The new Cantus Database has launched!

Welcome to https://cantusdatabase.org for a familiar look with updated software underneath. This version of the Cantus Database employs Django with PostgreSQL (migrated from Drupal with MySQL) and became available for login access for contributors on July 24, 2023, at Workshop 15 of the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission, the project that now oversees the Cantus Database, funded by the Canadian government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The Drupal site at the University of Waterloo (https://cantus.uwaterloo.ca) will remain online for a few months for reference only; no new data will be added there. Within a few months, all links to pages and chant records on the uWaterloo site will be redirected permanently to cantusdatabase.org.

Contributors please note: Your username is now your email address, and you will need to reset your password at first login to the new site. If you forget which email address you signed up with, or if the password reset email does not arrive (please check your spam folder), please contact us (debra.lacoste@dal.ca or cantusdatabase@gmail.com)!

Visit https://youtu.be/qCTZXbSfBgk?t=5851 to watch Michael Portillo's interview with Dr. Jennifer Bain about the amazing journey of the Riesencodex in post-World-War-II Europe.

Check out this multi-page web exhibit by Gareth Cordery, a student of Susan Boynton at Columbia University: http://liturgicalmanuscripts.sandbox.library.columbia.edu/barnardbarlines/. Close-up photos and explanations of the varied scribal uses of vertical lines in the manuscript New York, Columbia University - Barnard College Library, MS 1 are accompanied by an extensive bibliography and comparative statistical analysis. The glossary of terms and links to other web resources are certain to be helpful for students, too!

Barnard MS1 is indexed in the Cantus Database: https://cantusdatabase.org/source/683940.

Find Debra Lacoste of the Cantus Database at the Music in Manuscript Cultures interdisciplinary forum at The Queen's College, Oxford, September 8-9, 2022, hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures.

Watch her video abstract here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW819FJwp68

Click here for Debra's introductory video to MedRen 2022 Session 36: WORKSHOP - Quandaries, Queries, and Quagmires: Plainchant Puzzles and How to Solve them in the Cantus Database (July 6, 2022). “From Manuscript to Database”: An Introduction to Indexing in Cantus

Join us on Wednesday, July 6, 2022 for MedRen Session 36: WORKSHOP - Quandaries, Queries, and Quagmires: Plainchant Puzzles and How to Solve them in the Cantus Database! During the session, it will be handy to have quick access to links of manuscript images and other materials (link or scan QR code):

Some #FragmentFriday reading if you haven’t seen this yet: From authors Anna de Bakker and Jennifer Bain and the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission (DACT) Project:

https://theconversation.com/from-scribe-to-choir-to-being-repurposed-over-generations-medieval-christian-chant-book-fragments-reveal-stories-164035

The Spanish antiphoner usually housed at Western University (London, Ontario, Canada) as ‘ms M2150’ has ventured forth once again! Now starring in the exhibition ‘Hidden Stories: Books along the Silk Roads’, at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto until February 27, 2022, this 16th-century source is described on the exhibition website’s digital section (https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/exhibits/show/hidden-stories-books/the-silk-roads) as a mode of “spiritual travel.” As one of twenty-one books representing various religious and secular contexts across medieval Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, our already well-travelled (and rather weather-beaten) old friend seems to be enjoying the high-life in the big city. Visitors to the museum, or to the digital version of the exhibit, can find a brief description, several representative images, and a 2-minute audio recording, all helping to renew a place for it in our historical imaginations of a vibrant and colourful medieval world.

Now available on YouTube: "Analysing the Music of Hildegard of Bingen" (Jennifer Bain), presented as part of "Software Tools in Chant Analysis Virtual Workshop" hosted by the University of Bristol on June 3, 2021.