About
This Blog will help us prepare ourselves for our planned meeting at Haverford College on March 16, 2009. The purpose of the gathering, as I explained in recent conversation, is to refine a new digital resource for the study of early music, a collaborative project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Haverford College, and the CESR of Tours, France. For those who can join us, this on-line discussion will help move things along. For those who are unable to come to Haverford, it will be a way for us to hear your thoughts, too!
As you may recall, we have already identified a pilot repertory of 16th-century partbooks (chansonniers issued by Du Chemin in the early 1550’s) for the first stage of this project, and have outlined the essential functions for the database and electronic interface. These are described in my grant proposal to the NEH, and in a (non-working) sample of how the resource might look that Vincent Besson crafted some months ago (see PDF files on my Haverford Home Page–at the bottom of the page)
The aim of our conversations in March will be to gather ideas other functions, tools, and repertories that you would like to have available in this form for use by scholars, students, and performers. As we seek further funding from the North American and European funding agencies in order to expand the resource we would also like to form an international advisory board that will help ensure its continued success by proposing repertories, connecting it with their classes and scholarship, and generally guiding the effort to bring the benefits of digital tools to the study of early music. (Later in the spring we will also convene a similar gathering at the CESR in Tours in order to hear what our European colleagues have to say about the project).