Project Leader & Supervisor

NWO grant

• Prof. Dr. Th. Mertens (UIA Antwerpen)
• L. Vroomen MA (UIA Antwerpen)

Deze Wetenschappelijke Onderzoeksgemeenschap van historisch letterkundigen onder de neerlandici in Nederland en Vlaanderen heeft als doelstelling: (1) het leggen van de grondslagen voor een onderzoek naar verschillende aspecten van de voorgeschiedenis van het moderne literatuurconcept (12e-18e eeuw), (2) op grond van deze bevindingen een aantal centrale vooronderstellingen ter discussie stellen die het literatuurhistorisch onderzoek in de Lage Landen traditioneel hebben gestuurd, met het oog op een verdere uitwerking in vervolgonderzoek en (3) het faciliteren van onderzoekssamenwerking tussen verschillende groepen literatuurhistorici die elkaar in de klassieke onderzoeksstructuren maar zelden ontmoeten, daarbij inbegrepen het creëren van nieuwe internationale onderzoeksverbanden.

Researcher

Other grant (government funding) sponsored by FWO

• prof. dr. Paul Wackers
• prof. dr. Bart Besamusca
• dr. Feike Dietz
• prof. dr. Els Stronks

• Projectleider: Jürgen Pieters (Universiteit Gent)
• en neerlandici aan universiteiten in Louvain-la-Neuve
• Antwerpen
• Leuven
• Leiden en Nijmegen

A large, fully searchable, and easily accessible database concerning Dutch song will provide much-needed national and international access to an important part of the Dutch national heritage. The applicants (prof. dr. L.P. Grijp, dr. D. van der Poel, dr. R. van Stipriaan, drs. M. de Bruin, dr. A. Leerintveld and dr. E. Stronks) propose to create such a database containing complete transcriptions and scans of 100,000 Dutch songs. The new database - 'Database Dutch Songs On Line' (DDSOL) - will stimulate research into Dutch song culture which draws on the increased opportunities provided by advances in technology which have significantly altered and especially broadened the scope of research in the humanities. The DDSOL will combine the work done by the Nederlandse Liederenbank (NLB, Dutch Song Database) and the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL, Digital Library for Dutch Literature). The current internet version of the NLB - the most recent result of an NWO-project started in 1986 at the Utrecht University and continued by the Meertens Instituut with other organizations - has already put scholarship in the Netherlands at the international forefront of developments in the digitization of song culture. The NLB is unique not only for its size (one of the largest world wide) but especially for the richness of searchable metadata it provides on the songs it contains. However, it has one key deficiency: it contains very few transcriptions of the songs themselves. Individual songs (texts and melodies) are ultimately the key for studying song culture as a whole. The proposed project intends to address this need by coordinating two existing data sets, those of the DBNL and the NLB, and significantly expanding them into a comprehensive new database by adding a new, large data set with full transcriptions, links to scans and contextual information. The search possibilities of DDSOL will enable researchers to reconstruct networks of melodies and lyrics within the corpus. The applicants, together with a group of affiliated scholars, over the course of the project will produce two thematic volumes containing studies on religious and profane song culture. These studies will shed new light on the relationship between song and the formation and shaping of groups and group identities in Dutch society from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Their central hypothesis will be that songs are an important factor in constructing social identity, and that such social identity (tied to confession, class, age, profession and gender), as well as shifts in it through time, can be traced through the ways in which the songs are intertwined, in patterns of production and reception, and in performance. The research program will also result in an English-language monograph, and several journal articles on the technical aspects of the project. The research done within the project will provide the foundational material for an ambitious culminating volume, 'A History of Dutch Song', to be written after 2013.

Researcher

NWO grant NWO Middelgroot

• prof. dr. Els Stronks

• drs M. de Bruin
• dr R. van Stipriaan
• dr A. Leerintveld