Digital Musicology Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Age

Eleanor Selfridge-Field esfield@stanford.edu

1. Access

1. Access

2. Analysis and query

3. Authority

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 2

Riches of access

Primary sources

essential

• 1895-2011: required trip to

library holding the sources

• 2011-????: requires access

to the internet

Examples • An illuminated manuscript containing poetry

and music by Machaut (14th century), Paris

• Bach’s manuscript for the first

unaccompanied suite for cello BWV 1007,

Berlin

• The Old Hall manuscript, London

• Printed Italian lute music from 1546, Venice-

London

• Sketches from the last year (1827) of

Beethoven’s life, Bonn

• Schubert’s letters sorted by their watermarks,

Vienna

• Pictures of Aaron Copland from 1908 to

1981, Washington

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 3

Sample project by John Stinson,

John Griffiths (LaTrobe University Library, Australia,

c. 1993 to the present)

3000+ plus entries from the 14th century

This talk was given live on 6 December (the feast of St.

Nicholas). The material shown at right (pertaining to that

feast) is representative of many projects in musicology:

a conventional database links 14th-century chants (shown

with the original neumes notated over modern notes). The

data can be sorted in several different ways.

Here it is sorted by liturgical feast.

Medieval Music Database: A music-and-text project

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 4

Source comparison via digital access Manuscripts of music by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 5

SLUB, Dresden:

Mus MS 2389-O-43

(RV 340)

Concerto in A Major

Autograph 1716-17,

DedicateeL Joh. Pisendel

WM: W-Dl 131,

W-Dl 394

ppn:316139777

http://digital.slub-dresden.de/ppn316139777

Daisy-chain access to related digital resources

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 6

SLUB, Dresden:

Mus MS 2389-O-43

(RV 340)

Concerto in A Major

WM: W-Dl 131,

W-Dl 394

ppn:316139777

SLUB link to RISM:

RISM-A/II-212000183

SLUB watermark lexicon

RISM musical listing for cadenza

RISM link to ppn in Dresden

On watermarks see also WZIS--

http://www.landesarchiv-

bw.de/web/50960

2. Query and analysis

7

1. Access

2. Analysis and query

3. Authority

Musical data

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 8

Notation domain

• Fundamentally

spatial

• Uses:

• Performance

(scores, parts)

• Music theory

• Music history

• Composition

• Publishing

Sound domain

• Fundamentally

temporal

• Uses:

• Listening (audio

files)

• Interactive apps

(MIDI files)

• Embedded

music (films,

videos)

Innate problems

• Diverse media

• Diverse kinds of

music

• Each domain has

separate arrays of

code and

standards

External obstacles to digital music uses

Corporate property restrictions: copyright

provisions not standardized between

countries; varying priorities between sound

and notation

Cultural property restrictions: collective

property belonging to a community,

institution, or nation may be unavailable

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 9

Text query vs music query

Text

• Monophonic

• Unidirectional (L→R)

• Unimodal (text=text)

• Most information explicit

• Search object usually

precise

Music

• Polyphonic

• Multi-dimensional

• Multimodal

(music=music+text)

• Some information explicit,

some implicit

• Search object often fuzzy

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 10

Text vs music: Methods of search

Textual methods

• Matching: linear search

• Style: n-grams

• Chronology: Usage timelines

Musical methods

• Feature search • Pitch

• Duration

• Global-variable sort • Meter

• Mode

• Combined feature search

• Scale: • Generalized

• Specific

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 11

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 12

Five levels of music search: Exact search

• By exact pitch

• By melodic interval

• By scale degree (relative pitch)

Fuzzier search

• By gross contour (3-factor)

• By refined contour (5-factor)

Themefinder search engine

Themefinder sample search results

Notation-based search

www.themefinder.org

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 13

Five levels of music search: Exact search

• By exact pitch

• By melodic interval

• By scale degree (relative pitch)

Fuzzier search

• By gross contour (3-factor)

• By refined contour (5-factor)

Themefinder search engine

Notation-based search

www.themefinder.org

What search strategy is most efficient? [Sapp, Liu, Selfridge-Field: ISMIR 2004]

• study of search strategies

• 100,000 items

• 19 search strategies

Most efficient?

