People are being invited to get involved in a project to digitise the lists of music sung at Lichfield Cathedral’s choir over hundreds of years.
Records date back more than 170 years, covering choral performances taking place each week.
Now the Trinity Project is hoping to make the information accessible to the public.
Richard Shakeshaft, who is leading on the project, said:
“The collection of music lists is, I believe, a unique historical record and offers an amazing insight into cathedral music over the past 170 years.
“In the autumn of 1848, someone at Lichfield Cathedral – presumably a member of the Corporation of Vicars Choral – decided it would be a good idea to save their copy of the Cathedral’s weekly tables that record the music sung at the daily services.
“I am gradually getting the 9,000 bound music lists scanned, but to make the information even more useful and to allow trends in cathedral music to be identified, the data held on the music lists needs transcribing.”
Richard Shakeshaft
“Shedding new light on English cathedral music”
The task of turning the scanned images into usable lists is being crowdsourced, with members of the public invited to join the project.
A competitive element to the project will also kick off today (7th June) with transcribers given a score based on the volume and quality of the scans they convert.
Richard said the data produced would help launch future elements of the project.
“There are already two-and-a-half years’ worth of weekly tables available to be transcribed.
“There are a further 49 years scanned, which are gradually being loaded into the system as days are completed.
“At this stage, the project is only set up to transcribe the information, and the transcription side of the project will continue to develop to cope with the ways in which the cathedral’s liturgy changed through the centuries.
“The data that is transcribed will be held in a separate system which is still under development – the prototype looks good, but without data to put in it, it is purposeless.
“This is an enormous project, but one that has the potential to shed new light on English cathedral music over nearly two centuries.
“The involvement of people is greatly appreciated, and I hope that they will find it an engaging and interesting project.”
Richard Shakeshaft
For more details on how to get involved, visit the Trinity Project website.
