Digital Edition and Thematic Annotation of Franz Liszt's Writings (Liszt Writings Digital)

• Applicants: Dr. Claudia Bamberg; Professor Dr. Rainer Kleinertz; Professorin Dr. Dorothea Redepenning
• Subject Area: Musicology ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Data Management, Data-Intensive Systems, Computer Science Methods in Business Informatics
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 507178756

The scope of the project is the digital edition of the complete writings of Franz Liszt. The overarching goal is the first complete provision and worldwide accessibility of the texts, including all relevant materials and documents, as a historical-critical born digital edition that is easy to be found, available in open access and in open standard formats. With the help of a thematic annotation of the writings, for the first time an interest-based and interdisciplinary access to the texts beyond the usual search options is made possible. The static classification of a printed edition is abandoned in favor of far more diverse possibilities of chronological as well as thematic arrangement and selection, which can only be realized in a digital edition. This takes into account the thematic richness of Liszt's writings, whose focus goes far beyond purely musical issues such as Programme music: in the literary format of the Travel Letter, for example, Liszt comments on aesthetic, cultural and social problems; he devotes extensive essays to the works of Richard Wagner, and he writes a monograph on Fryderyk Chopin's life and work after his death. In the context of his activity as a Weimar Court music director (1848-1858), he drafted a detailed programme for the promotion of all artistic disciplines under the title “The Goethe Foundation”. The extensive book on “The Gypsies and their Music in Hungary” is based on the conviction (now disproved) that Hungarian music goes back to an epic in tones handed down by Sinti and Roma. The characteristic diversity of the topics and their broad cultural horizon, which combines philosophical, music-aesthetic, social-critical and cultural-historical questions, is to be made accessible with the help of a controlled keyword system. This concept requires the development of novel modules that are to be tested for the digital edition of music writings as part of the Liszt project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants