Conception and development of a digital organ music catalog (Digital Organ Music Catalog/DOMuCat)

• Applicants: Dr. Kristina Richts-Matthaei; Professor Dr. Matthias Schneider
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 569719257

The three-year project “Conception and development of a digital organ music catalog (DOMuCat)” aims to create a technical infrastructure in which existing records of organ music of all genres, eras, and regions are centrally compiled in a superordinate manner. Infrastructure to be developed herein will provide the basis for future research data on organ music and will bring together previously decentralized knowledge structures. A primary aim of linking this database with existing standard data central to the field of choral organ music (composers and hymns) and developing standardized indexing structures is the aggregation and comprehensive presentation of organ music (meta-) data in a long-term and sustainable manner. The Center for Digital Music Documentation (CDMD) of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz will lead data curation efforts, which will also ensure that the project is embedded in the structures of NFDI4Culture. Numerous collaborations—with the Hymnological Database of the University of Strasbourg, the Protestant Church in Germany (New Hymnal Project Office), libraries and music academies, etc.—ensure long-term development and topicality. The foundational step of the project bundles and records, in a structured manner, open-source materials available from various locations. Subsequent utilization of the metadata editor MerMEId, which is currently undergoing further development, will establish a data collection structure capable of elucidating quantitative and, moreover, content-related and contextual evaluations of the implemented data. Additionally, recorded melody sequence searchability (implemented with IncipitSearch) will enable compositions on related musical themes to be compiled. The complete organ music index (metadata and incipits) thereby forms an early, large test corpus for the MerMEId editor in its newly developed structure. Furthermore, by integrating the DigiOrg data into the Culture Knowledge Graph, the data will not remain in an isolated database, but will instead be connected to other information resources from the outset. Automated routines are being developed for the ethical aggregation of data from digitally available databases and printed organ music directories alike. These automations, paired with the database structure, facilitate entry of individual parameters of organ music in the database in such a way that complex searches are possible. Repeatable routines are designed to enable future collection and curation of new data. As the project’s final output, the DigiOrg database will serve as a central documentation system with which all organ music ever composed can be successively recorded, even in decentralized fashion, and made accessible with linked data according to various search criteria.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• International Connection: France
• Participating Institution: Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde e.V.; Universität Greifswald; Universitätsbibliothek
• Co-Investigators: Professor Arvid Gast; Professor Stefan Viegelahn
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Beat Föllmi