An online digital facsimile of the Lugo codex

Abstract

Galicia, in northwest Spain, conserves only two complete medieval music codices: the Codex Calixtinus and the Lugo Codex. The former has been well-documented, and its music has often been performed; it remains one of the most important sources of the early Franco-Iberian polyphonic tradition. The Lugo Codex, on the other hand, is a chant manuscript that has been largely ignored by scholars and performers, despite assertions of its importance by several Spanish and international musicologists. The doctoral project described by this document is a digital photographic facsimile of the Lugo Codex, which is presented on the World Wide Web. The final digital media product is available publicly as a website at the permalink URL www.lugocodex.org and features an interface that consists of a database-driven search engine, allowing the user to search for text within an index of chant titles. The search results are linked to a collection of digital images of the manuscript in various resolutions. The project also includes a technical description of the technology employed in creating the facsimile and the website, as well as an overview of the techniques of digital restoration as they apply to sources of chant and specifically to the Lugo Codex. The goal of this project is to make this manuscript available to performers and scholars of chant who have access to the Internet through any graphics-capable browser and to serve for singer-scholars as an introductory case study of digital restoration of chant manuscripts.