[MEI-L] Music and Digital Humanities: Monday's lecture (27. April): Alíz Horváth. Followed by: 4. May: Frans Wiering

[David M. Weigl]

Reminder: Distinguished Lecture Series in Music and Digital Humanities

https://iwk.mdw.ac.at/music-dh

Monday's lecture in the Distinguished Lecture Series on Music and 
Digital Humanities taking place at the mdw — University of Music and 
Performing Arts Vienna on 27th April will be given by Alíz Horváth 
(Central European University):

"Multilingual DH featuring Digital Musicology? An Unexpected Match"

Abstract: What do non-Latin scripts and music have in common in the 
context of digital humanities? This talk will open up a space for 
discussion on potential shared characteristics and challenges in 
advancing digital scholarship in these areas. The rapid development of 
digital humanities has led to the diversification of the field with a 
wide array of tools and methods. However, linguistic aspects remain a 
problem in DH practice because most languages beyond English, and 
particularly non-Latin scripts, are still significantly 
under-represented and under-resourced. My talk will consider the 
complexities of what the term multilingual DH refers to through my 
individual and data-driven collaborative research projects focusing on 
both conceptual perspectives on language inclusivity in digital 
scholarship and more pragmatic considerations regarding its “users” 
through UX methods.
In addition, I will discuss the realities and specific challenges of the 
lifecycle of a multilingual DH project through case studies pointing at 
broader issues that multilingual DH as a phenomenon
reveals about the importance of language diversity towards equal access 
to digital tools. Arguing for a need for a more multifaceted 
understanding of the realities of those involved in multilingual
DH, I will also showcase concrete examples of initiatives to enhance 
language diversity towards a more inclusive DH field which could also be 
expanded to digital musicology.

Bio: Alíz Horváth has a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations 
from the University of Chicago and currently works as assistant 
professor of East Asian history and Digital Humanities at Central 
European University. She is an avid advocate of linguistic diversity in 
digital humanities and serves as co-founder and chair of the DARIAH 
Multilingual DH Working Group. She is a key researcher and DH ordinator 
in the FWF Cluster of Excellence EurAsian Transformations, member of the 
editorial board for Asia Pacific Perspectives, a topic editor of the 
Asian and Asian Diaspora studies section of Reviews in DH, member of the 
Scientific Advisory Committee of OPERAS, member of the Scientific 
Committee of the overlay journal Transformations, and former contributor 
to the pioneering New Languages for NLP project, organized by Princeton 
University.


The lecture will start at 17:00 (Vienna/CET). As always, it will be 
streamed via Zoom, and both in-person and remote participation is free.

Zoom Link:

https://mdw-ac-at.zoom.us/j/67606221415?pwd=9VUR9zPcIe43mV2Gj5IIXyd3jgWZw1.1

Please refer to https://iwk.mdw.ac.at/music-dh for further information.

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The following lecture will be held on May 4 2026, 17:00 (Vienna/CET):

Frans Wiering (Utrecht University)

"Musicology and computing: A very short history"

Abstract: Frans Wiering have spent most of his professional life working 
in the exciting interdisciplinary area between musicology and computing 
known (among others) as computing in musicology, computational 
musicology, digital musicology, or music information computing. Each of 
these terms suggests a different focus, but they also indicate that the 
field hasn't quite settled, despite its over 70 years of existence. 
Musicological computing (to use yet another expression) has much in 
common with other forms of humanities computing, except for one thing: 
the processing of musical information, in the form of music notation and 
musical audio. This will also be the main topic of this talk.

The first, promising experiments in music processing date from the 
1950s. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a period of grand ambitions for 
computer-supported inventorying, publication, and analysis of musical 
heritage. In practice, however, the need for technological groundwork
was so strong that these ambitions could only be realised to a limited 
extent, if at all. Furthermore, both computer science and musicology 
experienced a paradigm shift in 1980s. Consequently, computational 
musicology, with its ‘scientific’ nature, became largely separated from 
mainstream musicology. Since around 2015, this landscape has changed 
again for a variety of reasons, including the ready availability of 
digital resources, access to (free or cheap) software, mobile internet, 
online communication, and finally the pandemic. Doing musicology in the 
digital environment has become commonplace.

Bio: Frans Wiering was an Associate Professor at the Music Information 
Computing group of the Department of Information and Computing Sciences 
of Utrecht University (Netherlands). He retired in 2024, but remains 
associated with Utrecht University. He received his PhD in musicology 
from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) in 1995 for his 
dissertation ‘The Language of the Modes on the richness and variety of 
modality in 16th- and 17th-century polyphonic music. His current 
research is in computational musicology, music information retrieval and 
interactive technologies, which he combines in his ongoing work on the 
use and acceptance of new technologies in music research in the project 
‘What Do Musicologists Do All Day.’