Musical materialities and conduits of culture: revealing the hidden histories of music during poland’s ‘golden age’ (c. 1475 – 1600)
From the Middle Ages, the Polish Kingdom and Grand Duchy of Lithuania (P-L, from 1569 a Commonwealth) possessed a rich diversity of cultures, from Armenians and Ashkenazi Jews to those of Bohemian, French, Italian, Scandinavian and German origins. Engaging in commercial and artistic pursuits across urban and rural communities, multicultural P-L cultivated a nation of tolerance and a flowering of artistic and philosophical thought from the end of the fifteenth century known as Poland’s ‘Golden Age’. Situated in this fertile period, MusiConduits will bring together unique resources to develop a multi-faceted understanding of musical culture through its objects: from archives, books and printed/engraved art to museum objects and historic buildings. The MusiConduits project is innovative in its design and focus, intersecting material culture studies, musicology, organology, gender-sensitive approaches, family and urban studies, fine and decorative arts studies, artistic craft processes, lexicography and the history of the printed page. A complementary project strand will explore how modern collaborative approaches to digital humanities can inspire public engagement with these dynamic hidden histories from the past.
Cataloguing and coding of data using content management software (Omeka) and qualitative analysis software (Aquad) will support an in-depth examination of urban vs. rural music-making, trade and commercial centres, the transfer of musical aesthetics through art objects, printed books as conduits of musical culture, gendered music-making/music consumption and collaborative pathways to public engagement through digital humanities.
Deliverables include creating a bespoke Handwritten Text Recognition engine automatically transcribing Polish-language archival documents through Transkribus software, a project exhibition (University of Warsaw), an exhibition catalogue/monograph, a seminar series on cross-sectoral digital humanities projects and a final conference