A digital companion for musicological scholarship: the Lohengrin TimeMachine
Laurence Kaplan Dreyfus, David M Lewis, Kevin Page · Journal of New Music Research · 2024
Musicology has long suffered from the difficulties of making its work accessible, or even comprehensible to a wider audience. We introduce a digital companion to music scholarship – in this case, an exploration of Wagner's early use of leading motifs in the opera Lohengrin – providing different ways to explore, see and hear the materials that are discussed in musicological research. That research is described in text and a video, each of which is incorporated into the companion as a springboard for further discovery. Novel visualisations include a ‘TimeMachine’ view, in which a user can flick through motif occurrences, quickly navigating through the musical transformations across the opera. Having introduced the scholarship and the companion, we discuss the collaborative process by which the application was conceived and built, including the practicalities of timing and incorporating external design expertise. We conclude by discussing the future of such ‘companions’ in musicological publication.