Welcome

This site aims to provide up to date information about the development of an xml database, providing a research facility for those interested in historical clavichords worldwide. XML provides the basis for open international standards, and also offers the flexibility needed to hold the varied quantity and quality of data available about historical clavichords held both privately and in public collections around the world.

Latest News

As part of the data quality review, we have added longitude and latitude for the location of where the instruments were made, and where they are now located. To give an idea of the kind of visualisation that this opens up, I have made some experiments with Yahoo Pipes. Two demonstrations can be viewed:

• A map of clavichords, showing where they were made
• A map of clavichords, showing where they are now located

Both of these offer a filter on the date when the instrument was made. As a result, there are some undated instruments that are in the database, but will not be shown on the maps.

Background

At the heart of any initiative like this lies the need to get the widest agreement possible on the standards which will underpin the database. Sharing demands common standards and agreement, and the early stages of this project were spent developing and testing a robust set of standards that could be applied to a database implementation, and would prove acceptable to the widest possible community.

The British Clavichord Society has been keen on backing this initiative following its presentation at the Symposium on the Clavichord in Edinburgh in October 2006, and gave support to the early research work which was conducted using the prototype database developed for the BCS by Professor Mike Daniels.

Charles Mould, editor of the 3rd Edition of Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440 - 1840 by Donald Boalch (published in 1995, and known as Boalch3) has generously made the content of Part 2 of the book, the details of surviving instruments, available to the University of Edinburgh so that it may be brought up to date and maintained in a published form online.

This project has been able to progress from the largely theoretical work conducted for the BCS to the practical development of a database primed with the content of Boalch3. A working database has been developed using the eXist platform, and is currently undergoing extensive quality assurance tests. It will only be made available to a wider audience online when the quality of the content is at least at the level of the published book.

Once the quality work is complete, and a user-friendly user interface has been developed and tested, the online database will be made publicly available under the management of the University of Edinburgh.

A paper describing this initiative, and covering the more interesting design considerations, was presented at the VIII International Clavichord Symposium in Magnano in September 2007, and has been published in 'De Clavicordio VIII'.

For details of the earlier research carried out with the British Clavichord Society, see Downloads.

For details of the database design principles, the xml schema and test access to the database, see The Database