Description

RePIM is the development, in the form of a computerized database, of the incipit list of Italian poetry set to music conceived by Lorenzo Bianconi. Begun in 1977, following the publication of Il Nuovo Vogel, and funded by a grant from the Swiss National Fund, the list was completed in paper form in the 1980s, with the collaboration of Angelo Pompilio and Antonio Vassalli. The project originated from the conviction that in secular vocal music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the poetic component has a structural and artistic importance equal to that of the music, and thus holds the utmost importance for the historical and critical understanding of the work of art. However, as is well known, musical sources only rarely identify the author of the poetic text; therefore, the poet’s identity must be sought by collating musical sources with the rich array of coeval poetic sources, both manuscript and printed. RePIM, from its very beginning, has addressed this basic scholarly need: to identify, through the systematic perusal of poetic sources, as large a number as possible of authors of poetry used by musicians in the secular and spiritual vocal production of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For all sources in the census (musical and literary), a systematic survey was conducted to identify online availability of full digital reproductions. 3182 copies of musical sources (from 2156 editions) and 1389 copies of literary sources (from 816 editions) can currently be found online. Overall, of the 5173 editions surveyed, 2973, or just under 60 percent, are available in digital form. The archive is still in a preliminary version and the web application currently available is a prototype.