Beethoven in the House: Digital Studies of Domestic Music Arrangements

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Johannes Kepper; Professorin Dr. Christine Siegert
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429039809

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

“Beethoven in the House” (BitH) involved two novel and complementary studies of 19th-century domestic music arrangements, the development of a digital research environment alongside the studies, and the innovative application of digital musicology methods within this environment. The performance of music in the home was the means by which most works were received before the advent of recording and broadcasting, yet the notation sources that form our primary record of this culture have not been the subject of comprehensive or methodical study. The choices made by arrangers in adapting music for domestic consumption – of instrumentation, abbreviation or simplification – reflect the musical life of the nineteenth century and can inform our understanding alongside contemporary accounts such as newspapers, advertisements and diaries. A study starting with Sigmund Anton Steiner's editions of Beethoven's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies and Wellingtons Sieg as a focal point involved a detailed comparison of the arrangements asking whether this reflected the publisher's stated values. A second study sought patterns in a larger sample of lesser-known scores from the Harmonicon magazine, collating emerging indicators of arrangers' motivations within a narrative of the domestic market – the music industry of the time. Both studies used a range of digital methods and combined a number of independent tools. A novel approach of the project was the use of Selective Encodings, where music documents are digitised and their content is only captured as data to the minimum extent necessary to make the intended musicological statements. Both aspects – workflows using a combination of tools focused on different tasks and Selective Encodings – significantly reduce the requirements for applying digital methods in musicology. In order to illustrate the potential of Selective Encodings, a special tool was developed in the course of the project, following a carefully designed data model based on Linked Open Data. The BitH Annotator app enables the creation, distribution and access of a variety of scholarly annotations to music documents.

Publications

• “Beethoven-Bearbeitungen im Zentrum - Klanginstallation „Inside Beethoven!“ und neues Forschungsprojekt „Beethoven in the House“.” Appassionato № 45 - Aussichten, November 2020.
  Richard Sänger & Elisabete Shibata
  
• “Ode an das Werk.” forschung: Das Magazin der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, January 2020.
  Rembert Unterstell
  
• “Using Digital Tools to Analyze Domestic Arrangements of Beethoven’s Symphonies: Refining the Concept of the Musical Work.” Forschungskolloquium, Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar der Universität Paderborn und der Hochschule für Musik Detmold, October 27, 2020.
  Mark Saccomano
  
• "Beethoven Arrangements: Can Digital Approaches Widen Our Investigative Reach?” Musikwissenschaft nach Beethoven (XVII. Internationaler Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung). Bonn, September 28-October 1, 2021.
  Kevin R. Page & David Lewis
  
• “Beethoven in the House: Digital Studies of Domestic Music Arrangements.” In Music Encoding Conference Proceedings 2021, edited by Stefan Münnich and David Rizo, 117–23. Humanities Commons, 2022
  Kevin R. Page, Johannes Kepper, Christine Siegert, Andrew Hankinson & David Lewis
  
• “Beethoven in the House: Digital Studies of Domestic Music Arrangements.” Music Encoding Conference, Alicante, June 19-22, 2021.
  Kevin R. Page, Johannes Kepper, Christine Siegert, Andrew Hankinson & David Lewis
  
• “Digital Musicology: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.” Digital Humanities at Oxford. July 12-15, 2021.
  Kevin R. Page.
  
• "Documentation for the Beethoven in the House Music Annotation Model.” 2022.
  Mark Saccomano, David Lewis, Lisa Rosendahl & Elisabete Shibata
  
• A model for annotating musical versions and arrangements across multiple documents and media. 9th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology, 10-18. ACM.
  Lewis, David; Shibata, Elisabete; Saccomano, Mark; Rosendahl, Lisa; Kepper, Johannes; Hankinson, Andrew; Siegert, Christine & Page, Kevin
  
• “Beethoven in the House.” Nach der Norm: Musikwissenschaft im 21. Jahrhundert (Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung). Berlin, September 28-October 1, 2022.
  Christine Siegert, Andrew Hankinson, Johannes Kepper, David Lewis, Kevin R. Page, Lisa Rosendahl, Mark Saccomano & Elisabete Shibata
  
• “Beethoven in the House: Annotating Digital Sources to Contextualise Musicology Studies.” IAML Congress 2022. Prague, July 24-29, 2022.
  Kevin R. Page, Andrew Hankinson, Elisabete Shibata & Mark Saccomano
  
• “Franz Gerhard Wegeler, Die Klage. Das Adagio aus Beethovens Klaviersonate op. 2 Nr. 1 aus Bonner Sicht.” Jahresgaben des Vereins Beethoven-Haus, 38, Bonn 2022.
  Christine Siegert
  
• “Klaviertrio- und Vokalbearbeitungen des Allegrettos von Beethovens Siebter Symphonie: Analyse symphonischer Metamorphosen mithilfe digitaler Werkzeuge.” Understanding Beethoven: Musicology and Computer Science in Dialogue. Koblenz, July 14-16, 2022.
  Elisabete Shibata & Lisa Rosendahl
  
