Open Edirom: From hybrid music edition to open data publication

The OPEN Edirom project is developing a digital edition of incidental music for Goethe’s play Faust, representing an innovative initiative within the realm of music philology and MEI/TEI edition. Embracing the "data first" principle, OPEN Edirom prioritizes making its content openly accessible, thereby enabling diverse potential uses for researchers and performers. Our aim involves presenting the scholarly text and music edition in its entirety, incorporating its various forms of data, i.e. music, texts, source images, metadata, and annotations, all displayed with Edirom software. The piece we edit in this project is Goethe’s renowned play Faust I, as adapted by Carl Seydelmann, along with the corresponding music composed by Peter Joseph von Lindpaintner for the Court Theatre in Stuttgart. The work premiered in 1832. This paper delves into the concept of music edition as open data publication and delineates its advantages over analog and hybrid editions in terms of reusability and alignment with the FAIR principles. It also addresses the challenges encountered in data preparation, both specific to incidental music and in general data processing. Furthermore, we propose solutions and recommendations for similar projects based on our insights.