Speaking to reporters in Warsaw, NIFC deputy director Maciej Janicki announced the two-year plan to have Chopin’s entire oeuvre digitised by 2020 – making the late composer the first of the “greats” to have all of his musical scores made readily accessible to the public via this “new”, open-source medium – which Janicki adds will include some 40,000 related items from the UNESCO world heritage collection in addition to the scores online - including both photographs (daguerreotypes) and paintings of the composer alongside scholarly articles (in both English and Polish) as well as original manuscripts.
Users to the website will be able to run interactive analyses on downloadable scores – searching for patterns in rhythm, harmony and melody – a far cry from what the Institute considers the dated, “simple PDF” scans currently available for public viewing.
The massive project, co-financed by the European Union, is a major boon for the country and for the citizens of Warsaw, a city which itself recently made headlines in the United States early this year when a team of forensic specialists announced the manner and cause of death – complications arising from Tuberculosis - for Chopin after “examining” what is perhaps the city’s greatest musical treasure (a heart preserved in Cognac which lay at rest at the Polish Capital’s Holy Cross Church, said to be that of the composer himself - smuggled into the country from Paris by the musicians sister, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz shortly after his death). The findings from the visual inspection of the 170 year old organ was published in the February 2018 issue of the American Journal of Medicine.
Enjoy below a fine recording of Chopin's Nocturne Op. 48, no I in C minor (Arthur Rubinstein performs):
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-Rose.
