In 1984 the University of Melbourne and La Trobe
university began a collaborative project to record a representative sample
of the music of the fourteenth century. The project began under the joint
direction of John Stinson (La Trobe University) and Professor John Griffiths
(University of Melbourne). In the process of gathering a 'representative
sample' we established a complete inventory of all works known to have
been composed in the fourteenth century in every European country. We began
by listing the standard editions and proceeded to add the complete fourteenth-century
contents of all the source manuscripts and fragments. The resulting inventory
of 3,198 works represents all the fourteenth-century works contained in
the 427 manuscripts in which the repertoire is transmitted, together with
any works known from literary sources to have once existed, but not found
in manuscripts whose existence has been published. We have attempted to
give every source of each piece, every facsimile and edition, the literature
relating to each work and the recordings.
Most of the data was entered by Meredith Sherlock,
whose accuracy and attention to detail have contributed to the reliability
of the databases. John Stinson was responsible for the overall conception
of the project and the programming which has produced the data in its present
form; the preparation of the Gopher site, indexing and availability on
the Internet was the work of Vincent Galante of the La Trobe University
Library and Paul Nankervis of the University's Information Technology Services.
The Italian texts were edited and translated by Professor Giovanni Carsaniga
(University of Sydney); the French texts and translations were prepared
by Jennifer Garnham, Dr Robyn Smith and Dr Jan Pinder. Substantial funding
for The Fourteenth-century Music Project has come from the participating
Universities and the Australian Research Council. The databases of repertoire,
composers and manuscripts were first published on the Internet on 10 June
1994.
As is inevitable in such an ambitious project,
there may be works, sources, literature and recordings we have missed.
By making this inventory available on the Internet it is our intention
not only to make this material freely available to scholars world-wide,
but to solicit corrections and additions, so that the resource will be
a reliable working tool for all. The listings are updated as necessary;
to this end, corrections and additions, comments and enquiries about the
recordings produced from this project should be sent to John Stinson via
e-mail.