Critical Editing of Music in the Digital Medium: an Experiment in MEI

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Critical Editing of Music
in the Digital Medium: an
Experiment in MEI
Viglianti, Raffaele
raffaele.viglianti@kcl.ac.uk
King's College London
Critical editions of music have not received
the level of attention that research in Digital
Humanities has given to textual criticism,
which already has an established scholarly
production of written contributions and digital
publications. Digital representations in literary
criticism are used for analytical purposes as well
as for accommodating critical editions in the
digital medium, which offers a high degree of
interactivity and opens toward experimentation
with new formats of publication. Nonetheless,
there has been little debate about music editing
in the new medium and only a few digital
publications have been developed.
Several aspects of digital textual criticism can
find an application on music documents because
similar issues exist in the representation of
primary sources and editorial intervention. In
fact, since the early stages of music scholarship,
musicologists looked at the editorial practices
of classical philologists while working towards
a definition of their own scientific finalities
(Grier, 1996). The study of documentary sources
transmitting a written work (manuscript or
printed) is the main correlation between
music and textual criticism. For instance,
the discrepancy identified by Tanselle (1989)
between text and the artefacts that transmit it, is
a condition that applies to music notation as well
as literature; however, literature is ‘a one-stage
and music a two-stage art’ (Goodman, 1976:114;
also discussed by Feder, 1987). A musical work,
in fact, does not exist only as written notation
but also requires performance to reach its final
receiver. For this reason, understanding the
complexity of the music work-concept and its
associated cultural practices is central to the
digital representation of music critical editions.
Even though the recent research in digital
textual scholarship provides a rich paradigm
for the emergent field of digital editing of
music, there is the need for more research
on digital representation and publication of
detailed notation data.
The work conducted for a postgraduate
dissertation (MA) at King’s College London
attempted to discuss some of these issues.
This poster presents the results of the
dissertation’s case study: a digital edition
of Claude Debussy’s Syrinx (La Flûte de
Pan) for flute solo. The XML-based model
represents notation, variant readings and
editorial intervention; additionally, several
different views are extracted and rendered for
presentation with vector images.
1. An experiment with MEI:
Syrinx (La Flûte de Pan)
by
Claude Debussy
Syrinx (La Flûte de Pan)
by Claude Debussy
(1862 – 1918) is a short piece for flute solo
originally composed as theatrical interlude for
the play
Psyché
(1913) by Gabriel Mourey under
the title
La Flûte de Pan
. Despite Debussy
showing little interest in the publication of
the piece, the first performer, Louis Fleury,
contributed to the reception of the piece as
independent from Mourey’s play. The piece
maintains a relevant role in the solo flute
repertoire. Two principal sources have been
used for the digital edition: the first edition
published posthumously by Jobert in 1927
under the new title
Syrinx
and a recently
discovered manuscript in a private collection in
Brussels dated 1913 (MSB), which constituted
the base text.
For the creation of a digital model for the
new edition, the use of a combination of
TEI and MusicXML was initially considered;
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however, MusicXML does not match TEI’s
flexibility when encoding primary sources
and variant readings. MusicXML, in fact,
is primarily designed ‘to be sufficient, not
optimal’ (Good, 2001); therefore, it represents
normalised common western music notation to
facilitate interchange and does not allow the
flexibility in the granularity that is required
when representing the editor’s interpretation
and understanding.
The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) provided
an alternative choice.
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This XML format is

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modelled on TEI and attempts to follow the
same principles. In particular it specifically
focuses on formalising interpretation through
declarative knowledge and claims to be
independent from rendering software while
also addressing processing matters (Roland,
2002).
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Moreover, it includes a module for
the representation of variant readings and
transcription of primary sources; therefore
a combination with TEI did not seem
to be necessary. The MEI format is still
in development; however, the University of
Paderborn (Germany) and the University of
Virginia (USA) recently received a grant to take
MEI out of its beta phase and produce public
guidelines, which should be completed by the
end of July 2010.
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2. The encoding model
The poster will show how the MEI model
represents some editorial aspects common with
textual editing (i.e. bibliographical metadata,
correction and regularisation) and editorial
issues related to the nature of the music
notation (i.e. apparatus, rhythmic constraints,
performative instructions). In particular it will
show:
1.
The header
: similarly to TEI, MEI
provides a “header” (<meihead>) that allows
documenting information about the digital
file and its sources. Notably, the elements
in the description of the manuscript source
MSB attempt to emulate the much more
detailed encoding model offered by the TEI
manuscript description module. The header
also documents the encoding criteria for
notation.
<measure>
<staff>
<layer>
//- Notes
<note>, <beam>, <tuplet>, etc.
...
</layer>
//- Phrase marks
<slur>
...
//- Dynamics, tempo markings and
directions positioned above the staff
<dir>, <dynam>, <breath>, etc.
...
//- Dynamics, tempo markings and
directions positioned below the
staff
<dir>, <dynam>, <breath>,
etc.
...
</staff>
</measure>
Example 1: Encoding criteria for notation
2.
Variant readings
: The MEI file represents
this edition’s base text (MSB) and adds
additional information every time a difference
in the other sources occurs. If the sources
agree, it is expressed silently. This criterion
is identified by the TEI guidelines as ‘internal
parallel segmentation’.
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Example 2 shows
alternative notations encoded with <app>
and <rdg>; the attribute type specifies which
reading has been selected for the edition.
It is worth explaining the basic mechanisms
behind the element <slur>, since they are also
common to other elements. The attribute staff
defines to which staff the phrase mark belongs
to; place defines whether the slur has to be
rendered above or below the staff; tstamp
identifies the beat in which the slur starts and
dur the beat in which the slur ends.
<measure id="m28" n="28">
...
<app>
<rdg source="MSB">
<slur staff="1" tstamp="2" dur="4"
place="above"/>
</rdg>
<rdg source="FEJ" type="ed">
<slur staff="1" tstamp="2"
dur="2.875" place="above"/>
<slur staff="1" tstamp="3"
dur="3.75" place="above"/>
</rdg>
</app>
...
</measure>
Example 2: Alternative phrase marks
in bar 28 from source MSB and FEJ.
3.
Editorial conjecture and intervention
:
change of hand, additions, corrections and
supplied notation have been encoded with
elements equivalent to the ones employed by
the TEI.
4.
Problematic cases
: bar 22 in MSB presents an
incongruent rhythm and a missing barline to
separate it from bar 23. The encoding used an
empty-element version of <beam> to encode
the differences in beaming resulting from the
different rhythms and a <gap> element for the
missing barlines.