Digital matters: early Iberian manuscripts from the Lisbon vantage point

Manuscript surveys, digitization efforts, database building: all have been pursued in the past fifteen years at the Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music (CESEM) in Lisbon’s Universidade Nova. In so doing, the materiality of medieval and Renaissance codices has been both confronted and abstracted from. Digital tools have been used to expand the reach of past methodologies, but research has also been transformed by their power and ubiquity. This paper will contrast the situation before and after 2010, addressing the ways in which Lisbon-based research on music-related codices and fragments has furthered awareness of their characteristics. The manuscripts referred to include the Ajuda songbook, the Cantigas de Santa Maria codices, and, among the many manuscripts included in the Portuguese Early Music database, the twelfth-century plenary Missal in the Salamanca University Library.