Carl Nielsen's works
The dataset contains catalogues of works by several Danish composers. This guide focuses on the catalogue of Carl Nielsen’s works and on analysing these using R.
Photo: Georg Lindström
The material behind the dataset
The catalogue identifies and describes the individual works, reproduces their opening passages (incipits) as musical notation, and links a wide range of information to them. This may include when the works were composed, links to the printed edition (the Carl Nielsen Edition in 32 volumes), the history of their creation, and the sources behind the information, such as manuscript scores, letters, and more.
See the Catalogue of Carl Nielsen's Works.
About the dataset
The dataset is an extract of the raw data underlying the digital catalogue of works. The catalogue is based on the XML format MEI, which is specially designed for encoding musical notation and also includes supplementary data linked to the works. The MEI standard is developed and maintained by the Music Encoding Initiative.
The dataset only includes metadataand does not include the musical scores themselves. The dataset has been prepared for analysis, and the guide therefore focuses primarily on demonstrating how the data can be analysed. For example, where Carl Nielsen’s works have been performed, which authors he composed music for, and more.
The dataset has been released into the public domain.
The creation of the dataset
This dataset forms the basis of the extensive thematic-bibliographic catalogue of Carl Nielsen’s works, Catalogue of Carl Nielsen’s Works (CNW). The catalogue was compiled by the Danish Centre for Music Publication, formerly a unit under Royal Danish Library, which also holds the vast majority of the source material in its collections. The digital edition supplements the printed edition, published in 2016, and is available online. The catalogue provides information about sources, the creation of the works, first performances, and more.