ECHOES MEI Analyser

The ECHOES MEI Analyser is one of the main outputs of the research project Echoes from the Past: Unveiling a Lost Soundscape with Digital Analysis. This project aims to describe the characteristics of plainchant in the Diocese of Braga between the 11th and the 17th centuries. While the primary research questions are musicological, the project involves a significant component of information technologies related to the development and application of techniques such as Optical Music Recognition (OMR) and Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) to early music scores.

The ECHOES MEI Analyser is a prototype tool designed for the musical analysis of chants encoded in MEI Neumes. This tool will be officially released at the end of the ECHOES project (February 2026), but it is already fully documented, accessible and available for testing. This entirely new and innovative digital resource allows, for the first time, a cross-comparison of chant melodies originally written in two different styles of notation. The ECHOES MEI Analyser is not based on any existing digital tool; it is an original creation by the ECHOES team, built from scratch.

The ECHOES MEI Analyser has the potential to be scaled up for analysing the full repertoire of Braga plainchant in future projects, and it could even be expanded to include further cross-comparison between plainchant sources written in other European music notation styles.
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