As theatre historians, we deal with residues, fragments, layered elements which are likely to remain silent if they are not correlated with one other. The study of documents relating to a single event or theatrical artifact is useful in evaluating their microhistory (Georg G. Iggers, 1997), that is, the relationship between that object and the cultural system that produced it. Sometimes, however, it is extremely difficult to account for the potential relationships between a theatrical artifact and other external contexts. A major reason for this impediment is the difficulty in finding sources. The proliferation of computer technologies in the Humanities, the conception and planning of digital archives, and the progressive integration and standardization of the information management protocols have in effect revolutionized the ways of thinking and doing research. “Old” disciplines, such as philology and history, nowadays have tools infinitely more powerful than just a few decades ago. The purpose of this paper is to report the identification of the exact text matching of two sections of an early-Seventeenth-century Roman opera with two vocal compositions from the late 1600s preserved in manuscript form in the Archivio Musicale del Duomo di Como (Italy). This discovery has been fulfilled thanks to an online search, made possibile by the interaction between a common web search engine and the database of the Catalogo Nazionale dei manoscritti musicali (National Catalogue of Music Manuscript) of the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan, which includes the main references for the music manuscripts up to the Twentieth century in Italian libraries. Such contingency, furthermore, warrants some methodological considerations regarding, inter alia, the nature of the digital archives, their architecture, and the policies of copyright law/open source that may affect the level of accessibility to the sources.
Digital Archives and Textual Attribution: Story and Reflections About a Migration from Opera to Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century / Roma, Aldo. - ELETTRONICO. - (2016), pp. 9-9. (Intervento presentato al convegno Presenting the Theatrical Past tenutosi a Stockholm University nel 13/06/2016-17/06/2016).
Digital Archives and Textual Attribution: Story and Reflections About a Migration from Opera to Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century
ROMA, ALDO
2016
Abstract
As theatre historians, we deal with residues, fragments, layered elements which are likely to remain silent if they are not correlated with one other. The study of documents relating to a single event or theatrical artifact is useful in evaluating their microhistory (Georg G. Iggers, 1997), that is, the relationship between that object and the cultural system that produced it. Sometimes, however, it is extremely difficult to account for the potential relationships between a theatrical artifact and other external contexts. A major reason for this impediment is the difficulty in finding sources. The proliferation of computer technologies in the Humanities, the conception and planning of digital archives, and the progressive integration and standardization of the information management protocols have in effect revolutionized the ways of thinking and doing research. “Old” disciplines, such as philology and history, nowadays have tools infinitely more powerful than just a few decades ago. The purpose of this paper is to report the identification of the exact text matching of two sections of an early-Seventeenth-century Roman opera with two vocal compositions from the late 1600s preserved in manuscript form in the Archivio Musicale del Duomo di Como (Italy). This discovery has been fulfilled thanks to an online search, made possibile by the interaction between a common web search engine and the database of the Catalogo Nazionale dei manoscritti musicali (National Catalogue of Music Manuscript) of the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan, which includes the main references for the music manuscripts up to the Twentieth century in Italian libraries. Such contingency, furthermore, warrants some methodological considerations regarding, inter alia, the nature of the digital archives, their architecture, and the policies of copyright law/open source that may affect the level of accessibility to the sources.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
