Tuesday 9 June 2015 – Stephen Rose – Writing a Big Data History of Music

Please join us for our next seminar.

Presenter:  Stephen Rose (RHUL)

Title:  Writing a Big Data History of Music

Date:  9 June 2015

Time:  5:15 PM (GMT)

Venue:  John S Cohen Room 203, 2nd floor, IHR, North block, Senate House or live online via the Digital History Seminar blog.

Live Stream

Abstract: This seminar introduces the project A Big Data History of Music, which aimed to unlock the musical-bibliographical data held by libraries in order to create new research opportunities. The project cleaned and enhanced aspects of the British Library catalogues of printed and manuscript music, which are now available as open data from www.bl.uk/bibliographic/download.html. Analyses and visualisations of these datasets exposed previously uncharted patterns in the history of music, for instance involving the rise and fall of music printing in 16th- and 17th-century Europe, or the rise of nationalist colourings in music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The detection of these long-term trends permits new ways of linking music history to wider histories of culture, economics, society and politics.

Seminars are normally streamed live online on this blog and on YouTube. To keep in touch, follow us on Twitter (@IHRDigHist) or at the hashtag #dhist.

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