MARCMUS – Music Paper and Handwriting Studies in Portugal (18th and 19th Centuries): The Case Study of the Collection of the Count of Redondo

MARCMUS intends to lay the foundations for a Music Paper and Handwriting Study Centre and establish Portuguese source criticism on a par with international standards.

The project aims to systematically record and digitally preserve the watermarks and paper types (the conjunction of the watermark and the number and size of staves drawn by rastra) of the Count of Redondo Collection music manuscripts (currently housed at Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal). It will also record the literary and music handwritings of the copyists and composers involved. The corresponding site will allow free access to the resulting correlational databases (watermarks/paper types and handwritings). The watermark database will also become available at the Bernstein Project: the Memory of Paper, the largest international project of its kind (in 10 languages) which includes 53 collections and more than 300,000 researchable watermarks (www.memoryofpaper.eu).