This open-access music data project aims to make works by historically marginalized and un(der)-represented people more discoverable, to decenter the musical canon, and make data-driven music scholarship more diverse and inclusive. The nature of this project is iterative, because it is being used as a way to teach students about transcription and encoding. The repository contains a growing dataset of music incipits and excerpts from a large historical period by an un(der)-represented group (primarily women and people of color) that has generally been left out of (big) data driven scholarship work.

View the incipit index

Read more about the current and past iterations of this project on the About page.

We envision this repository serving as a companion to other projects that bring visibility to un(der)-represented people, in particular:

• Afrocentric Voices in “Classical” Music curated by Randye Jones
• Composer Diversity Database founded by Dr. Rob Deemer
• Donne Women in Music founded by Gabriella Di Laccio
• Music by Black Composers project of the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation
• Women in Music Resources compiled by the Music Theory Examples by Women team