NEWS

Schola Cantorum Basiliensis FHNW / E-LAUTE / IMS Study Group Tablature in Western Music Thu 11 to Sat 13 September 2025

BASEL STUDY DAYS ON LUTE AND TABLATURE

As part of the WEAVE research project E-LAUTE and in collaboration with the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis FHNW and the IMS Study Group Tablature in Western Music, the ‘Basel Study Days on Lute and Tabla-ture’ will take place from 11 to 13 September 2025. The three days will focus on three topics:

• Digital editions of lute music
• German lute tablature: usage, content, and context
• Current research on tablature and lute music

In addition to the lectures and discussion rounds, there are also plans for short concerts by the SCB facul-ty and students.
Proposals for presentations (20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion) in the three above-mentioned topics should be sent with title and abstract to forschung.scb.hsm@fhnw.ch by 30 June 2025.

Publications and presentations 2023-2025:

• 2025: Kateryna Schöning, Reinier de Valk, David M. Weigl, Ilias Kyriazis, Olja Janjuš, Henning Burghoff und Christoph Steindl, ‘A Collaborative Digital Edition of 15th- and 16th-Century German Lute Tablature: The E-LAUTE Project’, in: Journal of New Music Research(01/08/2025), DOI: 10.1080/09298215.2024.2445593

• 2025: Rosmer S., Weigl D. M., ‘Editing premodern German song texts within a musicological edition platform: challenges and possibilities’, in: Philologia Hispalensis(2025). Peer-reviewed and accepted 2025-04-03; forthcoming, issue autumn 2025.

• 2024: Andrea Puentes-Blanco, Metoda Kokole, Philippe Vendrix, María Gembero-Ustárroz, Rebecca Herissone, Christian Troelsgård, Klemen Grabnar, Birgit Lodes, Kateryna Schöning, Vilena Vrbanić, ‘The monumental edition in the digital age: creating a sustainable future’, in: Journal of New Music Research(2024), S. 1–13, online: doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2024.2373998

• 2024: Werner Goebl, David M Weigl, ‘mei-friend: An Interactive Web-based Editor for Digital Music Encodings’, in: Journal of Open Source Software 9/98 (2024)

• 2025_ MEC_London: Lewis, D., Janjuš, O., De Valk, R., Weigl, D. M., Crawford, T., Overell, P. and Schöning K.: ‘‘Mein vleis und mue’: MEI support for lute tablatures’, in: Music Encoding Conference 2025 Proceedings.

• 2025_ DHd_Bielefeld: Christoph Steindl, Kateryna Schöning, ‘E-LAUTE - die Musik abseits der Noten und die Daten abseits der Musik’, Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum , Universität Bielefeld 5.3.-6.3.2025

• 2025_ IAML_Salzburg: Ilias Kyriazis, ‘E-LAUTE: incorporating multifaceted music representations and Semantic Web technologies into the Austrian National Library’s digital edition of lute tablatures’, IAML, Salzburg, 6.7.-11.7.2025.

• 2025_ ROM: Stefan Rosmer, ‘Deustche Lieder in Lautentabulaturen. Liedrepertoires und Liedschichten in der ertsen Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts im Vergleich verschiedener Lied-Medien’, Perspektiven der Liedforschung DHI, 29.1.-31.1.2025

• 2024_ ECHOS_ CESEM_Lisbon: R. de Valk, ‘AbsoLutely Tabulous – A toolbox for computational processing and analysis of music in lute tablature’. Conference Digital Technologies Applied to Music Research: Methodologies, Projects, and Challenges, Lisbon, Portugal (2024). Full paper presented at conference.

• 2024_ IAML_ Stellenbosch: David M. Weigl, Olja Januš, Reinier de Valk, Kateryna Schöning, ‘Encoding strategies for notations combining text and music’,The 2024 IAML Congress,Stellenbosch, South Africa, 23.6.-28.6.2024

• 2024_ ECHOS_ CESEM_Lisbon: Ilias Kyriazis, ‘The E-LAUTE critical edition as open knowledge platform and semantic network’,Digital Technologies Applied to Music Research: Methodologies, Projects and Challenges, Lissabon, 26.6.-29.6.2024

• 2024_ ECHOS_ CESEM_Lisbon: Olja Janjuš, ‘Computational analysis of German lute tablature: The interplay of data representations and tools’,Digital Technologies Applied to Music Research: Methodologies, Projects and Challenges, Lissabon, 26.6.-29.6.2024

• 2024_ MedRen_Granada: David Weigl, ‘Introduction. Interplay in the Corpora of German Lute Tablature’, MedRen: Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Granada, 6.7.-9.7.2024

• 2024_ MedRen_Granada: Silas Bischoff,’German Lute Tablature - Truly a German invention or a souvenir from other music cultures?’, MedRen: Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Granada, 6.7.-9.7.2024

• 2024_ MedRen_Granada: Olja Janjuš, ‘See the bigger picture? - Applying computational approaches to tablature data sets’, MedRen: Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Granada, 6.7.-9.7.2024

• 2023_ MEC/TEI: De Valk R., Schöning K., Weigl D. M., Lewis D., Crawford T., Lewon M., Overell P. ‘Ain schone kunstliche Underweisung’: Modelling German lute tablature in MEI’, in: Encoding Cultures: Joint MEC and TEI Conference 2023 Abstracts.

