Melodiarium Hymnologicum Bohemiae

Abstract

Melodiarium Hymnologicum Bohemiae is a digital database of facsimiles of sources of Czech, German and Latin sacred monody and is essentially sui generis; there are no other such digital databases of comparable scope for this repertory. Its address is www.firmadat.cz/melodiarium/, and the English version can be reached by clicking on the Union Jack icon. The idea of Czech musicologist Stanislav Tesař, MHB is an extremely ambitious project, which has involved a team of several Czech musicologists in its realization. It is now yielding the fruits of two three-year grants from the Czech Science Foundation and further support from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, which has funded the project from its inception. The amount of work that has been accomplished here is considerable but the sheer volume of material dictates that the catalogue will be for a long time a work in progress – it will not be complete for perhaps a decade. There is still much work to do; therefore this account is really more of a progress report than a conventional review.