Schulich School of Music scholars among winners of Digging into Data Challenge

Will use computers to study changes in Western musical style from 1300 to 1900 . An international team of scholars led by Julie Cumming, Associate Dean of McGill's Schulich School of Music, is among the winners of the second Digging into Data Challenge, a competition to promote innovative humanities and social-science research using large-scale data analysis. The McGill-led team will use computers to examine the fundamental language of polyphonic Western classical music and how it changed between 1300 and 1900. It is one of 14 teams representing Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom and the Netherlands that have been awarded grants to investigate how computational techniques can be applied to "big data" to change the nature of humanities and social sciences research. Eight funding agencies from those four countries have banded together to sponsor the competition. The research by the McGill team builds on recent changes in the way music is copied, stored and disseminated. While traditional musical scores aren't searchable by computers, most music is now copied in computer formats, known as symbolic notation.