A Big Data History of Music Stephen Rose, Royal Holloway
What is Big Data research? 2
Big Data may have high volume high velocity high variety 3
Big Data in the humanities David Armitage and Jo Guldi, The History Manifesto (Cambridge, 2014) http://historymanifesto.cambridge. org 4
Franco Moretti s distant reading Franco Moretti, Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history (2005), p.11 5
Charting the Great Unread Franco Moretti, Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history (2005), p.19 6
Trends in music history source studies 7
Trends in music history social / intellectual contexts of work 8
Trends in music history cultural histories of places / phenomena 9
Can techniques of distant reading allow us to write music history in new ways? Can we trust distant reading to mediate between ourselves and the original documents? 10
Big Data in music Machine readable scores? Audio libraries? Metadata about music publications? 11
Machine readable scores e.g. www.peachnote.com 12
Audio Big Data e.g. Digital Music Lab chord visualiser 13
A Big Data History of Music Vision for project How can the vast amount of bibliographical data held by research libraries be unlocked for music researchers to analyse? Can this data be interrogated in ways that challenge the traditional narratives of music history? 14
Aims of project To clean and enhance two existing bibliographical datasets To pilot big data research techniques on these and five other datasets To make the British Library datasets publicly available for download 15
Project datasets RISM A/I (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) - single-composer printed editions issued before 1800), ca. 100K records. opac.rism.info since May 2015 RISM B/I - printed anthologies, 1500-1700, ca. 17K records. Not yet fully online RISM A/II - music manuscripts, 1600-ca. 1850, opac.rism.info, incorporating the RISM UK catalogue of music manuscripts, ca. 900K records British Library catalogue of printed music, explore.bl.uk, ca. 1 million records British Library catalogue of manuscript music, searcharchives.bl.uk, ca. 16K records Augustus Hughes-Hughes: Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum (London, 1906-9), ca. 35K records. Not yet online Concert Programmes Database, www.concertprogrammes.org.uk, ca. 6K records 16
Project datasets British Library catalogues of music now available as CSV or RDF-XML files for download at www.bl.uk/bibliographic/download.html 17
RISM volumes 18
RISM online catalogue 19
Data facets or types Composers Musical works Places Time Subjects/genres Printers/publishers 20
Data facets captured in music datasets Composer Work title Country of origin City of origin Creation date Subject/ genre A/I Y some Y some Y Y B/I Y Y Y Y CPM some some Y Y Y (though many are approx.) A/II Y Y Y Y N/A BL MSS Y some Y N/A H-H Y Y Y Y N/A some Printer/ publisher some Key: A/I RISM A/I (single-composer printed editions) B/I RISM B/I (printed anthologies) CPM - British Library catalogue of printed music A/II RISM A/II (music manuscripts) BL MSS British Library catalogue of manuscripts H-H Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum, ed. A. Hughes-Hughes 21
Transforming the data from MARC21 library format MARC21 format 22
Transforming the data from MARC21 library format Spreadsheet row 23
Transforming the data from MARC21 library format MARCedit tool used to transform library catalogue records into TSV files http://marcedit.reeset.net/ 24
Library data diversity: date information [WM 1825] Row Labels Count of Dates [ca. 1825] [1825?] [1825] 1825 [1825-1830] [before 1825] [after 1825] 1825 1 [1825?] 1 [1825] 1 [1825-1830] 1 [after 1825] 1 [before 1825] 1 [between 1825 and 1830] 1 [ca. 1825] 1 [between 1825 and 1830] [WM 1825] 1 Grand Total 9 25
Data preparation Date Date Date Date [WM 1825] 1825 1820s 19th century [ca. 1825] 1825 1820s 19th century [1825?] 1825 1820s 19th century [1825] 1825 1820s 19th century 1825 1825 1820s 19th century [1825-1830] 1820s 19th century [before 1825] [after 1825] [between 1825 and 1830] 1820s 19th century 19th century 19th century 26
Data preparation Date Date Date Date [WM 1825] 1825 1820s 19th century [ca. 1825] 1825 1820s 19th century [1825?] 1825 1820s 19th century [1825] 1825 1820s 19th century 1825 1825 1820s 19th century [1825-1830] 1820s 19th century [before 1825] [after 1825] [between 1825 and 1830] 1820s 19th century 19th century 19th century Row Labels Count of Dates 1825 5 Grand Total 5 Row Labels Row Labels Count of Dates 1820s 7 Grand Total 7 Count of Dates 19 th century 9 Grand Total 9 27
Open Refine (http://openrefine.org/) 28
Open Refine (http://openrefine.org/) 29
Handel publications by date, as assigned in British Library catalogue 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 30
