Digitization: New: "Ancient Music Books Accessible to All" (Early Music Online)

From Royal Holloway, University of London:

Fragile treasures of 16^th Century music are now freely available online, thanks to a partnership between Royal Holloway, University of London, the British Library and JISC.

The Early Music Online project has digitised more than 300 books of the world’s earliest printed music from holdings at the British Library. Some of the books date back as far as the 1500s and, due to their fragile nature, would not be freely available to researchers, but thanks to this digitization project, musicians from around the world can now source the original music free of charge using the Early Music Online website.

Highlights of the collection include church music by the Flemish composer Josquin des Prez and the English musicians Thomas Tallis and William Byrd; drinking-songs from Nuremberg and love-songs from Lyon; lute music from Venice and organ music from Leipzig.

[Clip]

Dr Sandra Tuppen, from the British Library, added: “It’s wonderful to be able to share such fantastic musical treasures at the click of a button and make the works available to anyone in the world.”

Dr [Stephen] Rose, [from the Department of Music at Royal Holloway] explained that the British Library had worked with the College’s music department on previous database projects and they were keen to make use of the College’s expertise again.

Read the Complete Article

Direct to Early Music Online Website

Filed under: Digital Preservation, Libraries, Resources