An Open Access Edition of
The Copenhagen Chansonnier
Copenhagen, The Royal Library, MS Thott 291 8°
supplemented by editions of concerdances in the related chansonniers:
- Dijon – Dijon, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 517 (Dijon Chansonnier)
- Nivelle – Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Rés. Vmc. ms. 57 (Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée)
- Laborde – Washington D.C., Library of Congress, MS M2.1 L25 Case (Laborde Chansonnier)
- Wolfenbüttel – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Codex Guelf. 287 Extravag. (Wolfenbüttel Chansonnier)
Site under construction!
On open access publishing, see my recent paper ‘Publishing 15th century music: Open Access and Digital Editing’ (2008).
A short user’s guide to the site:
The entrance to the edition is the table of contents of the Copenhagen Chansonnier - go there by clicking on Copenhagen in the left-hand menu.
The chansons included in the edition at the present time are marked with an * (asterisk), clicking on the title gets you to a page with a list of sources, a transcription and English translation of the text, and comments (more or less extensive) on the sources and the chanson’s text and music.
This main page of the chanson contains links to the editions of the music in the different sources as PDF files - click on PDF to see or download a single file - and in most cases you can also download the whole set of files in one convenient PDF package. Moreover the page contains links to the facsimile edition of the Copenhagen Chansonnier - click on Facsimile - and to other facsimiles, if available.
You can also use the lists of contents for the other chansonniers as entrance, or the list of compositions by title or by composer, but they will become more interesting and rewarding as the number of chansons included in the edition increases.
If you would like to be informed by mail of major updates to the site, just send a couple of words to pw@pwch.dk.
NB PRINT: The printing of html pages works perfectly using Firefox (MAC and PC), Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer (MAC), but gives serious problems using some versions of Internet Explorer on Windows systems. I'll find my way around this problem. In the meantime – use the free Firefox.