Text mining and early music: using Lexomics in research
Karen M. Cook · Early Music · 2015
Amongst the digital research methods that have developed in recent years, one with immense possibilities for early music scholarship is text mining. This approach extracts data from written sources, determining patterns based on statistical analyses of word usage. Because this approach is computer-based, it can quickly process a large number of sources at a single time. While text mining cannot replace other traditional research methods, a program such as Lexomics (http://wheatoncollege.edu/lexomics/introduction-lexomics/) is a useful addition to early music scholarship. Lexomics is a tool that determines relationships between text sources based on an analysis of word frequency. It can reveal connections or disparities between or within sources with regard to vocabulary, style, potential authorship and transmission. When applied to early theoretical treatises, it can therefore illuminate relationships between greater- and lesser-known sources or authors, trace textual influences, expose shifts in terminology or assist in the re-creation of potential stemmas. In this article, I provide an overview of the Lexomics program and demonstrate its practical usefulness in early music research. Using texts from the online Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum database (and the critical editions from which they were drawn), I apply Lexomics to one of my own current projects: an exploration of the relationship between Petrus de Sancto Dionysio’s Tractatus de musica and a set of small anonymous treatises that circulate alongside in its manuscript sources.