[Madrid] Expression of interest

Hello. I registered for the Madrid conference about the multilingual web
(October, 26-27) and would like to have the opportunity to give a short
speech to discuss the following issue:

There is an immeasurably large body of data in respect of classical music
already available on the Web, or that could be easily made available
unearthing them from the libraries OPACs (On-line Public Access Catalogues,
or library databases).
Classical music is perceived as being one of the very common roots of
Western culture, but classical music works usually have only generic titles
given by the composer such as symphony or sonata, together with numeration
and other descriptive elements.
These works are known by many different descriptions, according to the
language and practice typical of each country. The EU only has 23 official
languages, while the great majority of what is available through the web is
described in English.
The following examples represent different, correct, existing ways to
describe the same musical work:
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Concerto for piano and orchestra no.1 in B flat
min. op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Concerto for piano no.1 in B flat min. op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Concerto for piano op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Concerto for piano no.1
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Concerto for piano in B flat min. op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Conc. for piano in B flat min. op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Piano concerto no.1 in B flat min. op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Piano conc. no.1 in B flat min. op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Pfte. conc. no.1 in B flat min. op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Pfte. conc.  B flat min. no.1 op.23
Piotr Ilijch Ciaikovskij Pfte. conc.  #1 op.23
All of the above examples are in English. If we take into account the
different languages and linguistic habits or transliterations we can have
many other descriptions, like the following:
P.I. Ciaikovsky  Concerto per pf. e orch. n.1 in si bem. min. op.23
Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky Konzert für Klavier und orchester nr.1 op.23
b-moll
P.I. Tchaïkovski  Concerto pour piano et orchestre n.1 en si bém. min.
(op.23)
Besides these, we should consider only few examples of other possible
different ways to romanize the name Ciaikovskij from its Cyrillic alphabet
original form Чайковский, Пётр Ильич:
Cajkovski, Petr I. Čajkovskij, Peter Ilič
Čajkovskij, Pëtr Il’ič Chaikovskii, Petr Il’ich
Chaikovskii, Petr Il'ich Ciaikowski, Pietro
Tchaïkovski, Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovsky, Piotr Ilyitch
Tchaikovsky, Peter Tjajkovskij, Pjotr
Tschaikowsky, Pjotr Iljitsch Tsjaikovskij, Peter Iljitsj
Moreover, famous works have often many different versions, orchestrations,
transcriptions, nicknames, alternative arias and so on.
It is easy to imagine all the possible combinations and permutations when
different transliterations, languages, and abbreviations are taken into
account.
In a computer-assisted search all of these variant terms are not clearly
associated with the same object, resulting in very poor and frustrating
search results. The issue is very well known to music lovers and to expert,
both in libraries and in commercial ventures like Amazon or i.Tunes,
theatres, concert halls, festivals, broadcasting companies etc.
We would like to discuss about the possibility to launch *a project able to
allow users to run a search, and get the results, in their own language,
giving a semantic meaning to a textual search.*
The project is quite realistic because: :
(i) classical music is a reasonably narrow, very well documented and quite
closed domain.
(ii) classical music is very well represented in public libraries all over
the world. Their filing habits and rules may give a formidable help to
overcome barriers due to different languages and to variant standards
 The proposed solution, far from creating new standards, might only enrich
the already existing data provided by libraries with semantically
appropriate metadata that will uniquely identify musical works and easily
cross-reference different archives and catalogues.
 As far as the musical industry is concerned  - i.e. the record business,
music publishers, rights collecting societies, radio stations… - none of
these by itself has the means to ease the problem, although all of them
could greatly benefit from a project that would allow end users to easily
find and buy their digital or traditional goods.

I would be glad to throw the theme on the floor (15' are absolutely enough)
and very interested to profit of the audience reactions.

Thanks for your attention.

Best regards,

Patrizia Rebulla

-- 
Patrizia Rebulla
CEO
Castaliamusic s.n.c.

rue de Haerne, 26
B-1040 Bruxelles


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