A Big Data History of Music

皇家霍洛威和大英图书馆之间的这种合作将为如何研究音乐史提供一个范式转变。它将首次汇集世界上最大的关于已出版的乐谱、音乐手稿和古典音乐会的数据集（超过500万条记录），用于统计分析、操作和可视化。来自七个现有数据库和目录的数据将用作这一项目的基础。这些数据集（其中两个目前无法在线获得）包括：大英图书馆的印刷和手稿音乐目录;由Répertoire International des Sources Musicales（RISM）创建的书目，列出了1500-1800年印刷的欧洲音乐和欧洲图书馆中的音乐手稿;以及RISM英国音乐手稿数据库和音乐会节目项目数据库。这些目录和数据库已经成为所有音乐史和音乐学研究人员以及许多表演研究和文化史学者的重要工具。然而，到目前为止，还不可能分析这些丰富的数据，以了解音乐传播的大规模趋势，特定作曲家的受欢迎程度或音乐品味的发展。我们的项目将对齐和联合收割机的七个数据集，使他们可以作为大数据进行分析。大英图书馆数据的关键领域将得到充实和清理，以便它们能够成功地与其他数据集保持一致。然后，项目小组将试行各种方法，利用从大数据研究中获得的方法分析合并的数据集。通过分析特定作品和作曲家作品的频率，传播和分布，该项目将挑战当前关于音乐如何跨境传播，音乐品味如何发展以及某些作曲家或曲目如何被奉为具有美学价值的思想。这项研究的结果将通过在大英图书馆举行的专题讨论会传播，学术界和非学术界人士都将应邀参加。最后，这些数据将作为一个开放的数据集提供给研究人员，以进行跨学科的大数据研究。

This collaboration between Royal Holloway and the British Library will provide a paradigm shift in how music history is researched. It will bring together for the first time the world's biggest datasets about published sheet music, music manuscripts and classical concerts (in excess of 5 million records) for statistical analysis, manipulation and visualisation. Data from seven existing databases and catalogues will be used as the basis of this project. These datasets (two of which are not currently available online) include: the British Library's catalogues of printed and manuscript music; the bibliographies created by Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) that list European music printed 1500-1800 and music manuscripts in European libraries; and the RISM UK Music Manuscripts Database and the Concert Programmes Project database. These catalogues and databases are already essential finding tools for all researchers of music history and musicology, plus many scholars of performance studies and cultural history. However, until now it has not been possible to analyse these rich collections of data for large-scale trends in the dissemination of music, the popularity of specific composers, or the development of musical taste. Our project will align and combine the seven datasets so that they can be analysed as big data. Key areas of the British Library data will be enriched and cleaned in order that they can be successfully aligned with the other datasets. The project team will then pilot ways in which the combined dataset can be analysed with approaches taken from the study of big data. By analysing the frequency, spread and distribution of specific compositions and composers' outputs, the project will challenge current thinking about how music was transmitted across borders, how musical taste developed, and how certain composers or repertories were canonised as carrying aesthetic value. The results of this research will be disseminated via a symposium held at the British Library, to which academics and non-academics will be invited. Finally, the data will be made available as an open dataset for researchers to undertake big data research across multiple disciplines.