The rise and fall of music printing, 1500-1700 2000 RISM A/I and B/I data 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 Total 800 600 400 200 0 1490s1500s1510s1520s1530s1540s1550s1560s1570s1580s1590s1600s1610s1620s1630s1640s1650s1660s1670s1680s1690s 31
Single-composer prints (RISM A/I) versus anthologies (RISM B/I), 1500-1700 AI BI 2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 1490s 1500s 1510s 1520s 1530s 1540s 1550s 1560s 1570s 1580s 1590s 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s 1650s 1660s 1670s 1680s 1690s 32
Petrucci anthologies Harmonice musices Odhecaton [Canti A] (Venice, 1501) 33
Monumentalising the composer Lassus, Magnum opus musicum, Munich 1604 34
1493 1501 1504 1507 1510 1513 1516 1519 1522 1526 1529 1532 1535 1538 1541 1544 1547 1550 1553 1556 1559 1562 1565 1568 1571 1574 1577 1580 1583 1586 1589 1592 1595 1598 1601 1604 1607 1610 1613 1616 1619 1622 1625 1628 1631 1634 1637 1640 1643 1646 1649 250 Music printing by year, 1500-1649 RISM A/I and B/I data 200 150 100 50 0 35
36 Music printed in major centres, 1500-1649 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 1493 1503 1507 1511 1516 1520 1526 1530 1534 1538 1542 1546 1550 1554 1558 1562 1566 1570 1574 1578 1582 1586 1590 1594 1598 1602 1606 1610 1614 1618 1622 1626 1630 1634 1638 1642 1646 Venice Rome Paris Nuremberg London Antwerp
Venice dips in 1571 and 1576/7 Battle of Lepanto, 1571 Plague, 1576/7 (including Titian s funeral) 37
Venice, 1571 Il primo libro delle Napolitane à tre voci, Giosef Policretto, & altri eccellentissimi musici (Venice, 1571) 38
Lifespan of early modern industries the typical pattern of a sharp rise followed by an abrupt fall can very easily be imagined as the probable profile in the pre-industrial economy (Fernand Braudel, Civilization and capitalism: the wheels of commerce, trsl. London 1982) 39
450 Main music-printing centres, 1570s 400 Erfurt 350 Leuven 300 250 200 Magdeburg Mühlhausen Munich Nuremberg 150 Paris 100 50 Strasbourg Venice Wittenberg 0 1570s 40
All music-printing centres, 1570s 41
All music-printing centres, 1640s 42
180 160 Main music-printing centres, 1690s Amsterdam Antwerp 140 120 Augsburg Bologna 100 London 80 60 40 20 Nuremberg Paris Rome Stettin Venice 0 1690s 43
Composer case-study: Palestrina 44
Palestrina the archetypal Catholic composer? Palestrina presenting his music to Pope Julius III. Liber primus missarum (Rome, 1554) 45
RISM A/I and B/I data Palestrina: places & dates published 46
The myth of Palestrina as saviour of polyphony Music would have come very near to being banished from the Holy Church by a sovereign pontiff had not Giovanni Palestrina found the remedy, showing that the fault and error lay, not with music, but with the composers, and composing in confirmation of this the Mass entitled Missa Papae Marcelli Agazzari, 1607 47
RISM A/I data Palestrina: genres and places 48
RISM A/I and B/I data Palestrina: places & dates published 49
Palestrina in the Protestant periphery Palestrina s madrigal Vestiva i colli Englished in Musica transalpina (London, 1588) 50
RISM A/II data Palestrina manuscripts 51
The cult of Palestrina By Aloysius, the master, I refer to Palestrina, the celebrated light of music to whom I owe everything that I know of this art, and whose memory I shall never cease to cherish with a feeling of deepest reverence Fux, Gradus ad parnassum (Vienna, 1725) 52
Composer case-studies Purcell 53
Composer case-studies the part-books and other records surviving for many religious institutions from the 18th century onwards have the potential to establish whether, for example, performance of [Purcell s] sacred repertory became restricted to a small number of works...or whether it was influenced by printed editions such as that of Boyce (Rebecca Herissone, Ashgate Research Companion: Henry Purcell, 2010) 54
RISM online catalogue 55
Composer case-studies Number of Purcell anthems in manuscript 25 20 15 10 5 0 56
Composer case-studies MSS of Purcell anthems in cathedral and chapel libraries 57
BL Aleph data: The rise of Scottish music 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1680s 1690s 1700s 1710s 1720s 1730s 1740s 1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 58
from Restoration Scotch songs A New Scotch Song sung to the King at Windsor, c.1685 59
to Ossian and the noble savage Address to the Sun from Ossian, c.1783 60
Queen Victoria s visits from 1842 Scotia s welcome to Victoria, arr. Henry Bishop c.1842 The Balmoral Quadrilles c.1850 61
Download data from www.bl.uk/bibliographic/download.html Contact stephen.rose@rhul.ac.uk sandra.tuppen@bl.uk A Big Data History of Music was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council 62