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Datasets

Open datasets for Renaissance improvised counterpoint

This page provides access to the open research datasets developed within the doctoral project Renaissance Improvised Counterpoint: Rethinking Concept, Cognition, and Aural Foundations (FWO project no. 11A9922N). All materials are published as open-access data on Zenodo and are intended to support research, teaching, and performance related to Renaissance contrapuntal practice.

The datasets include modern digital editions of sixteenth-century theoretical sources, analytical versions with interval labelling, and the multi-volume Corpus of Recorded Counterpoint Examples (CRCE), an audio corpus documenting historically informed instrumental realisations of counterpoint examples transmitted in Renaissance music theory treatises.

All datasets form part of the Improvised Counterpoint Sources and Corpora community on Zenodo, which brings together digital corpora of primary sources and related audio datasets within a unified scholarly infrastructure.

Digital corpora

1. Aranda Digital Corpus – The 38 Counterpoint Examples from Mateo de Aranda (1535)

Modern and analytical editions of the counterpoint examples transmitted in Aranda’s Tractado de canto mensurable y contrapuncto (Lisbon, 1535).

2. Lusitano Digital Corpus – The 247 Counterpoint Examples from F-Pn Esp. 219 (ca. 1550)

Modern and analytical editions of the counterpoint examples transmitted in Vicente Lusitano’s Trattado grande de musica pratica.

3. Torres Digital Corpus – The 25 Counterpoint Examples from Melchor de Torres (1566)

Modern and analytical editions of the counterpoint examples transmitted in Torres’s Arte ingeniosa de música (Alcalá de Henares, 1566).

4. Montanos Digital Corpus – The Counterpoint Examples from Francisco de Montanos (1592)

Modern and analytical editions of the contrapuntal repertory transmitted in Montanos’s Arte de música theorica y practica (Valladolid, 1592).

Corpus of Recorded Counterpoint Examples (CRCE)

A multi-volume audio corpus comprising 420 historically informed instrumental recordings of 276 counterpoint examples transmitted in Renaissance music theory treatises. The corpus is organised into six volume datasets and accompanied by a corpus-wide metadata and documentation dataset.

5. Corpus metadata dataset

6–11. Volume datasets

While selected materials are presented in contextualised editorial form across the project’s companion sites, all datasets remain accessible as standalone research resources and can be used for independent analytical and practice-based study, including download, via Zenodo.