Online Chopin Variorum Edition

Online Chopin Variorum Edition (OCVE)

Although numerous variorum projects exist in the field of textual studies, many of which exploit the latest technologies with regard to image manipulation and collation/cross-referencing across discrete filiation chains, musicology has not fully exploited the application of such technologies to complicated source networks like those pertaining to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and other composers. The aim of the Online Chopin Variorum Edition (OCVE) is to capitalize upon emerging technical capacities for text/image comparison that allow unprecedented manipulation and comparison of defined musical elements. Its principal scholarly goal is to facilitate and enhance comparative analysis of three categories of primary source material relevant to the music of Fryderyk Chopin: manuscripts (sketches, autographs, scribal copies, glosses in student copies, etc.); first impressions of the first editions; and later impressions of the first editions (i.e., those containing variants attributable to the composer or to others involved in the editorial process).

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded an eighteen-month pilot study at Royal Holloway, University of London from May 2003 to October 2004, while a second phase—OCVE2—began in November 2005 and will end in April 2008. OCVE’s original goals were to develop three types of image manipulation:

1. superimposition of printed sources within discrete filiation chains
   

2. juxtaposition of excerpts of materials (both manuscript and printed) from single or multiple filiation chains, viewable against chosen base texts and in isolation
   

3. combination/interpolation of elements from disparate sources in purposeful collations
   

The first of these proved to be problematic at the pilot stage for reasons related to the physical structure of the sources, but a limited superimposition tool was nevertheless developed. The second mode was the principal focus of the pilot phase, while the third mode is earmarked for more extensive investigation in subsequent research. The results of the pilot stage can be viewed at the project website www.ocve.org.uk, along with workshop summaries, user evaluations, and the final report.

The project website also sets out the aims and objectives of the second phase of research. Over its thirty-month life, OCVE2 will:

Develop more ambitious and robust annotation tools of potentially greater utility to scholars and musicians alike.

We are continuing to address the following core research questions:

What is a musical “work,” and how is the “work concept” that has prevailed since the mid-nineteenth century challenged by the Chopin sources?

Although its most immediate contribution is to the field of Chopin studies, the OCVE project is potentially relevant to the source materials of other composers’ music from a range of chronological periods, and indeed to the very under­standing of what a musical edition and a musical work might constitute. Indeed, OCVE poses fundamental challenges to the “work concept” that has informed (and sometimes distorted) the thinking of musicologists over the past 150 years, while also serving as an example of the ways in which scholarship and technology can interact to mutual advantage. In creating an unprecedented “dynamic edition” in OCVE, technology both facilitates scholarly research and becomes part of the research process itself, shaping and molding the research questions at the heart of the investigation.

Participants might wish to consult the website of a parallel project, Chopin’s First Editions Online (CFEO; see www.cfeo.org.uk), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from March 2004 to August 2007. The full CFEO web resource will be launched in Fall 2007.