>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