>From Science News, 25 September 1999:
Staging an opera or performing a symphony that demands a full
orchestra is a complicated business. Musical scores can run to
hundreds of pages, distributed among dozens of performers. During
rehearsals, a conductor may rearrange or delete sections of music
and change which instruments play which parts. Individual musicians
may scribble reminders on their pages to indicate how loudly or softly
to play certain passages.
Making and tracking such modifications to the score can add up to
a massive information-management headache. Now, software engineers
have climbed onto the podium. Paolo Nesi and his coworkers at the
University of Florence have developed a computer-based system for
creating, updating, and storing annotated scores. The researchers
describe their project in the September COMPUTER.
In the Music Object-Oriented Distributed System (MOODS), a network
of electronic lecterns replaces an orchestra's traditional printed
music scores and metal stands. Musicians and the conductor read from
screens that scroll the music in time with the performance, eliminating
the shuffling of pages. In addition, each musician's lectern allows
editing of an individual part, and the conductor's lectern allows
modifications of the main score. An archivist's workstation monitors
major changes, distributing updated music to all the lecterns.
During rehearsal, "several musicians may work simultaneously on the
same music score, on the same part, and on the same measure, changing
and adding music notation symbols and sharing the results of the
manipulation in real time with the other musicians," the researchers
note.
Nesi and his colleagues demonstrated their prototype system at
the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy, in a concert featuring nine
musicians performing music by Mozart, Vivaldi, and Verdi. Developed
further, this technology could prove immensely useful for musicians,
conductors, and even music publishers, who could distribute customized
electronic versions of specific performances, Nesi remarks.
References:
Bellini, P., F. Fioravanti, and P. Nesi. 1999. Managing music in
orchestras. Computer 32(September):26 (See
http://computer.org./computer/co1999/r9toc.htm
Further readings:
Additional information about the Music Object-Oriented Distributed
System (MOODS) is available at
http://aguirre.dsi.unifi.it/~moods/wwwpag.html
Sources:
Paolo Nesi
Department of Systems and Informatics
University of Florence
Via s. Marta 3
50139 Firenze
Italy
Web site: http://dsiI.dsi.unifi.it/~nesi/
Scott Morrison
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