• 2023_ MedRen_München: Kateryna Schöning,’E-LAUTE’, München 24.7-29.7 2023

• 2023_Newcastel: Reinier da Valk, ‘The Future of Digital Editions of Music Conference’, 28.3.-30.3. 2023

• 2023_ IMS/TabGroup_Tours: Kateryna Schöning, Reinier de Valk, David Weigl, ‘Digitally editing German lute tablature for the E-LAUTE project: Workflows and first results.’,Tours, 1.11-3.11 2023

Our Workshops:

• Munich, Ludwig-Maximilian-University & Bayerische Staatsbibiliothek,18.9.-20.9.2024: E-LAUTE Workshop

• Basel, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis / FHNW Basel & Study Group Tablature in Western Music, International Musicology Society (IMS), 10.9.- 13.9.2025: E-LAUTE Workshop & IMS Tablature Group Conferece (public)

What are we working on right now:

• We are developing the editorial platform E-LAUTE (host Austrian National Library, =ÖNB), which will be published in its initial phase in 2025:

• We are editing 1700 pages of tablature music, searching for concordances and preparing synoptic views. Together with TabMEI Group and Laurent Pugin (Verovio) we are preparing the new version of MEI with lute tablatures (MEI 5.1.).

An example in mei-friend:

An example on the ÖNB platform:

• We have developed an internal database (E-LAUTEdb) for the material E-LAUTE and in particular for the historical-bibliographical cataloguing of model- and improvisation-based repertoire or fragments.

(1) We work on the source-original and uniform titles / text incipits, independent of the individual manuscripts or prints. So we are moving away from the concept of a ‘completed unique piece’:

(2) Then we incorporate the entries (text, images, music) into each individual manuscript or print under the categories mentioned here, i.a. we do a new indexing of the whole material.

(3) And then we work on the indivudual entries (text, images, music) from the individual manuscript or print under the categories mentioned here, i.a. ‘Concordances’.

• We discuss and finalise the joint Editorial Conventions for the literal and edited transcriptions into all tablature notations and common music notation (=CMN). The documentation will be published on the E-LAUTE edition platform.

• Our lute performers (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis) create audio recordings. This audio part of the E-LAUTE project is increasingly developing into a comprehensive teaching project that will occupy several students of the lute class (Marc Lewon). (Further information will follow.)

• We evelop and finalise our editing / encoding workflows.

Here is a simplified schematic overview of our encoding workflow, the way to MEI files, which we are editing and will soon make available to everyone: we entered music into Fronimo (tablature) and MuseScore (CMN), convert the files to MEI and finalise them using mei-friend (Werner Goebl, David M. Weigl) to all required files. As the diagram shows, we co-operate with other developers, e.g. Luteconv (Paul Overell, E-LAUTE team), and at the same time create our own tools (TabMEI_transcriber; AbsoLutely Tabulous) (both Reinier de Valk).

Luteconv Converter:

AbsoLutely Tabulous:

• We create literal transcriptions in a project-specific reduced variant of CMN that is in accordance with the tablature notation, consisting of one or two staves containing only stemless, black noteheads and rhythm flags (placed above the staff — as in the tablature), in order to provide only pitch information (also automatically changeable) and avoid suggestions of duration and voice-leading (i.e., of polyphonic structure).

• We are working on the connection between MEI and TEI:

• We develop and finalise the infrastructure of the entire project.

In the Git working environment (e.g., GitHub or GitLab), MEI files are produced by the E-Laute-Team using various technologies (Fronimo/Oxygen, AbsolutelyTabulous, mei-friend, etc.). Releases of these files are stored on the research data management system TU-RDM, which is based on InvenioRDM. The newest versions of these files are also stored on the GAMS infrastructure from ÖNB, where the digital edition is hosted. On the TU-RDM, each released version of a file receives a DOI, allowing for easy access to older versions. This ensures that all code executed with the data in our research environment can be reproduced at a later date and yield the same results. In JupyterHub, template notebooks with stubs to connect to DB Repo, TU-RDM, GAMS, and other resources are provided to facilitate this objective. DB Repo, a repository for databases that supports data evolution, citation, and versioning, is being developed by TU dbrepo. The data of the bibliographic e-lautedb is mapped to a GAMS instance provided by ÖNB. There, a triple store enables the use of linked data to explore connections between original sources (stored in IIIF format in the ÖNB and other libraries), MEI files, audios, and TEIs.

ÖNB infrastructure: The trajectory of a source (and its encoding) from its digitisation to its management and final delivery, consisting of the following components: (i) integration of facsimiles via IIIF; (ii) working git repository for all data; (iii) GAMS repository for published data; (iv) transformation to target formats (e.g., HTML, PDF) using XSLT