The italian lauda from manuscript to byte: a conceptual framework

Abstract

The main goal of the ERC AdG LAUDARE, hosted by the University of Trento and the Gran Sasso Science Institute in L’Aquila (Italy), is the creation of a database of Italian lauda texts and music from 1200 to 1550. This article provides a conceptual framework for this task. The authors start from an analysis of the sources and their variety and consider strategies for creating a relational database to represent such a heterogeneous repertory in an organized way, without hiding its intrinsic complexity. A point of departure is the ‘weak’ philological status of the genre, continuously subject to alterations by copyists and performers. For this reason, the authors suggest that the database comprises a series of lauda occurrences drawn from each source, instead of attempting to reconstruct more abstract textual and musical identities. The task of representing the historical connections among texts, music, sources, and actors of the repertory is given to the analytical tools and indexes of the database.