A digital companion for musicological scholarship: the Lohengrin TimeMachine

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Dreyfus, Laurence; Lewis, David and Page, Kevin. 2025. A digital companion for musicological scholarship: the Lohengrin TimeMachine. Journal of New Music Research, ISSN 0929-8215 [Article] (In Press)

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2025.2487100

Abstract or Description

Musicology has long suffered from the difficulties of making its work accessible, or even comprehensible to a wider audience. We introduce a digital companion to music scholarship – in this case, an exploration of Wagner's early use of leading motifs in the opera Lohengrin – providing different ways to explore, see and hear the materials that are discussed in musicological research. That research is described in text and a video, each of which is incorporated into the companion as a springboard for further discovery. Novel visualisations include a ‘TimeMachine’ view, in which a user can flick through motif occurrences, quickly navigating through the musical transformations across the opera. Having introduced the scholarship and the companion, we discuss the collaborative process by which the application was conceived and built, including the practicalities of timing and incorporating external design expertise. We conclude by discussing the future of such ‘companions’ in musicological publication.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2025.2487100

Additional Information:

Funding: The Lohengrin TimeMachine was developed by the Unlocking Musicology project (AH/R004803/1), funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It is a companion to the essay ‘Asking a Forbidden Question: A new view of musical themes in Wagner's Lohengrin’ by Prof. Laurence Dreyfus (University of Oxford Faculty of Music), building on research undertaken during the Transforming Musicology project (AH/L006820/1). The MELD framework was created as part of the Fusing Audio and Semantic Technologies for Intelligent Music Production and Consumption project, funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L019981/1).

Keywords:

Digital musicology; interdisciplinary collaboration; digital publishing; Wagner; multimedia; hypermedia

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Computing

Dates: