[MEI-L] MEI, variant readings, encoding

[Eleanor Selfridge-Field]

Thanks for raising the issue of variants. The CMME support turning ficta on and off. It employs its own flavor of XML. Is there any scope for convergence of, let's say, the critical apparatus aspect of MEI and the virtual rendering of CMME? Ted is probably the only one in a good position to judge.

Encoding sources, encoding editions, rending score on screen, and rending score on paper are four distinct tasks. Implementation of paper-score production processes (if that is the meaning of "edition" here) can take many years. Short-cuts (such as translating into MusicXML to produce scores in Finale) can produce pitch and duration information more or less accurately (after some fine-tuning) but it will drop all the things that Finale (or Sibelius) does not support in the first place. 

The advantage of having an indigenous MEI-based printing system (which I don't expect to see in the next few years) would be that the details scholars find important could be accurately represented.

If by "edition" you mean a visual score online (as a one-system scroll), then CMME offers that capability now. [Getting from a one-system scroll to a page with spatially rationalized systems and user-friendly system and page breaks is an enormous task.]

==

At CCARH we have spent quite a bit of time looking into MuseScore (which ostensibly reads MusicXML files), because it is free. It is still under development, though. 

We are also consulting on a Renaissance project that involves musica ficta and some other Renaissance-specific markup. A lot of data has already been encoded using Finale and specific arbitrary substitutes for the period-specific details, but some of those details need to be changed to pass through MusicXML to analysis programs. 

This raises a question for Richard: Is there any possibility that the same data used to produce editions would ever be useful for analysis?

Eleanor

 



Eleanor Selfridge-Field
Consulting Professor
Braun Music Center #129
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-3076
http://www.stanford.edu/~esfield/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Freedman" <rfreedma at haverford.edu>
To: "Music Encoding Initiative" <mei-l at lists.uni-paderborn.de>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 6:35:34 AM
Subject: [MEI-L] MEI, variant readings, encoding

Friends,

Since we've started various discussions about encoding and early
music, here are some questions that arise from my interest in making
digital editions of Renaissance repertories (16th century). In our
editions (as opposed to sources) there is relatively little that one
could not find in the 'common practice' set of figures. The only
thing unusual here would be ficta signs, and perhaps the need to mark
some ligatures.

I am especially interested to know how one would go about encoding
variant readings in ways that readers could turn 'on' or 'off'
depending on their choice of base text, etc. Stefan Morent has
already demonstrated how this might work for plainchant. Attached
find a pdf of a transcription we made with Sibelius in which the
variant readings are shown as ossia parts, just for the measures in
question.

What would a such variants look like in MEI encoding? (Just give me
simple explanation for one bar, perhaps).

Related questions: since I am now starting to think about a revised
proposal to the NEH to support the completion of the Du Chemin
project, I am now curious to know whether MEI could be a standard for
the encoding of the variants, or perhaps even the editions
themselves. All of this leads me to the next question: how soon
might we have tools for encoding that would look like a music editor?
And how soon might we have some tools that would allow rendering--
perhaps of variants, perhaps of entire scores?

Attached please find a PDF of the edition in question. See measure
7-10 for an idea of the kinds of variants I have in mind.

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)

_______________________________________________ mei-l mailing list
mei-l at lists.uni-paderborn.de
https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/mailman/listinfo/mei-l