Project description DEENESFRITPL Digital edition of medieval chant palimpsests During the Middle Ages, books were often reused by replacing old texts with new ones, leading to the loss of thousands of melodies. A significant corpus of early chant has been lost as a result. Recovering lost scripts is fundamental for revealing the beginnings of musical notation for vocal music. The EU-funded MUSRES project will provide musicologists, performers, and scholars new material evidence and innovative digital tools for revealing early written music. The project will reconstruct, study, and edit five of the most important surviving chant palimpsests combining advanced digital photography and image editing. MUSRES will create ‘MusRes 1.0’, the first virtual research domain for the digital edition of early music palimpsests. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective 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. Fields of science humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistoryhumanitiesartsmusicology Keywords Gregorian chant palimpsests manuscript studies musical notation Digital Humanities digital imaging medieval liturgy Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2020 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2020 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF) Coordinator UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO Net EU contribution € 171 473,28 Address Via calepina 14 38122 Trento Italy See on map Region Nord-Est Provincia Autonoma di Trento Trento Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
