Writing a Big Data History of Music

A Big Data History of Music

Stephen Rose, Royal Holloway

2

Trends in music history –

source studies

3

Trends in music history –

social / intellectual contexts of ‘work’

4

Franco Moretti’s ‘distant reading’

Franco Moretti, Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary

history (2005), p.11

5

Charting the ‘Great Unread’

Franco Moretti, Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history (2005), p.19

6

Big Data in music…

Machine readable scores?

Audio libraries?

Metadata about music publications?

7

Machine readable scores

e.g. www.peachnote.com

8

Audio Big Data

e.g. Digital Music Lab

chord visualiser

9

Vision for project

How can the vast amount of bibliographical data

held by research libraries be unlocked for music

researchers to analyse?

Can this data be interrogated in ways that challenge

the traditional narratives of music history?

10

Aims of project

• To clean and enhance two existing bibliographical

datasets

• To pilot big data research techniques on these and five

other datasets

• To make the British Library datasets publicly available for

download

11

Project datasets

• RISM A/I (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) - single-composer

printed editions issued before 1800), ca. 100K records. opac.rism.info since

May 2015

• RISM B/I - printed anthologies, 1500-1700, ca. 17K records. Not yet fully online

• RISM A/II - music manuscripts, 1600-ca. 1850, opac.rism.info, incorporating the

RISM UK catalogue of music manuscripts, ca. 900K records

• British Library catalogue of printed music, explore.bl.uk, ca. 1 million records

• British Library catalogue of manuscript music, searcharchives.bl.uk,

ca. 16K records

• Augustus Hughes-Hughes: Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British

Museum (London, 1906-9), ca. 35K records. Not yet online

• Concert Programmes Database, www.concertprogrammes.org.uk,

ca. 6K records

http://opac.rism.info/

http://explore.bl.uk/

http://searcharchives.bl.uk/

http://www.concertprogrammes.org.uk/

12

RISM volumes

13

RISM online catalogue

14

Data facets or types

Composers Musical works Places

Time Subjects/genres Printers/publishers

15

Data facets captured in music datasetsComposer Work title Country of

origin

City of

origin

Creation

date

Subject/

genre

Printer/

publisher

A/I Y some Y some Y Y

B/I Y Y Y Y

CPM some some Y Y Y (though

many are

approx.)

some some

A/II Y Y Y Y N/A

BL MSS Y some Y N/A

H-H Y Y Y Y N/A

Key:

A/I – RISM A/I (single-composer printed editions)

B/I – RISM B/I (printed anthologies)

CPM - British Library catalogue of printed music

A/II – RISM A/II (music manuscripts)

BL MSS – British Library catalogue of manuscripts

H-H – Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum, ed. A. Hughes-Hughes

16

Transforming the data from

MARC21 library format

MARC21 format

17



Spreadsheet row

18



MARCedit tool used to transform library catalogue records

into TSV files

http://marcedit.reeset.net/

19

Library data diversity: date information

• [WM 1825]

• [ca. 1825]

• [1825?]

• [1825]

• 1825

• [1825-1830]

• [before 1825]

• [after 1825]

• [between 1825 and 1830]

Row Labels Count of Dates

1825 1

[1825?] 1

[1825] 1

[1825-1830] 1

[after 1825] 1

[before 1825] 1

[between 1825 and 1830] 1

[ca. 1825] 1

[WM 1825] 1

Grand Total 9

20

Data preparation

Date Date Date Date

[WM 1825] 1825 1820s 19th century

[ca. 1825] 1825

1820s

19th century

[1825?] 1825

1820s

19th century

[1825] 1825

1820s

19th century

1825 1825

1820s

19th century

[1825-1830]

1820s

19th century

[before 1825] 19th century

[after 1825] 19th century

[between 1825

and 1830]

1820s

19th century

21

Data preparation

Date Date Date Date

[WM 1825] 1825 1820s 19th century

[ca. 1825] 1825

1820s

19th century

[1825?] 1825

1820s

19th century

[1825] 1825

1820s

19th century

1825 1825

1820s

19th century

[1825-1830]

1820s

19th century

[before 1825] 19th century

[after 1825] 19th century

[between 1825

and 1830]

1820s

19th century


1825 5Grand Total 5


19th century 9

Grand Total 9


1820s 7

Grand Total 7

22

Open Refine

(http://openrefine.org/)

23

Open Refine

(http://openrefine.org/)

24

Handel publications by date, as

assigned in British Library catalogue

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

25

The rise and fall of music printing,

1500-1700

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

1490s1500s1510s1520s1530s1540s1550s1560s1570s1580s1590s1600s1610s1620s1630s1640s1650s1660s1670s1680s1690s

