Preserving Musical Cultural Heritage at MIRAGE

Abstract

The preservation and restoration of the information contained in musical documents (sounds, scores, images) are very delicate but necessary operations in order to safeguard an immense cultural patrimony from irreversible degradation. The re-recording of audio documents onto digital carriers and their processing on computerized systems require the coordination of several technical-scientific and musicological competences: from the audio signals processing to the chemistry of the carriers, from archive-keeping to the history of electronic music and musical technology. Such a complex professional interdisciplinary training is repaid by the accomplishment of more rapid systems and more sophisticated methodologies of information retrieval and processing. Moreover, the opening of archives and libraries to a wide telecoms community, which is made available through the integration of the Internet web, gives a further impulse to education and cultural development. The choice of establishing a university laboratory for the preservation and processing of musical knowledge and materials is inspired by these strategic aims.