Several web sites take advantage of the internet’s capacity to entertain two or three ways of presenting a single piece of information. These sites make use of text, pictures, sound, and video presentations to help bring medieval manuscripts to a wider audience.
The Medieval Bestiary Project
This project compiles a number of medieval bestiaries and presents the definitions of the animals in comparison to each other, along with the common medieval allegory that often accompanied such descriptions, and a picture of the relevant animal, insect, or stone. This compendium provides a very general look at medieval bestiaries.
Turning the Pages
This is a project by the British Library that combines images of manuscripts with texts/transcripts, and a program that makes it look as if you are actually turning the pages of a manuscript. An excellent idea for people who have trouble seeing the manuscript for what it is when trying to research them online.
Musick’s Monument
So far this is the only project I’ve found that actually uses music along with manuscript images to explain what medieval musical manuscripts contain. There are also Quicktime videos available and--another innovation--iPod wallpapers downloads.
Rossell Hope Robbins Library Projects
It would be a pity to try and use only one of these projects, since they are all helpful. Along with images from many different time periods, this web site shows how medieval manuscripts have perpetuated myths that are popular even now.
Showing posts with label Musick's Monument. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musick's Monument. Show all posts
Friday, May 9, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Music
Manuscripts containing musical scores have been preserved online mostly by their incorporation into database projects, though there exist many individual projects and efforts to draw on multimedia sources now available.
Medieval Music Database
La Trobe University Library hosts this site, which holds an extensive database of medieval musical texts, usually accompanied by transcriptions, translations, and valuable information about the manuscripts and their relationships to similar items. Along with individual manuscript images, the site also houses four complete works (three antiphons and one gradual). This site has an excellent search function. Unfortunately the Music Dept. of La Trobe University was closed down, so updates on the database have been sporadic.
Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music
Though this archive requires brief registration, the archive is easily searched once inside and holds an enormous collection of manuscript images in high-resolution. Along with the images in this database, manuscripts are also listed that are only part of a census of items and do not have much information related to them, so in your search, be sure to specify that you would like images of manuscripts.
Digital Scriptorium
This web site, which I’ve introduced before, has a good search function and a decent selection of music-related manuscripts, though not many whole works. High resolution photos are available. When using the search function you may find it useful to use more specific terms (antiphon, gradual, kyrie, gloria, rather than “song” or “music”).
Stichting Musick’s Monument: Medieval Manuscripts
In words from their own site, “The Stichting Musick’s Monument produces Historical Art Productions, partly in association with scholars from the Chair of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).Pictures, music and text are integrated: You will hear music from the same period and the same area of origin as the visual materials; these are supplemented with explanatory text. From this combination evolves something like a Gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art), a complete new way of digital art presentation.” A very interesting project!
Medieval Music Database
La Trobe University Library hosts this site, which holds an extensive database of medieval musical texts, usually accompanied by transcriptions, translations, and valuable information about the manuscripts and their relationships to similar items. Along with individual manuscript images, the site also houses four complete works (three antiphons and one gradual). This site has an excellent search function. Unfortunately the Music Dept. of La Trobe University was closed down, so updates on the database have been sporadic.
Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music
Though this archive requires brief registration, the archive is easily searched once inside and holds an enormous collection of manuscript images in high-resolution. Along with the images in this database, manuscripts are also listed that are only part of a census of items and do not have much information related to them, so in your search, be sure to specify that you would like images of manuscripts.
Digital Scriptorium
This web site, which I’ve introduced before, has a good search function and a decent selection of music-related manuscripts, though not many whole works. High resolution photos are available. When using the search function you may find it useful to use more specific terms (antiphon, gradual, kyrie, gloria, rather than “song” or “music”).
Stichting Musick’s Monument: Medieval Manuscripts
In words from their own site, “The Stichting Musick’s Monument produces Historical Art Productions, partly in association with scholars from the Chair of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).Pictures, music and text are integrated: You will hear music from the same period and the same area of origin as the visual materials; these are supplemented with explanatory text. From this combination evolves something like a Gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art), a complete new way of digital art presentation.” A very interesting project!
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