Digitality in music edition: the open concept of work in the 17th century

• Applicants: Dr. Juliane Pöche; Professorin Dr. Ivana Rentsch
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 504660259

After 1600 the musical innovation of the basso continuo broke ground throughout Europe in a minimum of time proceeding from Northern Italy and dominated the compositional styles of the 17th to the mid-18th century. The basso continuo was not only accompanied by the sustained dominance of the major-minor tonality but also an essential flexibility of performance practice which naturally evades from the determination within a musical score. A (printed) critical edition which traditionally gears towards a principal version is incapable of meeting the requirements of this stated core aspect concerning the early modern music ideal. The project correspondingly aims to editorially process the broad range of the particular variant spectrum as equal options and transfer it into a pure digital solution which offers the possibility to depict the improvisatory quality of the compositions as well as the particular boundaries regarding the formation of variants. The aim consists in a model edition for the German repertoire of the basso continuo originating from the 17th century which accommodates the indeterminate comprehension of a musical work in opposition to the tradition-steeped printed editions which technically fail to offer such quality. Due to the volatile form of the compositions and the aesthetic unreliability of a major variant a pure digital solution is designated in preference to a hybrid edition. The distinct focusing of the model edition on the German repertory of the 17th century is caused by its exceptional variability of performance practice. The resulting maximum diversity of editorial problem formulations and corresponding essential technical resolutions ensure the unproblematic adaptation with respect to the comparatively less flexible Italian compositions of the 17th century encompassing the basso continuo and the European repertory of the 18th century for future editorial projects. The project pursues three subgoals which are closely related: 1) the editorial processing of the sources which in detail and critically extrapolates all paratext-based variants without adjusting these to a hypothetical main version; 2) the edited material is converted into a digital presentation which is precisely developed and successively allows the generating of every historically reconstructed variant. By virtue of the necessary close exchange with other editorial projects a cooperation with the “Zentrum Musik – Edition – Medien” of the University Paderborn is envisaged. Eventually, 3) the developed tools will be released as open source to be immediately utilizable for coming editorial projects. The project will be integrated in the emerging field „The Early Modern World” of the University of Hamburg respectively a Germany-wide unique interdisciplinary work environment and network of early modern research.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants