How the Wawel Cathedral music collection was digitised and catalogued
Digitising and cataloguing the music collection at Wawel
The year 2019 marked the beginning of a significant effort to digitise and catalogue Wawel Cathedral’s music literature. A contractual agreement brought together the Pontifical University of John Paul II, the Archive of the Kraków Cathedral Chapter, and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. The initiative formed part of a wider endeavour conducted by the Chopin Institute, known as “Heritage of Polish Music in Open Access”.
This undertaking represents a landmark moment for what may be the most valuable music collection in Poland. For the first time in its complex history, the entire collection has been digitised and catalogued — an achievement with enormous consequences for both preservation and accessibility. Scholars and music lovers alike will now have easier access to materials that are fundamental to Polish cultural heritage. A brief overview of the methods and scope of this work is therefore in order.
What exactly is the “Wawel music collection”? It consists of manuscripts, prints, and early printed music derived from the cathedral’s performing groups. The central portion comes from three ensembles: the Rorantist College, the Angelist College of the Tomb of St. Stanislaus, and the Cathedral Ensemble itself. At present, the collection holds over 700 manuscripts and more than 300 prints. Notably, the project enabled the preliminary cataloguing and digitisation of materials that had never before been entered into any catalogue — a segment of the collection previously largely unknown. Over 500 items were newly discovered within this previously ignored ensemble. These include both manuscripts and, in greater number, printed copies assembled through various techniques.
It appears that much of this newly recovered material was originally owned by cathedral organists, though some works do belong to the cathedral ensembles proper. Although these documents are generally more recent than the core holdings, they contain extremely valuable artefacts — including nineteenth-century sources for a previously unknown composition most likely written by Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, as well as intensely emotional scores dating from the Second World War. Those wartime manuscripts serve as moving testimony to the efforts made to sustain the barest elements of musical life under the most dreadful conditions.
The Chopin Institute took on the task of providing a full catalogue and digitising all the cathedral ensembles’ music materials. This undertakings included items housed in the Archives of the Cathedral Chapter. The goal is to raise awareness of Polish musical heritage by giving researchers, performers, and any interested member of the public open access to key sources from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Working alongside leading Polish music archives, the Institute aims to bring all these works together on a single portal and database. But what does the process usually described simply as “digitisation” actually involve?
The first stage is a preliminary survey to determine the contents of the collection and to choose which items to catalogue. The project operates on the principle that entire collections are scanned, with one important exception: materials whose physical condition prevents handling without professional conservators’ intervention. For particularly delicate items, conservation work is also undertaken as part of the project, so that these may be included later.
Scanning comes next. Here, the process meets strict standards, above all those laid out by the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections. Furthermore, the Chopin Institute demands that contracted digitisation partners adhere to the FADGI guidelines, which guarantee high standards for colour accuracy and image sharpness.
Even as digitisation is still underway, the next phase begins. After a careful technical and quality check by Chopin Institute staff, the scans are passed to musicologists for study. The musical items are catalogued into RISM — the largest international database of musical sources. Each collection handled under the project is investigated by a group of musicologists, supervised by scholars who specialise in those particular types of source material. All work is coordinated by the RISM unit based at the Chopin Institute.
The impact of this cataloguing work is immense: roughly 20,000 records have been entered into the RISM database since the unit began in 2016, representing about twenty percent of all Polish data submitted to date. Entering metadata from the Wawel scores into RISM is essential for future research into this repertoire, as it allows a comprehensive, holistic view for the first time. It also makes the collection known to a broader, international audience, helps identify concordances between sources, and aids research into attribution of anonymously transmitted works.
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Institute’s work involves the digital transcription of selected pieces. This stage of the project relies on the Institute’s partnership with researchers from Stanford University, especially the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH). These researchers transcribe pieces into contemporary music notation encoded in the Humdrum format — a text-based notation reminiscent of a spreadsheet. In Humdrum, each voice appears in its own distinct column, and the sequence of rows allows one to read successive chords.
Pitches are designated by letters, and rhythm by numbers. This encoding can capture nearly every aspect of a source score.
Example 1. A cadence in A minor in Humdrum format
Using software developed at CCARH, these encoded files can be displayed with Verovio, an application that renders scores within a web browser. But the true advantage of creating scores in Humdrum lies in the opportunities for computational analysis. Researchers can examine elements such as melody, harmony, and rhythm across many works. With these tools, it becomes possible to browse and analyse the full corpus of music at once, allowing statistically based criticism of style and the creation of databases that enable music browsers to search for specific melodic motifs, rhythmic patterns, or other elements across large collections.
Digitisation, cataloguing, and digital editing of the Wawel repertoire will enable deeper future investigation of this priceless collection, opening up research options previously inaccessible. Ultimately, however, the most important benefit is that access to the original sources becomes far easier — whether for scholars or performers. At the heart of the Chopin Institute’s mission lies the dissemination of knowledge about Poland’s most valuable musical heritage. This effort, it is hoped, will not only spur new scholarly work but also encourage musicians both at home and abroad to include these works in their performance repertoires. In this way, the extraordinary Wawel music collection can finally secure its rightful place in the minds of performers, researchers, and music-lovers.
Abstract
In 2019, the work to digitise and catalogue the Wawel music collection began thanks to an agreement between the Pontifical University of John Paul II, the Archive of the Kraków Cathedral Chapter, and the Chopin Institute. As part of the “Heritage of Polish Music in Open Access” project, the entire collection is being digitised, catalogued in the RISM database, and selected pieces are being transformed into digital editions. Digitisation, cataloguing, and digital editing of the Wawel repertoire will allow not only more thorough study of the collection in future but also open entire new avenues of research that were not previously possible.