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A wonderful rewarding experience. Join us!

Musica international workshop
 in Strasbourg
in collaboration with the Institute of Phonetics of the University .

December 17 - 21, 2012

Musica workshops are openened for choir conductors,
librarians, publishers, composers...

A project to include the whole choral repertoire of the world
into a single multilingual multimedia database.

Registrations are open!

REMINDER: MUSICA, AN INTERNATIONAL CHORAL MUSIC RESOURCE

Are you looking for 17th century German motets for 6 to 8 voices? Or a work for mixed chorus with string orchestra in English under 10 minutes in length, preferably from the 18th century? Musica, the International Choral Repertoire Database (http://www.musicanet.org) is a tool that can assist you in your search.

An extensive database of choral music from around the world (and an official project of the International Federation for Choral Music), Musica is being built by member organizations in France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland, Venezuela, Hungary, Spain, Poland, United States,...

Including over 160,000 titles, and growing, the database is currently searchable in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. In addition to standard bibliographic fields (composer, title, author of text, publisher, etc.), there are fields which identify the level of difficulty for conductors to teach and for choirs to learn a piece, voicing, instrumentation, country of the composer, century of composition, keywords, and many other variables, all of which can be used to yield to a precise relevant search.

ASSIST IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICA

The aim of Musica - the creation of a comprehensive choral resource that is international in scope and available worldwide - is being reached through a cooperative collaboration of choral conductors, music librarians, and publishers. The idea of the Musica working-sessions is to bring choral conductors, music librarians, publishers and composers together for one week to share collegial time and to enter new choral repertoire into the database. A Musica team (all are choral conductors) is present to have a network of computers working smoothly and to teach people how to input new data as well as how to use the power of the database for their own explorations of choral repertoire. Seminars are organized to try to find together solutions for unsolved documentation questions about the database (such as optimization of descriptions of instrumentation, categorized keyword descriptions, etc.).

The success of these sessions is due to several factors:

  • Working in a focused, concentrated week is an efficient way to enter a large amount of new data in a short amount of time.
  • Working together brings the advantage of learning from each other.
  • Working together brings the pleasure of learning new choral repertoire in impromptu sight-reading sessions, sharing jokes with each other, of sharing stories and developing new friendships.
  • Working in the master database with the Musica team at your disposal for advices on search techniques gives you an exceptional opportunity to increase your skills in database searching and expand your opportunities to find ideas for building future programs.
The international dimension of the project and its confrontation with different cultures leads to an exciting work.


WHAT HAPPENS DURING A MUSICA WORKSHOP?

A Musica workshop aims at entering a significant number of scores in a short amount of time. This is done with score in hand, entering standard bibliographic data, but also entering musical information: tonality, level of difficulty for choir to learn and conductor to teach, to record the correct pronunciation of the texte (audio file), etc...

To do this, you will use the Musica v6 software, being connected to the master database of Musica. Later, you will be able to use this software from your location to continue the work, and with a perfect knowledge of this software, thanks to the workshop.

The first morning of the session is dedicated to better discover the database and receive all instructions on data entry. For the remainder of the week, you'll be entering new records, as well as having a chance to do your own research in the database; there may be some other special projects such as augmenting existing records for composers, or, for someone who has strong German, French, or Spanish language skills, providing translations for Musica's multilingual thesauruses.

View a video-clip by the french television France 3 Alsace,
reporting on a Musica workshop in France, February 2001

Click here


Generally, the schedule is defined collegially at the beginning of the session. Typically:

- in the morning, work from 9:00 am to 12:15 (coffee break around 11:00)
- lunch at 12:30
- work between 2:00pm and 6:00pm (coffee break around 4:00 pm)
  or sighteeing of the region, if work in the evening
- dinner at 7:00pm
- evening open, or going to a concert, or continuing the work,...

But you're a volunteer, and you're free to choose to spend time exploring the town or doing research on the Internet or anything else.

What music will be entered? Participants can bring their favorite pieces to enter, or they can simply grab a stack of music from the local library.

If this sounds like work, well, it is, a sort of ... but also very satisfying. Previous participants at sessions have enjoyed themselves so much ... that they come back regularly: Paul, Dominique, Raymond, Doris, Jane, Kathryn...! >Jean Sturm, Executive Director of Musica International : office(at)musicanet.org,will be running this session; he has a very special sense of hospitality and a unique commitment to this project. He quickly helps to create an environment of friends working toward a common goal, so even the work is fun.

COST AND ACCOMMODATIONS

There is no tuition fee. You have only to pay for your travel expenses and your food and lodging.

The participants are invited to attend the session. If you are only able to attend only a few days, you should prioritize the first few days in order to receive the basic information, which will be provided in the beginning of the session.

A certificate of attendance is delivered on request, and is equivalent to a participation to a Congress or an academic workshop, for instance, for which a mission can be easily obtained. Many choral music federations subsidize also the participation to Musica sessions.

Accommodation in studio appartments, at the Collège Doctoral Européen
(see http://cde.u-strasbg.fr/index.php?id=6072&L=2) (if a hotel room is preferred, contact us):

Cost:   Participation of 35€ per day, including accomodation and lunch. Dinner not included.
There are some possibilities to lower this price according to your personal situation. Please contact us.

The residence is about 5 minutes walk from of the place where will be held the workshop.

WHAT TO TAKE WITH YOU
  • Bring your FAVORITE SCORES that are not in Musica yet. If you are a publisher, bring your publications.
  • Take with you your favorite choral music CDs. They will be used to build "sound files" for the multimedia part of Musica.
  • If weight allows it, bring with you any document that might be helpful for the input of information in Musica: dictionaries (linguistic and musical), a watch (or better a stopwatch), ...
AND... bring with you whatever is always MUCH appreciated from your country for socializing (for instance: wine from your country to taste, chocolate, sweets, etc...)!


HOW TO APPLY

There is no formal application process to attend a Musica session. If you think you'd like to join us, please contact the Musica Coordination (office(at)musicanet.org), and send a brief summary of your choral experience.

 
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