Introduction
Our research team, consisting of musicologists, researchers of area studies, cultural studies, and computer engineering, has embarked on a project of establishing a music education database in the modern East Asia from November of 2011 to ...
Introduction
Our research team, consisting of musicologists, researchers of area studies, cultural studies, and computer engineering, has embarked on a project of establishing a music education database in the modern East Asia from November of 2011 to October 2014. Music education materials have been chosen, considering its wide use in society and a large quantity as a result which can provide tangible materials for analytical purpose as well. They were commonly used in both public and private school systems and widely published in all three cultures. Our database, the EMDB (Ewha Music Data Base) as the first repository of a unified primary sources of modern East Asia, offers a user-friendly web contents management system to register and search for information on East Asian music. Thus, it has become one of the new and powerful research tools for researchers.
All the collected materials can be largely divided into five categories: 1) textbooks[敎科書]; 2) pedagogic books[敎授書]; 3) anthologies of diverse genre[樂譜集]; 4) theoretical writings[理論書]; and 5) hymns and sacred music[讚頌歌 & 聲曲].
Comparing how these materials were used and functioned in each culture not only reveal similarities and differences in musical practices of the time, but also provides us with much understanding of our current musical behavior and phenomenon. Although the impact of Western music in East Asia since its inception at the end of the 19th century has been so immense beyond anyone’s imagination, researches on modern East Asian music has been highly stagnant. One of the significant reasons for such lacking lies in the fact that no archive or database, containing collected primary music sources of modern East Asian music as a unit has been properly established until now. The three representative countries of East Asia, Korea, Japan, and China have shared many experiences of geopolitical and sociocultural circumstances of colonialism, cultural imperialism, and nationalism, thus form unusually dense history in the region. Investigation of many of their shared repertoires of music (mainly songs) in the region during the first half of the 20th century also reveals how those cultures have become deeply intertwined, yet forming its unique music cultures. Therefore, it is imperative to study modern music of East Asia within socio-cultural context integratively and dialogically, working closely with scholars in the region.
As can be seen in the EMDB, our interdisciplinary research team set up the firm foundation of research in modern East Asian music by exploring a vast array of music as well as cultural contents of each nation. It not only fulfills the much needed music data for research purpose, but also for performance, and education in socio-cultural context. One of the valuable advantages of creating EMDB is that one now can easily search for materials of different cultures at one place that can allow researchers to interpret modern music materials by examining the entities of them.
Since the 1st of November 2014, the EMDB opens its door to public with its homepage (http://emusicdb.info) and the website offers search terms in 4 different languages; Korean, English, Japanese, and Chinese. Therefore, it is available for wider users, which has led us to become the hub of modern East Asian Music research by invigorating international scholarly exchanges.
On a larger scale, our research produced a fruitful result: firstly our research team has been chosen as one of the international working groups of RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales), since November, 2011, and a lot of modern music data of East Asia has been registered to the RISM-OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue). For about nine hundreds items of the EMDB can be searched at the OPAC system now and the collaboration between the two organizations will continue.
Secondly, starting with this project in 2011, we have steadily gaining its international recognition as the center for modern East Asian music research and our research team has also become an international branch of IAML (International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres), representing South Korea since March of 2015. We are now working closely with the musicologists and librarians in Europe as well as in the region, and result of our effort of digitizing materials and its result have been often reported to diverse venues of international circles.
In tandem with the above mentioned close working collaboration with such renowned international institutions of RISM and IAML, our research team has developed newly registered patent of searching method, using the first 8 measures of incipit in 2014 that can be rare in researches of humanities.
Lastly and importantly, several students who had been participated as assistant researchers to the project have completed their degrees in both master’s and doctoral levels by using our music database.