Dissemination, Ownership, and Reading of Music in early modern Europe
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: Music
Abstract
This project rewrites the history of the printed musical source from the perspective of its consumption - the owners and readers of music books. Operating in the intersection of musicology, book history (in particular, the history of reading) and bibliography, it offers new ways of assessing who owned music in early modern Europe and how they read it, bringing music into the discourse around early modern literacies.
It does so by bringing together a team of specialists from different fields, led by the PI with a track record of working in both musicology and book history. Together they will address questions around the dissemination and consumption of music by using the information hidden in the more than 1800 surviving copies of music books from the crucial period of 1500-1545, the 'incunabula' period for music printing. A copy-specific methodology new to music books, which has become of increasing importance for general book history, provides an entirely novel approach to questions such as the ownership, dissemination and reading of music sources in this crucial period, then leading to an understanding of musical literacy and its role in early modern Europe.
A series of articles and a monograph by the PI will firmly move the research of early music books away from production towards their consumption. Beyond that, supported by a leading digital humanities agency, we will develop a database, serving first as the way to collect information and later as a tool for end-users to search the ownership and use of music books. The new taxonomy of describing and cataloguing annotations and markings in musical sources, developed for the database in consultation with advisors and colleagues from book history, musicology and research libraries, will set a new standard not only for research, but crucially also for the use in libraries and collections much beyond the time period and material covered in this project.
It does so by bringing together a team of specialists from different fields, led by the PI with a track record of working in both musicology and book history. Together they will address questions around the dissemination and consumption of music by using the information hidden in the more than 1800 surviving copies of music books from the crucial period of 1500-1545, the 'incunabula' period for music printing. A copy-specific methodology new to music books, which has become of increasing importance for general book history, provides an entirely novel approach to questions such as the ownership, dissemination and reading of music sources in this crucial period, then leading to an understanding of musical literacy and its role in early modern Europe.
A series of articles and a monograph by the PI will firmly move the research of early music books away from production towards their consumption. Beyond that, supported by a leading digital humanities agency, we will develop a database, serving first as the way to collect information and later as a tool for end-users to search the ownership and use of music books. The new taxonomy of describing and cataloguing annotations and markings in musical sources, developed for the database in consultation with advisors and colleagues from book history, musicology and research libraries, will set a new standard not only for research, but crucially also for the use in libraries and collections much beyond the time period and material covered in this project.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Elisabeth Giselbrecht (Principal Investigator) |
| Description | At this stage-two and a half years into the five-year funding period-we have made significant progress in two primary areas: First, in terms of methodology, the development and population of our database has been exceptionally successful. After evaluating several approaches, we chose to adopt the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) framework for data capture. Unlike the relational database approach used in prior related projects, TEI offers greater flexibility in entering data and enables seamless integration with datasets from various disciplines. This marks the first time that annotations in music books have been captured in such a manner, generating considerable interest among scholars in musicology, book history, as well as institutions such as libraries and societies concerned with music bibliography (such as RISM). Both our database model and the data it houses will be made publicly accessible, allowing others to adopt, adapt, and build upon this framework for their own research purposes. Secondly, our individual research has advanced into exciting new areas. Katie McKeogh has made pioneering strides in linking music to broader discussions on book ownership in post-Reformation England, with a paper slated for publication this spring. Louisa Hunter-Bradley has similarly broken new ground in understanding the circulation of music books across Europe, with two forthcoming articles. Our seminar discussions have culminated in the acceptance of a special issue (due for publication in Spring 2026), which examines the distribution of music books in relation to other printed works, establishing a dialogue between these domains. Collectively, these smaller findings contribute to a significant revision of our understanding of the music book in the 16th century and its role in early modern society, a key objective of the project. Both of these developments are directly aligned with the goals outlined in our project proposal. |
| Exploitation Route | As outlined above, the database model we have developed is of considerable interest to others working in this and related fields. Once openly available it can be adapted for various other projects. RISM has already shown a keen interest in our data and strategies for sharing have been discussed. Our bringing together of communities working on the wider book world and musicology is bearing fruit in further round tables, discussions and workshops planned in this area. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy Education Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| Description | Grant COST EarlyMuse participation |
| Amount | £2,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | European Research Council (ERC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 04/2025 |
| End | 05/2025 |
| Description | Minor Grant |
| Amount | £250 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Bibliographical Society |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2024 |
| End | 02/2024 |
| Description | Minor grant |
| Amount | £300 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Bibliographical Society |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2025 |
| End | 04/2025 |
| Title | DORMEME TEI database |
| Description | We have - together with our digital partner Agile Humanities - developed a TEI database in which we have recorded original data about our primary object of study, music books from he 16th century. The TEI approach allows us to record individual interactions (annotations, marks etc.) in the music books and combining it with edition-level data. This is a new approach to recording music-bibliographic-provenance related data. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The new database model has created great interest among other organisations and researchers working in the field of music bibliography. In the coming years we will build on this and share both our dataset as well as our databasemodel. |
| Description | Committee member for Music literacy summit |
| Organisation | Society for Music Analysis |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | The PI has been asked to be in the committee for a new Musical Literacy Summit, a collaboration between the SMA and various other stakeholders to highlight issues and improve outcomes around musical literacy in the UK. To date, the collaboration has resulted in setting up a first Summit on Musical Literacy (to be held at the University of Cambridge in July 2024). The PI has contributed to this as a committee member. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The SMA has set up the collaboration and funded a researcher to coordinate the efforts. |
| Impact | First Summit on music literacy organised for July 2024 |
| Start Year | 2024 |
| Description | Collaborative workshop with other project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Our team organised and convened a full-day workshop with another large UK-based project in a related field. This gave us valuable insight into points of contact between the two projects and a great opportunity for postdocs to meet and set up potential collaborations. A joint conference panel was organised as a result. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Online workshops held |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Two sessions, each lasting 2.5 hrs, were organised to discuss the question of the 'Dissemination of music books in early modern Europe' with a group of international researchers, postgraduate students, members of library research teams. These were held online to be accessible to a wide geographical range without incurring costs. Participants came from across Europe and the US. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Workshop series |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a series of workshops around the topic of "Ownership", which brought together an international group of postgraduate students and scholars from different disciplines. Ca. 25 people from a wide range of locations attended per workshop, which were held online to ensure maximum international reach. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |