ReSounding the Archives Symposium

On Tuesday, April 24, the first ReSounding the Archives Symposium was held in the Garden Room of the Colonnade Club at the University of Virginia. This event culminated the first year of work on the ReSounding the Archives digital project that seeks to bring historic sheet music back to life through contemporary recordings and contextual essays.

Faith Ellen Lam and Jimmy Stevens close out an evening of performances.

The symposium showcased the work of 22 students from George Mason University (Mason), the University of Virginia (UVA), and Virginia Tech (VT). An interdisciplinary group of 17 undergraduates presented their research on the social, cultural, and musical context of WWI-era sheet music. After each presentation, performing arts students from VT and Mason performed the pieces. In addition, UVA doctoral student Joseph Thompson presented on the ways he is incorporating digital humanities into his dissertation project, “Sounding Southern: Music, Militarism, and the Making of the Sunbelt.” VT English student Libby Howe also contributed two posters exploring the visual rhetoric of WWI sheet music.

The 17 songs presented and performed at the symposium will provide the initial ReSounding the Archives website content, including digitized sheet music, live recordings, and studio recordings produced by students at VT and Mason. Each song is accompanied by a contextual essay.

All sheet music and recordings will be available for download under a Creative Commons license and freely available for educational use. The website will launch in summer 2018.