Christine Siegert opened with a discussion of Beethoven’s relationship with to the arrangements of his works, followed by presentations on The Harmonicon journal (David Lewis), our annotation tooling and the underlying technology (Johannes Kepper, remotely), and reflections on digital methodologies and their role in musicological investigation (Kevin Page).
]]>We needed to ensure sufficient metadata was present for use within our Annotator App, and that the appropriate encoding framework was in place so we could use our our chosen editor, MEI-Friend, as a musicologist-friendly method to create digitized scores.
The schema file and custom ODD are available in the project repository .
]]>The new version features a targeted view of the relevant measures from each digital source when adding annotations to a passage that occurs in multiple arrangements.
For more information on the annotator app, see this earlier post.
(Note that a personal Solid pod–available from a provider such as Inrupt or SolidCommunity–is required for use.)
The interviews revealed that the tool has potential for a broad range of uses besides the original purpose of comparing arrangements, and the overall design was in general favourably rated.
At the project’s meeting in Oxford in December 2022, the team discussed ways to make the tool better and the new features that students and researchers would like to see. These discussions were used to decide what issues to prioritize for version 2 of the app.
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and <measure>
, along with all the required metadata. The file is then ready to be edited in an app like MEI-Friend, without any specialized knowledge of music encoding processes.
The Cartographer app has already been successfully utilized in preparations for the annual Beethoven-Haus Studienkolleg, where the students were given selective encodings of Wellingtons Sieg to analyze and edit digitally. The Beethoven in the House Annotator app uses files produced by Cartographer to retrieve the source IIIF image and display it with measure numbers added. This makes the annotation and comparison way easier, since scholars can pull up the relevant portion of the score directly, rather than having to count out the measures themselves.
]]>A demonstration of the web application prototype by Paderborn University’s Center for Music, Edition, Media (ZenMEM) highlighted the integration of specially developed Optical Music Recognition (OMR) software with an image viewer for remote resources, allowing musicologists to use a mouse to highlight select passages on a facsimile for encoding and comparison.
The series of talks allowed researchers to discuss the technical and musicological aspects of the project with international scholars in musicology and digital humanities.
]]>All project members and invited colleagues participated, presenting the following topics at the session: Hidden “Musicking”: Beethoven in the Victorian Home (Christina Bashford, University of Illinois), Piano Trio and Vocal Arrangements of the Allegretto in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (Lisa Rosendahl and Elisabete Shibata); Domestic Arrangements between General Characteristics and Individual Solutions (David Lewis); Arrangements, Collections, and the Work: A perspective from RISM (Andrew Hankinson and Laurent Pugin, Bern University and RISM Digital Center); VideAppCorr (Elisa Novara and Richard Sänger, Beethoven Werkstatt); Harmonizing Models: Challenges of Sharing Concepts, Data, and Tools between Beethoven Projects (Johannes Kepper and Mark Saccomano); and Music Encoding and Linked Data (Kevin Page).
After the round table, there was a lively discussion around both the technological and musicological aspects of the presentations.
]]>While participants had the opportunity to handle physical scores, including first editions and Beethoven autographs, they were also able to engage with questions of music encoding using the newly created digital files. In workshop sessions, they had a chance to try some data modelling themselves, working as a group to come up with a way to represent scholarship that talks about analogous regions in different arrangements.
Participants at the Studienkolleg were introduced to our new annotation tool, using it to select and encode Beethoven extracts themselves and provide their own digital annotations. The tool had been pre-configured to include the facsimile, digital edition and metadata for all the arrangements the participants considered. At the end of the 4-day program, students presented their findings on the arrangements.
The workshop session resulted in valuable feedback for the development team on issues of usability and practicability, and were followed up with more formal interview sessions. The results of these will inform our continuing development of the tool’s interface and functionality.
]]>Our goals for this prototype were fairly simple, but each step involved multiple consultations among the researchers regarding musicological needs and technical feasibility within the scope of the project. Only by having the musicological and technical components of the project in sync could the model be properly tested, and the application evaluated for suitability.
The app was created using Vue.js, a popular Node javascript library. For annotation storage, the Solid framework was chosen for its compatibility with Linked Data. For viewing resources stored as MEI, the app relies on the Verovio score rendering library, and for high resolution digital image files of facsimiles, it includes the OpenSeadragon web viewer.
A demonstration site has been set up here: https://tool.domestic-beethoven.eu. (Note that a personal Solid pod–available from a provider such as Inrupt or SolidCommunity–is required for use.)
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