Werner Icking Music Archive
Encyclopedia
The Werner Icking Music Archive (often abbreviated WIMA), is a web archive of liberally-licensed sheet music
of public domain
music. The scores are electronically typeset by volunteers and distributed in PDF
, often accompanied by their typesetting files. WIMA continues the defunct GMD Music Archive and is named after its founder, the late Werner Icking. Christian Mondrup took over administration of the archive in 2001.
, Denmark
until February 2010. By February 2010, the university could no longer host it and Mondrup opted for a commercial web host sponsored by the Danish firm Paldam IT.
WIMA offers primarily classical music, but the archive also contains jazz scores. WIMA is also the home site of MusiXTeX
, a suite of open source music typesetting utilities based on the typesetting system TeX
The majority of the compositions represented in WIMA are early music
. Some of the early music scores published in WIMA are the first modern editions of these compositions. A number of contemporary composers have chosen to publish their works in WIMA. The older music offered in WIMA is out of copyright
.
Germany. (The GMD was later absorbed into the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
). He not only played a key role in the development and distribution of MusiXTeX software, he also produced new editions of music by baroque composers, most notably the complete Urtext edition
s of Bach
's works for solo violin and cello. He had played the violin since he was a child and for a time was first violin in the Chamber Orchestra of the Musikschule der Bundesstadt Bonn (City of Bonn Music School). Icking died at the age of 57 in a cycling accident while returning home from work. Several original compositions on the Werner Icking Music Archive are dedicated to his memory. His academic publications included:
Other public domain music
projects
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
of public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
music. The scores are electronically typeset by volunteers and distributed in PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
, often accompanied by their typesetting files. WIMA continues the defunct GMD Music Archive and is named after its founder, the late Werner Icking. Christian Mondrup took over administration of the archive in 2001.
History
Icking's original archive at the GMD (Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung) in Germany was the oldest online collaborative distribution site for music scores Following Icking's death in 2001, the administration of the site was taken over by the Danish composer and computer programmer, Christian Mondrup. Renamed the Werner Icking Music Archive in honour of its founder, the site was transferred to the Department of Computer Science (DAIMI) at the University of AarhusUniversity of Aarhus
Aarhus University , located in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, is Denmark's second oldest and second largest university...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
until February 2010. By February 2010, the university could no longer host it and Mondrup opted for a commercial web host sponsored by the Danish firm Paldam IT.
WIMA offers primarily classical music, but the archive also contains jazz scores. WIMA is also the home site of MusiXTeX
MusiXTeX
MusiXTeX is a suite of open source music engraving macros and fonts that allow music typesetting in TeX.-History:Macros for typesetting music in TeX first appeared in 1987 and were limited to one-staff systems....
, a suite of open source music typesetting utilities based on the typesetting system TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
The majority of the compositions represented in WIMA are early music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
. Some of the early music scores published in WIMA are the first modern editions of these compositions. A number of contemporary composers have chosen to publish their works in WIMA. The older music offered in WIMA is out of copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
.
Werner Icking
The mathematician and computer scientist Werner Icking (25 June 1943–8 February 2001) spent a large part of his career the Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung, a national research centre for applied mathematics and computer science in Sankt AugustinSankt Augustin
Sankt Augustin is a town in the Rhein-Sieg district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is named after the patron saint of the Divine Word Missionaries, Saint Augustine of Hippo . The Missionaries established a monastery near the current city centre in 1913...
Germany. (The GMD was later absorbed into the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Fraunhofer Society
The Fraunhofer Society is a German research organization with 60 institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science . It employs around 18,000, mainly scientists and engineers, with an annual research budget of about €1.65 billion...
). He not only played a key role in the development and distribution of MusiXTeX software, he also produced new editions of music by baroque composers, most notably the complete Urtext edition
Urtext edition
An urtext edition of a work of classical music is a printed version intended to reproduce the original intention of the composer as exactly as possible, without any added or changed material...
s of Bach
Bạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
's works for solo violin and cello. He had played the violin since he was a child and for a time was first violin in the Chamber Orchestra of the Musikschule der Bundesstadt Bonn (City of Bonn Music School). Icking died at the age of 57 in a cycling accident while returning home from work. Several original compositions on the Werner Icking Music Archive are dedicated to his memory. His academic publications included:
- BITS programmer's guide, Issue 15 of Institut für Software Technologie (St. Augustin), 1973
- GMDTEXT: eine Texter-Verpackung Benutzeranleitung (Volume 197 of Arbeitspapiere der Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung, GMD, 1986
- "MuTeX, MusicTeX, and MusiXTeX" in Eleanor Selfridge-Field (ed.) Beyond MIDI: The handbook of musical codes, MIT Press, 1997, pp. 222-231. ISBN 0262193949
See also
- Public domain resources
- List of online music databases
Other public domain music
Public domain music
Music is in the public domain if like with any other work in the public domain:*all rights have expired or*the authors have explicitly put a work into the public domain*there never were copyrights-Copyrights:For music the involved rights are:...
projects
- International Music Score Library ProjectInternational Music Score Library ProjectThe International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...
- Choral Public Domain LibraryChoral Public Domain LibraryThe Choral Public Domain Library is a sheet music archive which focuses on choral and vocal music in the public domain or otherwise freely available for printing and performing .-Description:...
- Mutopia ProjectMutopia projectThe Mutopia Project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of free content sheet music, in a way similar to Project Gutenberg's library of public domain books.The music is reproduced from old scores that are out of copyright...