MARCMUS
António Jorge Marques | Principal Investigator
Andrew Woolley | Co-Principal Investigator
João Pedro d’Alvarenga | Investigator
Rui Araújo | Investigator and Webmaster
Zuelma Chaves | Investigator and Database Developer
Pedro Sousa | IT engineer
Maria José Ferreira dos Santos | Maria del Carmen Hidalgo Brinquis | Emanuel Wenger | Consultants
Watermark evidence […] is most useful in conjunction with other evidence such as handwriting, type styles and staff rulings. Patterns of change, or indications of date and place, in more than one of these elements have a strong corroborative effect: the imprecision of each is to a large extent negated, and watermarks can then become a most potent research tool (Stanley Boorman, 'Watermarks' in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001, Vol. 29, online ed.).
Despite being a recognised powerful and unique research tool, musicological source criticism, particularly paper and handwriting studies, is a much-neglected discipline in Portugal. MARCMUS - Music paper and handwriting studies in Portugal (18th and 19th centuries): the case study of the collection of the Count of Redondo, systematically records and digitally preserves 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. It also records the literary and music handwritings of the copyists and composers involved (the collection, housed at Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, possesses a significant number of autographs). The MARCMUS site allows free access to the resulting relational databases (watermarks/paper-types and handwritings). The databases are also available at the Bernstein Project: the Memory of Paper, the largest international project of its kind (in 10 languages) which includes 56 collections and more than 320,000 researchable watermarks.
Despite being a recognised powerful and unique research tool, musicological source criticism, particularly paper and handwriting studies, is a much-neglected discipline in Portugal. MARCMUS - Music paper and handwriting studies in Portugal (18th and 19th centuries): the case study of the collection of the Count of Redondo, systematically records and digitally preserves 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. It also records the literary and music handwritings of the copyists and composers involved (the collection, housed at Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, possesses a significant number of autographs). The MARCMUS site allows free access to the resulting relational databases (watermarks/paper-types and handwritings). The databases are also available at the Bernstein Project: the Memory of Paper, the largest international project of its kind (in 10 languages) which includes 56 collections and more than 320,000 researchable watermarks.