Joint search of gross pitch (Box 4 of 5 at left)

in combination with gross rhythm (not shown)

Harmonic search, analysis

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 14

Keyscape harmonic summarization method of visualization

Developed by Craig Stuart Sapp (2001-2011).

See http://purl.stanford.edu/br237mp4161

Temporal position Ha

rmo

nic

su

mm

ary

Comparative analysis of harmonic content

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 15

16th cent. 18th-19th

cent.

Gabrieli Rameau

Lassus Wagner

Gesualdo Alkan

Lt green=C, Lt Blue=G, Drk Blue=D

X axis=time

16th cent.] 18th-19th cent.

Harmonic analysis of work

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 16

Sapp and Selfridge-Field,

“Beethoven in C Minor,”

Die Tonkunst (2011).

Harmonic “formats” of

work structure

Beethoven • Conventional in early works (3 mvmts)

• Unconventional in late works (2-7 mvmts)

[here: 2 mvmts = harmonic compression

Dark green=C Minor, Red=Eb Major

Visualizing sound

The Music Animation Machine MIDI movies by Stephen Malinowski (since 1986)

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 17

Bach: Double concerto (BWV 1043), mvmt. I

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, mvmt. iii)

Texture

Part synchronization

Performance studies

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 18

Typical aims • Comparison of performing styles

• Construction of timelines of change

• Investigations of interaction between technologies and manner of performance

Serious impediments to study • Preservation and/or recapture of media

• Copyright limitations (from 1923 in US; terms vary elsewhere)

• Fair use permits 30-second clips only

Mary Allison

(1922)

Victor Arden

(1922)

The examples above are recaptured digitally from pianola recordings (1922):

pianola.co.nz

Europeana sound project (new): 200,000 audio files (mostly ethnic [as response to copyright?])

Audio files work with QuickTime v. 7 or lower and

all other MIDI players.

3. Authority

Who is an authority?

Who controls digital assets?

19 Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology

1. Access

2. Analysis and query

3. Authority

Content vs stakeholders

No concensus on needs

• Users: Want answers, not analyses

• Managers: want more data

• Administrators: want data security and link stability

• Programmers: want one-size-fits-all solutions

• Programmers: want extensibility

• Corporations: want ownership

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 20

Authority in scholarly discussions

• Anxiety about quantity vs. quality

• Issue from the Eighties: need nuanced discussions

• Anxiety about disciplinary structure

• Premature: aims and methods change often

• Anxiety about academic authority

• Much to value as access to primary sources supplants

commentaries derived from secondary sources

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 21

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 22

A counter-example

Main point: Not all challenges to authority are

undesirable.

This example:

Hucbald studied Greek music theory in the 10th century

(see Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex 169 (468), f. 119↑).

He is credited in modern books with having invented music

notation. At right is the folio showing this notation.

In figure at right: T=tone, S=semitone

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 23

Hucbald, 10th cent.

Original source shows graphical ambiguity

Like piano-roll notation?

Like medieval lute tablature?

Selfridge-Field: Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Musicology 24

Hucbald, 10th cent.

Stages of the critical reception of Hucbald

1. MSS transcriptions 10th-12th cents.

2. Publication of treatises (18th cent.)

3. Interpretation of publications (19th, 20th cents.

4. Online access to original material

What does online access really provide? Direct access destabilizes the 18th-20th century

loop of publication and criticism, but it offers

the opportunity to evaluate primary sources

anew and to understand them in original contexts.

Vielen Dank

an die Volkswagen Stiftung

More information about several topics discussed here

can be found in my ViFaMusik talk on digital musicology (2012)