Competence Center Music - Edition - Media
A team of researchers from Paderborn University, the Detmold University of Music and the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences wants to transfer the results of research into musical tradition into the digital age.
While these results have so far been published in printed music volumes, traditional editions are now to be expanded into globally linked digital knowledge archives as part of a new competence center. Different versions and variants, sound recordings, image and film material as well as a wide range of documents on the history of creation and transmission can also be integrated.
In such digital editions, it is possible to jump directly to the desired measure, and unified versions can be compared on screens. Scholars can discuss online and record differences in a standardized language that can be implemented by the computer. Changes that a composer has made to notes, accents or transitions can be heard directly at the click of a mouse.
Such editions give practicing musicians easier access to the sources and allow them to compare their interpretation bar by bar with traditional versions. Entries in the sheet music can thus be automatically converted by the computer for different orchestral parts.
The center has 1.7 million euros available for three years for research, development and the promotion of young talent. The German Federal Ministry of Education is funding the competence center as one of only three new centers for digital cultural studies in Germany.
