Digital Images and Symbolic Encoding of Guatemalan Polyphonic Choirbooks: Enhancing Preservation and Access for Early Music Sources through Digitization and Music Information Retrieval
Martha Thomae
In this talk, I will present a pilot project focused on the digitization and encoding of one
of six colonial polyphonic choirbooks from the Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano
de Guatemala (AHAG), an archive located next to the Metropolitan Cathedral in
Guatemala City. These choirbooks, copied in the 17th and 18th centuries,
primarily contain Renaissance European polyphonic music written in mensural
notation and provide invaluable insight into Guatemala’s colonial-era musical
heritage. To preserve and enhance access to this music, I employed a
do-it-yourself (DIY) book scanner for high-resolution images, optical music
recognition (OMR) software trained for handwritten mensural notation, and an
interpreter for mensural notation. Additionally, a music-analysis tool served as
an error checker. I will present these tools and their
integration into a digitization and music information retrieval (MIR) pipeline
to create both digital images and symbolic scores of the choirbook. The symbolic
scores are encoded in MEI format, a machine-readable standard that allows for
the representation of early music in its original notation. This MIR pipeline
can be used to semi-automatically encode other early music
sources in mensural notation from both Europe and Latin America. By relying on
open, free, and online technologies, this pipeline remains accessible to
projects with limited resources, furthering the project’s mission of
“enhancing access” to early music sources.
Overview
Program