Thesaurus musicarum latinarum (review)

Abstract

Thesaurus musicarum latinarum. Thomas J. Mathiesen, Project Director. Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature, Indiana University. http://www.music.indiana.edu/tml/. [Requires a Web browser and Internet connection.] It was with great interest and enthusiasm that I accepted the task of reviewing the Thesaurus musicarum latinarum (TML) for Notes. As a medieval musicologist in his second career as a working librarian, I remember when TML first appeared on the scene, back when FTP and listserv were the dominant means of accessing files over the Internet (well before browsers made their appearance). It was both exciting and exhilarating to be able to participate in one of the first music consortiums, where the effort was done by working musicologists, the content was freely available through FTP download, and one could get regular updates on the progress and content of the project through e-mail. Now, in this Internet environment where Web pages and Web sites are more common and convenient than FTP download and Veronica (remember her?!), TML continues to move forward as a pioneer in the area of music on the Web, and in the continuing development of global participation by the music community to provide open access to this unique and otherwise hard-to-acquire material. As the Web site states, TML is an evolving database of the entire corpus of Latin music theory written during the Middle Ages and the As such, it fills a huge gap for scholars in these areas of study, by 1) providing access to these materials in one location, and 2) providing it for free. Other databases with this kind of depth of content and scholarship entail annual expenditure on the part of libraries in order to provide access for their patrons. The goals of TML are immediately apparent when one accesses the Web site. Instead of going immediately to database content, or the actual front page of the Web site, the user is taken to a copyright notice, where it is made clear that everything is either public domain or from copyrighted materials for which TML has obtained permission. In addition, the publishers make clear that they do claim copyright on content created by TML staff (introduction, canon, text and graphics, the encoding system, and the compilation of the sources). Once the user enters the Web site, it is readily apparent that the project is under the direction of the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature at Indiana University, and that Thomas J. Mathiesen is the director. The introduction to TML describes what it is, as well as other projects and databases that it complements but does not duplicate. These other projects include: the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (http://www.tlg.uci.edu/), the Lexicon musicum Latinum medii aevi (http://www.lml.badw.de/), the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (http://www.thesaurus.badw.de/), Saggi musicali italiani (http://www.music.indiana.edu/smi/), and the Center for the Computer Analysis of Texts (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/teachtech/about-ccat.html). The introduction also states the two fundamentals of the project since its beginning: that users be able to locate and retrieve sources without editorial intrusions (even those that correct errors); and that every printed edition of a particular text be available for users, even if it has been replaced by a more modern edition. The content of the database itself comprises Latin texts related in some way to music theory and composition in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Most of our understanding of practical matters related to musical composition during these eras comes from these manuscripts; in fact, without these treatises, modern musicologists would have no idea when compositional techniques became standard practice. These treatises were often written by well-known musicians of the time, or by Latin scholars describing and defining current compositional and notational practices. The sources, while mainly Latin, come from all over Western Europe. …