Cataloguing and digitisation of watermarks in early music prints with polyphonic music

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The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) owns one of the most important collections of polyphonic printed music of the 16th and 17th centuries with a total of 2,300 copies. These are sources of musicological prominence, many of them extremely rare, from the library's founding period and from the later systematic additions. The project aims to explore a new and hitherto unexplored area of watermark research with the early printed music. The earliest segment of this group, from the beginning of music printing at the end of the 15th century to the year 1550, is the subject of the project. It comprises 329 copies with a total number of 901 physical units. Included are choir books, tablatures, part book sets, broadsheets and theorica. A reference stock of predominantly dated sources is to be created by systematically cataloguing the watermarks in the BSB's music prints up to the year 1550. Within the course of the project, the watermarks will be recorded, documented, digitized using thermographic technology and catalogued. The results of the project will be integrated into the relevant databases. Concerning the field of filigranology, this is the "Watermark Information System" (WZIS). Via WZIS, the entries are also automatically registered in the international portal "Bernstein - The memory of paper". For the area of music sources, RISM-OPAC is central as the largest database of its kind worldwide. Due to the internationally important collection and the size of the holdings, the BSB's sources are particularly qualified for this purpose. This opens a new source segment to the watermark research that has been insufficiently developed to date. In the same way, the results should provide a new basis for research on the beginning of music printing, the distribution channels of 16th century music sources and the beginnings of the industrial music business.