PROJECTS
Corpus of 15th-Century Anonymous Masses
Corpus of 15th-Century Anonymous Masses is an online edition of polyphonic masses composed by anonymous musicians who worked in fifteenth-century European chapels. The database collects the critical editions of 142 masses (30 available online) and 147 isolated movements (1 available online), mainly preserved in Italian manuscripts (37 sources). Downloading is available free of charge, with scores and critical notes in pdf files. This is a project in progress, periodically enriched with new editions.
Gesualdo Online
Gesualdo Online is the website dedicated to the complete work of Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566-1613), one of the major composers of the late Italian Renaissance. The project collects the entire production of Carlo Gesualdo, which consists of more than 200 edited pieces of music and 39 references to the musical sources. Downloading is free of charge, with editions available in three formats: pdf, Sibelius and MEI files. In addition, Gesualdo Online proposes dynamic editions, in which the user can identify the variants attested in the different sources and choose the ones she or he prefers. This innovative proposal aims to encourage a rethinking of the basic principle of the critical edition.
Prosopography of Renaissance Singers
Prosopography of Renaissance Singers is a database of biographies of professional singers who worked in the European chapels from 1350 to 1600. The database collects 4557 entries and offers a wide variety of information, from the variant names of the singers to their dates and places of activities, together with their complete and detailed biographies. This is a project in progress, periodically enriched with newly released biographies.
Picardy Musical Heritage
Picardy Musical Heritage is dedicated to the critical edition of music by composers from Picardy or who worked in this region – situated in the North of France – during the Renaissance. The site collects the critical editions of 268 pieces of music (259 available online), 41 references to manuscripts and printed sources produced from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, and 8 biographies. Critical editions may be downloaded, free of charge, in three formats: pdf, Sibelius and MEI files. This is a project in progress, periodically enriched with new musical editions.
Renaissance Music in Croatia
Renaissance Music in Croatia is a website dedicated to the critical edition of music by composers and sources from the Croatian area, and also by Italian musicians who worked in Croatia during the Renaissance. This site collects the critical editions of 172 pieces of music, 36 references to musical and literary manuscripts and printed sources produced from the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, and 13 biographies. The critical editions can be downloaded in three formats: pdf, Sibelius and MEI files. This is a project in progress, periodically enriched with new editions of music.
Du Chemin Project
Du Chemin project is a website dedicated to the music books crafted by the Parisian printer Nicolas Du Chemin between 1549 and 1568. The site collects the digital reproduction of sixteen sets of polyphonic French songs books, each one organized in two part books, one for Superius and Tenor and the other for Contratenor and Bassus. Download, free of charge, images of the albums, articles and critical notes by Richard Freedman about Nicolas Du Chemin, his books, their contents and contexts, and reconstructions of the incomplete works in pdf and MEI format.
Singing upon the book in the Renaissance
Singing upon the Book in the Renaissance is a website dedicated to the oral practice of counterpoint in the early modern period. It makes available to our community of music lovers, musicians and researchers various tools for the study of polyphonic improvisation from the end of the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century.
The website also includes the edition in modern clefs of the musical examples contained in the De arte de contrapunto and the Introdutione facilissima (1553) of the portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano. Out of the 250 music examples that can be dowloaded in pdf format, 60 of them have been recorded by the ensemble Les Sacqueboutiers, and are available in mp3 format. An English translation of Lusitano’s Tratado de canto de organo in also available.
Corpus des Luthistes
Corpus des luthistes is a website dedicated to the Renaissance lute tablatures. The site collects the digital reproductions of three sixteenth-century tablatures by the Italian lutenists Francesco Spinacino and Vincenzo Capirola. Download free of charge the reproductions of the sources in pdf file, as well as the analytical descriptions of the sources.
The project was born in 2007, for the centenary of Spinacino’s first book tablature edition, as a digital development of the researches in this field by Jean-Michel Vaccaro, for the series Corpus des Luthistes Français (CNRS editions), and by many other visiting scholars of the Center for Renaissance Studies in Tours. This is a project in progress, periodically enriched with new digital reproductions and modern transcriptions of tablatures.
Catalogue of French Chansons
Catalogue of French Chansons is a database dedicated to the Renaissance French chanson from 1480ca to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The database collects 9723 songs incipits (text and music), and gives information about the composer, the scoring, the literary and musical sources, and the literary form.
The database was created in 1992 by Annie Cœurdevey. She started by including in the database the references from the catalogue by Hubert Daschner, Die gedruckten mehrstimmigen Chansons von 1500-1600. Literarische Quellen und Bibliographie (PhD Dissertation, University of Bonn, 1962), and then she verified and completed the study of the sources. Specifically she discovered many titles of chansons in manuscripts sources dating 1480-1500, and added to the database the monodic chansons from the Bayeux and Paris 12744 manuscripts.
Workshop of Virtual Polyphonic Reconstructions
The Workshop of Virtual Polyphonic Reconstructions is a database dedicated to the reconstruction of missing parts in Renaissance polyphonic compositions.
The database gathers nearly 3,000 files concerning the remaining lacunar sources preserved in libraries in Europe and North America, as well as 400 transcribed lacunar pieces, 200 of which have been the subject of reconstruction. Users can consult the source records and the proposed reconstructions for the missing voice parts. This project is linked to the Lost Voices Project of Richard Freedman.
CRIM. Citations: The Renaissance Imitation Mass Project
Building upon recent developments in digital music scholarship, CRIM (Citations: The Renaissance Imitation Mass) implements a new kind of quotable text for music, along with the analysis and commentary that illuminates its workings. The CRIM project is the product of a long partnership between Haverford College and the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours, France), and among an international team of scholars, students, and information technologists.
Vihuela Database
Conceived and produced by John Griffiths, this database is on the way to being a complete research tool that can be used for simple searches or complex relational questions. It covers the approximate period from 1470 to 1630, and aims to gather together in one place all that is known about instruments, music, people, documents, bibliography and recordings.