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School of Music

DIAMM comes to Bangor

DIAMM (The Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music), an enterprise at the very cutting edge of manuscript digitization whose expertise has won the highest regard throughout the UK and Europe, has just made a major contribution to the Bangor Pontifical Project, a special initiative of Bangor University’s 125th Anniversary Celebrations.

DIAMM has significant Bangor connections: Professor Thomas Schmidt-Beste was appointed Co-Director in 2008, and he is also co-investigator for a new DIAMM project that has just received £189,000 of new funding through the AHRC DEDEFI (Digital Equipment and Database Enhancement for Impact) scheme to fund a new camera and a great deal more photography.

Dr Julia Craig-McFeely, DIAMM’s Project Manager and Co-Director, visited Bangor at the beginning of February to photograph the medieval Pontifical, an exceptional manuscript that contains a wealth of melodic material. Two students assisted her with the digitization process, including Elina Hamilton, one of our Graduate Teaching Assistants who is currently researching 14th-century encyclopaedic music treatises for her PhD.

The high-resolution DIAMM images will soon be available for all to see via the project website later this year. The Bangor Pontifical Project team is very grateful both to Julia for offering us a great deal of invaluable advice prior to her visit, and also to CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales, a policy division of the Welsh Assembly Government, for the award of a generous grant that has made possible both the digitization of the Pontifical and essential conservation work now being undertaken at the National Library of Wales.  

For further information on a three-year 125 Anniversary PhD Research Bursary to work on the Bangor Pontifical click here...