BMBF Project Work Packages

Data Base

Within the scope of the first work package Building the Data Base, all already available music texts, libretto transcriptions, and audio recordings will initially be put into the data formats required for the project.

The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) format will be used for transcribing the music texts from rough models, some of which are available, digitally prepared by the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Gesamtausgabe [Complete Edition] (WeGA), though some must also be manually prepared from various facsimiled manuscripts and prints.

All verbal-text content will be encoded using Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines, so here also the project can draw on preliminary work for WeGA.

Acoustic Components

The acoustic domain of the project’s digital-edition model is the main focus of the second work package Preparation of Acoustic Components.

Existing audio recordings of the opera will be synchronized with music texts encoded in MEI; for this, pre-existing procedures can be drawn on that need only adaptation to the project requirements.

Algorithms for temporally and spectrally segmenting sound recordings should ensure a flexible handling of the edition’s acoustic domain. Since basic research is still to be done in this area, three numbers selected from the opera will be recorded in the project, using special recording techniques to obtain, first of all, reference results for optimizing the methods, and secondly, ideal sample material for demonstrating the edition model.

Music Edition

Freischütz-Edition, the third work package, includes all works around the edition of the opera’s music.

First, the digital-edition model as understood in this project will be refined and adapted to the specific factors of the object being analyzed. This includes, as per the concept described, in addition to the musical notation as the graphic manifestation, also the logical (semantic) and the acoustic / performative domains of music. At the same time, the verbal-text elements, especially the libretto versions, will have to be placed in relation to the music.

The development of the medium-specific edition based on WeGA preliminary work, the linkage of text and music editions, as well as the necessary software adaptations are further topics of this package.

Text Edition

In addition to the libretto’s genetic text edition, the focus in the fourth work package Libretto Edition and Intertexts is on the network of interrelationships situating the work.

Thus, modeled besides an edition of the stages and layers of text development up to the premiere are the reference points in Friedrich Kind’s libretto for setting the text. Furthermore, the reception of both the opera’s music and libretto is assessed, with reappraisal going beyond mere documentation and clarifying the strands of interpretation by digital means.

Necessary software adaptations for representing the genetic edition, the text references, and the work’s reception are also part of the work package.

User Interaction

The Integration of User Interactions (fifth work package), planned as part of the project, particularly demands tools that are intuitively easy to comprehend, besides the usual software-development requirements for suiting the purpose. Here, users of the edition are to be given opportunities to advance on their own by being provided with tools that are as far as possible self-explanatory. The software must also adequately represent the internal structure of the edition data.

The project’s targeted linkage with the repository of the TextGrid-network also facilitates making customized user-specific comments and advances visible to other users and thus available for further research.

Variance

The sixth work package, Variance as a Demonstration Example for Subsequent Research Issues, exemplarily treats various topics concerning written and acoustic variance for the development of downstream questions.

Using the Freischütz manuscripts, the aim is to investigate the variance in copyists’ transmittal of (musical) notation and hence to highlight the interpretative transparency of the notation. The focus of a second sub work package is on a comparison of performance materials to document the interpretation of the music text by conductors from the premiere into the 20th century. A third sub work package will examine the relationship of textual and acoustic relevance, questioning whether areas of particularly high textual variance in the sources are also reflected in a similar variance in corresponding recordings.