Historical Musicology and Digital Archives in Portugal: possibilities and challenges. The musical archives from the Monastery of Arouca and the Casa de Bragança Library-Museum: some methodological issues about the construction of a digital archive

Abstract

The relevance of digital technology in the Humanities does not need to be highlighted, so vast are the possibilities brought by digital tools to conservation, processing, and access to varied sources of information on a large scale. The impact of the digital world has also been deeply felt in Historical Musicology, an impact particularly visible in the multiplication of databases, whether cataloging specific repertoires or localized documentary archives, or even resources related to the codification of musical notation. In the process of building platforms for the cataloguing of musical sources, methodological issues are central, so that the accumulated data may allow different levels of use and increased production of knowledge, enhancing inter-operability between digital systems. The diversity of relevant sources raises difficulties (in terms of time, material support, content, destination, conservation, etc.). In addition, there is the multidisciplinarity expertise involved in the description of these materials, encompassing several specialist areas: musicology, paleography, codicology, liturgy, art history, among others. However, studies on the cataloguing of musical sources are still scarce, and there is a lack of standardized criteria, be they musicological, bibliographical, or archival. This paper considers, as case studies, two digital archives of musical archives: the catalogue of the Historical Collection of the Monastery of Arouca and the Catalogue of the Musical Archive of the Casa de Bragança Museum-Library, seeking to present some of the methodological coordinates that have guided the construction of these databases.