The cooperation project of the National Library of Estonia and Estonian Music Foundation enabled to digitise a large portion of scores from the Foundation’s collection which takes pride in being among the largest collections of handwritten scores by Estonian composers.
The project added 166 422 digitised pages to the database of manuscripts managed by the Estonian Music Information Centre which contains the works of most Estonian composers, the new additions feature Veljo Tormis, Heino Eller, Gustav Ernesaks and many others. The project also enabled to digitise 6000 pages of handwritten music stored in the National Library of Estonia collections, now available in the library’s digital archive DIGAR.
Signe Tõnisson, Head of the National Library’s Digitisation Centre calls it an excellent example of cooperation between different institutions which considerably enlarges the usage of the material now digitised. She considers it vital to make this part of Estonian heritage which is currently still on paper, digitally available.
Evi Arujärv, Director of the Estonian Music Information Centre sees the most important benefit of the project in notably increasing the international availability of the works of Estonian composers. She says that the Centre’s database of manuscripts is also searchable in English and has been enjoying the interest of music professionals across the world.
Marge Raun, Project Manager at the Estonian Music Foundation, emphasises the importance of the digitisation project: „Until now we have only been able to lend the physical copies of scores from the Foundation’s collections. Yet we speak of manuscripts on paper that have become very brittle in years and this has already excluded part of the collection from lending. We are very happy that the National Library of Estonia and the Estonian Music Foundation, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, could give a lot of handwritten scores a new life. Thanks to this project a significant amount of Estonian music and cultural history will soon be digitally available.“
At the current stage, digitised score files from the Estonian Music Foundation’s collection are entered in the database and supplied with metadata. The collection of the Foundation has been actively used by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of theatre Vanemuine, Pärnu City Orchestra, choirs, ensembles, musicians, music researchers, students and many others.
The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture and carried out in the framework of the Year of Digital Culture 2020.
