Sigma Xi Seminar Series: Toward a Data-Driven Musicology: Christoph Graupner, Cantatas, and Relational Databases

The field of music history has traditionally shied away from many of the techniques standard in the social and physical sciences, among them, the use of data-driven and statistically grounded techniques to handle large amounts of quantitative evidence. Yet, when faced with the over 1,400 cantatas written by Christoph Graupner in the early 18th century, I had to adapt several techniques common outside the field for use within it. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of the Christoph Graupner, the Lutheran liturgical cantata, and their respective places in early 18th-century music history. I will then describe and demonstrate several of the techniques I used and developed in order to arrive at a deeper understanding the music and the manuscript sources that preserve it. Bio: Evan Cortens holds a PhD in Musicology from Cornell University, with a focus on 18th-century German music. His dissertation, entitled “The Sacred Cantatas of Christoph Graupner: Music at the Intersection of Opera and Theology,” examines the cultural and historical context of the sacred works by this contemporary of J. S. Bach. His articles have appeared in Bach: The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute and Haydn: The Journal of the Haydn Society of North America; his edition of Johann Samuel Schroeter’s Six Keyboard Concertos, op. 3 was published by A-R Editions in 2013. Evan is currently an institutional analyst at Mount Royal University in Calgary. Sponsored by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, and Chacmool Archaeological Association.

Location:

Biological Sciences Room 211

More information at http://www.ucalgary.ca/events/calendar/sigma-xi-seminar-series-toward-data-driven-musicology-christoph-graupner-cantatas-and