Over recent weeks, the project, coordinated by Alamire Foundation research associate Kateřina Maňáková, has entailed a wide range of activities involving the intersection of Digital Humanities with research, performance practice, and the sustainable preservation of musical heritage. For this project the Alamire Foundation partnered with the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, and the ensembles Cappella Pratensis and Ramillete de Tonos.

The initiative was launched earlier this fall with the digitization round of the Alamire Digital Lab in Brno, where two Czech choir books that combine Franco-Flemish polyphony with local repertoire were digitized and then made available via the Integrated Database for Early Music (IDEM). The facilitating role that the state-of-the-art lab and database can play in the performance of Medieval and Renaissance music was then illustrated in practice: the digital images of one of the choir books from Brno served as the foundation for two concert performances of Mouton's Missa Dictes moy toutes voz pensées by Cappella Pratensis and Ramillete de Tonos. The same images were also used in workshops in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. These sessions were led by Tim Braithwaite assisted by Stratton Bull, allowing participants to sing directly from the original sources and notation.

The conference in The Hague provided a space for deeper reflection on the transformative potential of innovative tools and digitization within the field of early music, while also engaging with the potential pitfalls and ethical challenges of sharing and preserving cultural heritage in digital form. Digital mediation is opening up new paths of access to the past, and will undoubtedly play a defining role in the early music of the future, an evolution in which the Alamire Foundation aims to take a leading role.