Beethoven 2020/2030: Music in the Digital Present and Future
Event 22 October 2020 in the framework of the German presidency of the Council of the EU
2020 is Beethoven year: The name of Beethoven is on everyone’s lips, in academia and the media, in concert halls and the recording industry. His 250th birthday offers many reasons to look back at the past.
However, the special event “Beethoven 2020/2030. Music in the Digital Present and Future” to be held by the European national libraries is using this occasion as an opportunity to look forward.
What if Beethoven were alive today? What if he were composing, performing, recording and publishing music in 2020? How would he publish it? And where? How would he adapt music in the light of the new law on adaptations? Would he give it up altogether? How would he use digital archives or online publication platforms such as YouTube and SoundCloud to explore music both old and new? And how could his digital work be collected by public cultural heritage institutions, researched by scientists and made available to music lovers in the future for their use as a part of our cultural heritage?
Representatives of the European national libraries discussed these issues on 22 October 2020 from 11:00 - 13:00:
Claude Conter and Françoise Molitor (Luxembourg)
Frédéric Döhl (Germany)
Janet Topp Fargion (UK)
Günther Giovannoni (Switzerland)
Richard Gjems (Norway)
Tonny Skovgård Jensen (Denmark)
Ruprecht Langer (Germany)
Katre Riisalu (Estonia)
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the discussion took place virtually in the form of a video conference that was streamed live in the internet.
Recording of the event
Given the challenges currently facing music in digital space, the exchange of views between experts from European memory institutions will be looking forward: from data-driven research in the field of digital humanities and production in the context of artificial intelligence to collecting online publications and archiving them in the web.
These are supranational topics that are significantly influenced by various factors: by the European legislative framework (Information Society Directive, DSM Directive), the ongoing development of European research networks (such as the European Open Science Cloud) and memory institutions (such as Europeana), and by the Europeanisation of the everyday lives of musicians since 2000 under the influence of the internet and budget airlines.
You are cordially invited to follow this expert dialogue in order to gain an impression of both the challenges and the opportunities that digitisation entails for the work of cultural heritage institutions in the field of music. The discussion will focus in particular on the following topics:
- Possibilities for cross-border European cooperation
- The collectability of music which in some cases is published solely on streaming platforms or in social media
- Web harvesting artist websites/self-published works etc.
- The long-term archiving and reuse of digital music
- Regulations governing the deposit of mandatory copies in digital space
- The concept of digital cultural heritage
- The usability of text and data mining for the further development of services offered by memory institutions
- Metadata standards and cataloguing depth
It is no coincidence that Beethoven was chosen as the anchor for a panel discussion of this kind. As a subject of musicological research, Beethoven has for many years been a central field of experimentation for solutions in areas such as digital cataloguing and publication, cultural education and text/data mining. Beethoven is consequently an obvious starting point in the search for answers and expertise.
Funded by the Minister of State for Culture and the Media.
Last changes:
17.05.2021
