi-year horizon, with
many publication projects in the works. I think, in short, that the
CESR could be an early adopter of some of the MEI techniques, and
would offer a nice way to connect scholars (of early music in this
case) with a publisher who is prepared to experiment with the system.
I would be happy to put him in touch with you. I think he would be
prepared to host some representatives of the MEI project here at the
CESR for discussions.
Here is the link to the Du Chemin site, and another to the Ricercar
program's full array of digital initiatives:
http://ricercar.cesr.univ-tours.fr/3-programmes/EMN/Duchemin/
http://ricercar.cesr.univ-tours.fr/3-programmes/0430.htm
With continued thanks for your interest and involvement,
Richard
Richard Freedman
John C. Whitehead Professor of Music
Chair, Department of Music
Haverford College
rfreedma at haverford.edu
610-896-1007 (o)
610-896-4902 (f)
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