RISM A/I and B/I data

Total

26

Single-composer prints (RISM A/I)

versus anthologies (RISM B/I),

1500-1700

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

1490s 1500s 1510s 1520s 1530s 1540s 1550s 1560s 1570s 1580s 1590s 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s 1650s 1660s 1670s 1680s 1690s

AI BI

27

Petrucci anthologies

Harmonice

musices

Odhecaton

[Canti A]

(Venice,

1501)

28

Monumentalising the composer

Lassus, Magnum

opus musicum,

Munich 1604

29

Music printing by year, 1500-1649

0

50

100

150

200

250

14

93

15

01

15

04

15

07

15

10

15

13

15

16

15

19

15

22

15

26

15

29

15

32

15

35

15

38

15

41

15

44

15

47

15

50

15

53

15

56

15

59

15

62

15

65

15

68

15

71

15

74

15

77

15

80

15

83

15

86

15

89

15

92

15

95

15

98

16

01

16

04

16

07

16

10

16

13

16

16

16

19

16

22

16

25

16

28

16

31

16

34

16

37

16

40

16

43

16

46

16

49


30

Music printed in major centres,

1500-1649

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

14

93

15

03

15

07

15

11

15

16

15

20

15

26

15

30

15

34

15

38

15

42

15

46

15

50

15

54

15

58

15

62

15

66

15

70

15

74

15

78

15

82

15

86

15

90

15

94

15

98

16

02

16

06

16

10

16

14

16

18

16

22

16

26

16

30

16

34

16

38

16

42

16

46

Venice

Rome

Paris

Nuremberg

London

Antwerp

31

Venice – dips in 1571 and 1576/7

Battle of Lepanto, 1571

Plague, 1576/7

(including Titian’s funeral)

32

Venice, 1571

Il primo libro delle

Napolitane à tre voci,

Giosef Policretto, & altri

eccellentissimi musici

(Venice, 1571)

33

Lifespan of early modern industries

‘the typical pattern of a sharp rise followed by an

abrupt fall can very easily be imagined as the

probable profile in the pre-industrial economy’

(Fernand Braudel, Civilization and capitalism: the

wheels of commerce, trsl. London 1982)

34

Main music-printing centres, 1570s

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

1570s

Erfurt

Leuven

Magdeburg

Mühlhausen

Munich

Nuremberg

Paris

Strasbourg

Venice

Wittenberg

35

All music-printing centres, 1570s

36

All music-printing centres, 1640s

37

Main music-printing centres, 1690s

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

1690s

Amsterdam

Antwerp

Augsburg

Bologna

London

Nuremberg

Paris

Rome

Stettin

Venice

38

Composer case-study:

Palestrina

39

Palestrina – the archetypal Catholic composer?

Palestrina

presenting his

music to Pope

Julius III. Liber

primus

missarum

(Rome, 1554)

40


Palestrina: places & dates published

41

The myth of

Palestrina as saviour of polyphony

Music would have come very near to

being banished from the Holy Church

by a sovereign pontiff had not

Giovanni Palestrina found the

remedy, showing that the fault and

error lay, not with music, but with the

composers, and composing in

confirmation of this the Mass entitled

Missa Papae Marcelli

Agazzari, 1607

42

RISM A/I data

Palestrina: genres and places

43


Palestrina: places & dates published

44

Palestrina in the Protestant periphery

Palestrina’s

madrigal

‘Vestiva i colli’

Englished in

Musica

transalpina

(London,

1588)

45

RISM A/II data

Palestrina manuscripts

46

The cult of Palestrina

‘By Aloysius, the master, I refer to

Palestrina, the celebrated light of

music…to whom I owe everything

that I know of this art, and whose

memory I shall never cease to

cherish with a feeling of deepest

reverence’

Fux, Gradus ad parnassum (Vienna,

1725)

47

BL Aleph data:

The rise of ‘Scottish’ music

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

1680s 1690s 1700s 1710s 1720s 1730s 1740s 1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s

48

from Restoration ‘Scotch songs’…

A New Scotch Song sung to

the King at Windsor, c.1685

49

…to Ossian and the noble savage

Address to the Sun from … Ossian, c.1783

50

Queen Victoria’s visits from 1842

‘Scotia’s welcome to Victoria’, arr.

Henry Bishop c.1842

The Balmoral Quadrilles c.1850

51

Contact

[email protected]

[email protected]

A Big Data History of Music was funded by

the Arts and Humanities Research Council

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Education

Writing a Big Data History of Music