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Dutch Song Database


WORK IN PROGRESS AT THE DUTCH SONG DATABASE
The Dutch Song Database is not nearly finished. Our team works continously to enrich and extend different parts of the database.

Singing Map

13-03-2008
We are making a geographical entrance to the field recordings of Under the Green Linden, to present an overview of the dispersion of each song. An example is The song of Lord Halewijn.

Corrections, Additions and Maintenance

07-02-2008
If errors are in the Song Database are reported, these are corrected. Users of the Database are invited to suggest corrections and additions! Also new identifications of texts and melodies are incorporated. The information contained in reference works about the provenance of songs and melodies is processed systematically.

For new additions, see: updates

Singers of Under the Green Linden

07-02-2008
Since 2005 Ineke van Beersum has been entering biographical and other data of the singers of the Collection Under the Green Linden, which contains some 7,500 recordings of folksongs by Ate Doornbosch and Will Scheepers. Thus the "human capital" of this important sound collection becomes visible, sometimes even literally if Ineke manages to acquire photographs of the singers.

Sources of the Dutch Song Database

07-02-2008
During the numerous data entry projects which constituted the Dutch Song Database, the sources have been described in various ways. Since October 2007 Annemieke Arendsen has been checking the titles and other data of songbooks, manuscripts, broadsides etc. making them more precise and uniform. Real challenges are songbooks of which we do know which songs they contain, but whose titles or whereabouts are unknown.

Dutch Folksongs as Musical Content

07-02-2008
Developing a search engine like WITCHCRAFT is only useful if an electronic corpus of folkmelodies is available. Since September 2007 Marieke Klein, Mariet Kaptein and Ellen van der Grijn (coordination) have been entering music notation from the collection Under the green linden and from printed folk song editions.  As a pilot musicology students from Utrecht University entered some 500 melodies.  The notation is available on the Internet through the Dutch Song Database.

WITCHCRAFT

07-02-2008

Since March 2006 Anja Volk, Jörg Garbers and Peter van Kranenburg have been working at a search engine which can retrieve melodies of Dutch folk songs. This is an interesting and difficult problem because of the many melodic variations due to oral transmission. for more information see http://www.cs.uu.nl/research/projects/witchcraft/

Collection Harrie Franken

07-02-2008
Since the end of 2007 sound engineer Kees Grijpink and documentalist Ineke van Beersum have been digitalising the tapes of the collection of the late Harrie Franken, who recorded folksongs in the province of North-Brabant from the 1970s on. After the digitalisation the recordings will be included in the Dutch Song Database and made available on the Internet.