Summary
To this day, thousands of melodies that witness the early history of music in Europe remain hidden within the pages of palimpsest manuscripts, ancient books reused in later centuries to host a new, usually non-musical text. The medieval 'recycling' often completely erased the original content, making an impressive corpus of early chant inaccessible. This treasure trove of concealed musical heritage is one missing key towards unlocking the dynamics behind the beginnings of musical notation for vocal music. Recovering this centuries-long lost scripts will advance our understanding of the cognitive and material processes, as well as of the graphic forms and techniques employed by early singers to represent the sounds of music. The MSCA-IF project 'Musica Restituta (MUSRES) Retrieving Hidden Chant from Medieval Palimpsest Manuscripts' will provide for the first time to musicologists, performers, and the wider scholarly community (theologians, philologists, art and science historians, etc.) new material evidence and innovative digital tools for understanding early written music through its most obscure sources. The core object of the research will be a reconstruction, full study, and edition of five among the most important surviving chant palimpsests. The project will achieve this by combining cutting-edge digital photography and image editing with the creation of 'MusRes 1.0', the first on-line virtual research environment for the digital edition of early music palimpsests. Based at the University of Trento, and in collaboration with the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Würzburg (D), MusRes aims at redefining the landscape of available primary sources for the study of early chant, as well as considerably advancing the state of the art in the digital retrieval and editing of hidden musical information in manuscript texts, also for potential application beyond musicology.
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More information & hyperlinks
| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101030908 |
| Start date: | 01-07-2022 |
| End date: | 30-06-2024 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 171 473,28 Euro - 171 473,00 Euro |
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Original description
To this day, thousands of melodies that witness the early history of music in Europe remain hidden within the pages of palimpsest manuscripts, ancient books reused in later centuries to host a new, usually non-musical text. The medieval 'recycling' often completely erased the original content, making an impressive corpus of early chant inaccessible. This treasure trove of concealed musical heritage is one missing key towards unlocking the dynamics behind the beginnings of musical notation for vocal music. Recovering this centuries-long lost scripts will advance our understanding of the cognitive and material processes, as well as of the graphic forms and techniques employed by early singers to represent the sounds of music. The MSCA-IF project 'Musica Restituta (MUSRES) Retrieving Hidden Chant from Medieval Palimpsest Manuscripts' will provide for the first time to musicologists, performers, and the wider scholarly community (theologians, philologists, art and science historians, etc.) new material evidence and innovative digital tools for understanding early written music through its most obscure sources. The core object of the research will be a reconstruction, full study, and edition of five among the most important surviving chant palimpsests. The project will achieve this by combining cutting-edge digital photography and image editing with the creation of 'MusRes 1.0', the first on-line virtual research environment for the digital edition of early music palimpsests. Based at the University of Trento, and in collaboration with the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Würzburg (D), MusRes aims at redefining the landscape of available primary sources for the study of early chant, as well as considerably advancing the state of the art in the digital retrieval and editing of hidden musical information in manuscript texts, also for potential application beyond musicology.Status
TERMINATEDCall topic
MSCA-IF-2020Update Date
28-04-2024
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