Chopin's First Editions Online

The project has four key aims:

1. To create an online resource uniting the original impressions of Chopin's first editions in an unprecedented virtual collection

2. To develop complex textual interlinking of this virtual collection and relevant excerpts of the Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions (co-authored by Christophe Grabowski and John Rink, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2005)

3. To provide comparative text-analytical commentary on the multiple first editions in this archive

4. To devise innovative technical methodologies for complex web delivery of this material, using advanced imaging techniques allied with relevant open standards for metadata and interface design.

By the end of the project, an archive comprising c.5,000 digital images of Chopin's first editions will be available online without password restriction, prerequisite subscription or payment. It will be drawn from the holdings of four partner libraries (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Bodleian Library, British Library, and Chopin Society Warsaw) and eighteen other institutions, totalling c.5,000 digital images of Chopin’s music. The full score of each original impression will appear along with excerpts from the Annotated Catalogue and commentary on significant textual discrepancies.

Chopin's First Editions Online - totalling some 270 scores - will constitute a resource of unparalleled importance and scholarly potential, providing wider scholarly access and facilitating innovative philological and style-historical investigation. It is intended to serve as a model beyond Chopin scholarship: no other composer’s music has had such treatment, and the project will therefore play an important exemplary role in both musicological and technical respects.