Big Stach of Bach

Several institutions, including IBM, International Bach Academy in Stuttgart and the State Library in Berlin, have collaborated to launch the Bach Digital Project.

The site, at http://www.bachdigital.org/ , contains most of Bach's existing hand-written scores. The site states it requires Flash, a 56K or higher connection, 1024 x 768 resolution on your monitor (I'm using lower and it's not hurting me) and IE 4 or NS 4.5 or higher. This site is bandwidth intensive so a fast connection will help a lot.

The "front" of the site, at the URL above, has a variety of information -- on Bach, on the musical instruments of his time, selected manuscripts, etc -- but the real meat of the project is the digital library, at http://bachdigital.uni-leipzig.de/dl/index_en.html (This is the English version. There's a German version as well.) Unfortunately it looks like the search engine is still in German. That's what Babelfish is for, though, right? Anyway, you can search the titles, media formats, etc. The search results are somewhat confusing for me (babelfish wasn't helpful with what the symbols meant) but it looks like manuscript pages are available, as well as streaming audio.

The search page really needs to be translated. (If someone finds the English version, let me know.) Meanwhile, if you're just looking for a good Bach reference, stick to the top of the site -- there's plenty to browse around, including some selected manuscripts.

Posted to Aesthetics-Music-Specific | TrackBack