• “Modeling Music for Musicologists: A Linked Open Data Approach.” Digital Humanities 2022. Tokyo, July 25-29, 2022.
  Mark Saccomano, Elisabete Shibata, David Lewis, Andrew Hankinson & Kevin R. Page
  
• “The Unknown Beethoven: Studying Domestic Arrangments of Symphonic Works with Digital Tools.” Geisteswissenschaften und Informatik im Dialog: Aktuelle Perspektiven der Digital Humanities (Lecture Series). Fachrichtung Musikwissenschaft der Universität des Saarlandes / Trier Center for Digital Humanities der Universität Trier, January 17, 2022.
  Christine Siegert & Mark Saccomano
  
• “Vielfältige Verwandlung - Bearbeitungen des Allegrettos der Siebten Symphonie”. Appassionato № 49 - Verwandlungen - Transformations, November 2022
  Elisabete Shibata & Lisa Rosendahl
  
• "Supporting Musicological Investigations with Information Retrieval Tools: An Iterative Approach to Data Collection”. In Proceedings of the 24th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, 795–801. Milan, Italy: ISMIR, 2023
  David Lewis, Elisabete Shibata, Andrew Hankinson, Johannes Kepper, Kevin R. Page, Lisa Rosendahl, Mark Saccomano & Christine Siegert
  
• “A New Conceptual Model for Musical Sources and Musicological Studies.” In Proceedings of the Music Encoding Conference 2022, edited by David Weigl, Jennifer Bain, and Ailynn Ang, 145–50. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2023.
  Elisabete Shibata, David Lewis, Mark Saccomano, Mark Saccomano, Johannes Kepper & Kevin Page
  
• “Beethoven in the House: Selective Encodings of Arrangements of Beethoven’s Opp. 91, 92, and 93.” Zenodo, April 28, 2023.
  Lisa Rosendahl
  
• “Documentation for the Selective Encoding of Music Documents”. Zenodo, 2023
  Mark Saccomano, Lisa Rosendahl, David Lewis, Andrew Hankinson, Johannes Kepper, Kevin R. Page, Elisabete Shibata & Christine Siegert
  
• “DomesticBeethoven/bith-annotator: Release 2023-04 (v0.9.1)”. Zenodo, 2023.
  Johannes Kepper
  
• “Kammermusikbearbeitungen als Geschäft: Beethovens Symphonien im Verlag C. F. Peters. ” Geschäftsdaten als Quelle für die Musikwissenschaft. Repertoireund Verlagsforschung mit der Musikverlagsdatenbank (mvdb). Leipzig, March 9-10, 2023.
  Lisa Rosendahl
  
• “Klavier- und Kammermusik als Lied. Zur Praxis der Vertextung am Beispiel Ludwig van Beethovens.” Following the Lieder. Formen Praktiken und Potenziale einer dynamischen Gattung (Lecture Series). Universität Bonn, Universität Siegen and Universität Marburg, May 2, 2023.
  Christine Siegert
  
• “Nineteenth-century adaptations of concert music for domestic use as seen in contemporary periodicals: digital scholarship built on the foundations of IIIF, MEI and Linked Data”. Digital Humanities 2023. Collaboration as Opportunity (DH2023), Graz, Austria. June 30, 2023.
  David Lewis & Kevin Page
  
• “Piano Sonatas as Chamber Works – The Beethoven Case”. Chamber Scenes: Musical Space, Medium, and Genre c. 1800 (Conference), Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies. San José State University, February 16-18, 2023.
  Christine Siegert
  
• “Selective Encoding: Reducing the Burden of Transcription for Digital Musicologists.” Encoding Cultures (Joint MEC and TEI Conference 2023). Paderborn, Germany, September 4-8, 2023.
  Mark Saccomano, Lisa Rosendahl, David Lewis, Andrew Hankinson, Johannes Kepper, Kevin R. Page & Elisabete Shibata
  
• “Vom Wandel der Werke: Bearbeitungen von Beethovens Klaviersonaten im 19. Jahrhundert”. Beethoven Piano Club, Bonn, January 30, 2023.
  Christine Siegert
  
• Popular musical arrangements in the nineteenth-century home: A study of The Harmonicon supported by digital tools. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology, 32-39. ACM.
  Lewis, David & Page, Kevin
  
• Selective Encoding: Reducing the Burden of Transcription for Digital Musicologists. Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, Issue 18.
  Saccomano, Mark; Rosendahl, Lisa; Lewis, David; Hankinson, Andrew; Kepper, Johannes; Page, Kevin & Shibata, Elisabete
  
• “Ein gänzlich verfehlter verstümmelter dem Original u. Inhalte nicht getreuer Klawierauszug. Frühe Bearbeitungen der Ouvertüre zu Die Weihe des Hauses op. 124”. Nie gehörte, nie geahndete Wunder-Geheimnisse der heiligen Kunst: Zum 200. Jubiläum von Beethovens Akademien im Mai 1824. International Conference, Beethoven-Haus Bonn, May 4–6, 2024,.
  Lisa Rosendahl