Centre for Digital Musicology in the Institute of Musicology of the University of Wrocław
We are opening the first academic Centre for Digital Musicology in Poland. The prologue to its activities will be a lecture by Sonia Wronkowska (National Library) on MEI encoding.
Most people use technological facilities. It also involves musicology. Activities concerning digital musicology have been around for a long time in the Institute of Musicology of the University of Wrocław. We are very pleased to announce that at the instigation of dr Grzegorz Joachimiak and with the involvement of staff and doctoral students from the Departments of Historical Musicology, Systematic Musicology, and Musical Anthropology we are opening the Centre for Digital Musicology in the Institute of Musicology of the University of Wrocław. It will be the first of its kind academic institution in Poland. The activities of the Centre for Digital Musicology will be supported by Centrum Humanistyki Cyfrowej Uwr [Centre for Digital Humanities of the University of Wrocław], Regionalny GLAM [Regional GLAM – Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums], Reprographic and Digitization Unit of Wrocław University Library, Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Department of Computing Goldsmiths University of London. Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute which have been working closely with the Institute of Musicology for a long time will also support the laboratory’s activities. We are also open to cooperation with other institutions. A prologue to Laboratory of Digital Musicology functioning will be Sonia Wronkowska’s (National Library) lecture which will take place on 26 March, hour. 10:00: “MEI – fundament najciekawszych projektów cyfrowej muzykologii” [MEI – foundation of the most interesting digital musicology projects]. A workshop for students on the “Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) – an open standard for encoding musical notation” will take place after the lecture.
The starting point of the lecture will be an explanation of the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) meaning in the context of the contemporary view of the digital humanities. Drawing on her own experience working in heritage institutions and scientific projects, the author will present the role of transparent and interdisciplinary data modeling as a key to successful endeavors at the intersection of the humanities and computer science. MEI will be presented as a standard example of an initiative that connects communities of researchers, librarians, and computer scientists who co-create valuable and substantive technological solutions in a balanced way. This solid foundation enabled the implementation of many interesting science, IT, and editorial projects in musicology over the last two decades. The series of simple exercises during workshops will aim to acquire basic rules governing the XML markup language and learn the basic elements of MEI by participants. The leader of workshops will show that sequences of triangular brackets, characters, numbers, and letters are one possible way of writing music, which can be read like a score or tablature. The emphasis will be put on understanding of the relationship between musicological knowledge and technical specification, that is how the result of cooperation between humanists and computer scientists forms the code understandable for computers and people. The side effect of workshops will be the study of the syntax of the XML markup language, a universal standard for representing data – one of the core competencies in the digital humanities.
Sonia Wronkowska – the head of the Musical Collection Unit of the National Library and director’s development attorney. In her work, she combines musicology, librarianship, and computer science.
The lecture will be conducted in a hybrid form, online access by MS Teams will be possible after a prior request for the link to join sent by email to the following address: marianna.kowal@uwr.edu.pl.
The participation in workshops will be possible only in place. The lecture and workshops inaugurate project “Na szlaku dziedzictwa muzyczno-dźwiękowego Dolnego Śląska. Rozwój kompetencji miękkich, praktycznych i cyfrowych studentów muzykologii” [On the trail of music and sound heritage of Lower Silesia. The development of soft, practical, and digital skills of musicology students.] The project is financed by the Rector of the University of Wrocław as part of educational initiatives addressed to extra-curricular students (coordination: dr Sławomir Wieczorek.)
Translated by Martyna Mrugała (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
