Music, Technology, and Digital Scholarship

Putting new media in the service of old scores, the digital environment offers much that will advance the study, teaching, and performance of music. There are on-line image archives, research databases, digital editions, tools for computational analysis, and even social media sites devoted to the serious study of music, in all its richness. But what good are such tools? And how do they relate to the peer-reviewed journals, books, and monuments with which they jostle for attention and resources? I would like to offer some perspectives on the promise and peril of the digital domain for the study of music, highlighting some current accomplishments and pointing out some challenges for the years ahead. Along the way we will pause to consider the long history of transformative intersections of music and technologies of writing and reproduction. And we will reflect on the how these new modes new tools might enable new kinds of disciplinary collaborations, new relationships among teaching and research, and new models of intellectual property and publication.