IT and culture: the Collection of notes of the Bolshoi Theatre will be digitized

The General Director of the Bolshoi Theatre Anatoly Iksanov reported that its unique Note Library, which contains old scores, manuscripts and autographs of composers, would be digitized. “This project is of great importance. The note collections of the Bolshoi Theatre are one of the oldest and largest in the world, and it is extremely important to preserve this heritage for the future generations”, said Iksanov. All priceless note archives are planned to be converted into digital format by means of digitization. More than 20% of the archive documents have already undergone the initial bibliographical processing, whereas the register of important finds contains over 300 storage units.

These are the composers’ manuscripts, first publications of their works; notes, which contain the autographs of directors, composers and singers; commentaries on the margins and conductors’ notes. Among the documents of high value are the notes from private collections of the world famous musicians. The process of the archive digitization and creation of the digital catalogue will take several years.

The Head of the Note Library Archive of the Bolshoi Theatre Boris Mukasey reported that the main purpose of the digitization was to create the digital bibliographical catalogue, accessible not only to artists, musicians and workers of the Bolshoi theatre, but also to other musical theatres and art historians. Besides, it is planned to create the digital reading room, enter the International association of musical libraries and found a scientific center by the Note Library of the Bolshoi Theatre.