Digitisation and valorisation of Venetian Music Archives

The IISMC (Istituto Interculturale di Studi Musicali Comparati) archive of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini holds documentation on the Institute’s activities since 1969. In addition to working on the preservation and enhancement of the archival materials (paper, audio, photographic and video), since 2004 the Institute has been systematically documenting its initiatives in audiovisual form.

The talk intends to present recent work carried out using digital technologies for the IISMC archive with particular reference to audiovisual documentation (S. Tarsitani), cataloguing and restitution (C. Vecchi) and the creation of audiovisual materials for educational and dissemination purposes (M. Lutzu).

With the LeviDigiLab project, the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi in 2023 started a digitisation process for the preservation and online consultation of the documentary heritage of the Gianni Milner Library.

The project aims to bring the culture of digitisation into the Fondazione Levi, making the structure and the staff involved capable of dealing with the digital transformation of the holdings for conservation and enhancement and to increase the public’s accessibility through a dedicated platform searchable by the user through a dedicated front-end (Opac).
The foundation has equipped itself with an in-house laboratory that is currently being implemented thanks also to the numerous grants obtained.

The Luigi Nono Archive was founded in 1993 on the initiative of Nuria Schoenberg Nono with the aim of collecting, preserving and promoting the composer’s precious legacy. Since 2015 the project of the creation of the Luigi Nono Digital Collection has been launched in collaboration with Paul Sacher Stiftung and funded by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung. Between 2015 and 2017, a preservation and valorisation project took place, promoted and coordinated by the Soprintendenza archivistica e bibliografica del Veneto e del Trentino Alto Adige, which also involved the magnetic tapes of the Luigi Nono funds. The intervention was entrusted to the Centre for Computational Sonology of the University of Padua. In 2019, the online migration of the Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono’s database began with the intervention of the company Audio Innova, a spin-off of the University of Padua.

On 1 October 2021, thanks to a new scientific collaboration between the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory of Music in Venice and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, it was possible to launch ARMID@Venezia (ARchivio Musicale e Iconografico Digitale A Venezia), a research project dedicated to the digitisation, virtual restoration and non-invasive diagnostic study of ancient musical sources (manuscripts and printed books) kept at the lagoon music institute. After a brief excursus on the main digitisation, cataloguing, conservation and valorisation projects currently active at the Conservatory’s “Mario Messinis” Library (Prof. P. Da Col), the technologies adopted and the results achieved within ARMID@Venezia will be described (Dr. A. Martignon, Prof. G. Pojana).

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute for Music works for the acquisition, preservation, protection, and valorisation of 20th and early 21st centuries archives, with a focus on those produced by prominent personalities from the worlds of music, dance and audiovisual, which can be consulted through digital archives.

The presentation aims to illustrate this archival heritage and the enhancement initiatives implemented in recent years, focusing in particular on digital archives and their huge potential.