Sometimes I don't know where my personal projects end and where my professional
interests begin. (Is that a good or bad thing?) Take the case of one of the
dream projects that I have recently been raving about to both friends and colleagues.
I want to build the Bach Digital Library (BDL). When I proceed to describe what
I mean by the BDL, I usually add the qualification that I don't have be the
one to mastermind the BDL -- I wouldn't mind if it came into being because of
the efforts of others. Yet's it clear that I'd be disappointed if I didn't get
to have some input into a BDL since the fun for me is not only in the Bach-part
but the digital library part.

So what is this Bach Digital Library that has me so intrigued? (I won't be
able to fully describe my vision for the BDL tonight in this one blog entry,
because there is a lot I have to say, though I have more questions than answers.)
I imagine the BDL as an ultimate digital representation of the Bach oeuvre and
the body of relevant interpretation. Obviously, it's hard to nail down what
an ultimate representation is -- but let me throw out some possible characteristics
without worrying (at first) about the practicality of the vision.

The BDL would contain the complete work of Bach available in multiple representations.
One representation would be digital scans of the Bach autographs (or original
scores) -- much like what is currently contained in the project that goes by
the name of Bach Digital.
A second representation would capture the musical notation of the Bach scores;
I naturally think of how XML
might be used to represent music notation, including such efforts as
MusicXML. A third way to represent
Bach's music that would be included would be performances of the work. In this
area, I would lump materials such as the many MIDI recordings of Bach already
on the Web [1,
2,
3, 4]
as well as the great volume of phonographs and CDs of Bach's music. (For example,
I have sitting before me the 153 CDs of the Bach
2000 set as I write this piece and think that wouldn't it be great if all
it could be digitized and made publicly available in a BDL). Finally, I'd like
to have a way of representing all the interpretive materials around Bach's music
in the BDL; here I take interpret "interpretive materials" broadly
and include everything from a conductor's notes on how he read a passage to
books about Bach's life to Yo Yo Ma's series Inspired
by Bach. And there's a lot of materials that should be in the BDL that doesn't
fit the classification scheme that I just laid out here (You can, for instance,
consult Bach Central Station, described
as "the most extensive directory of J.S. Bach Resources on the Internet",
for a more sophisticated classification of Bach-related resouces....) Basically,
the BDL should somehow encompass the wide-range of Bach related materials out
there.

So far I've described the range of materials that I hope to see in the BDL.
Even getting all this range of materials together in one large corpus would
be a demanding task. Every one of the representations would be useful, to our
understanding and appreciation of the music of Bach. However, as I will hope
to demonstrate the continuation of this blog entry, it is the combinatorial
possibilities of the various representations that is the truly intriguing part
of the BDL. (I will also attempt to address the issue of how one might build
a BDL.)