Untangling the Social Network of Musicians

As opposed to the former idea of creative autonomy, in recent years, humanities research tends to investigate cultural contexts and circumstances, inspirational models, and the ways that knowledge, experience and expertise have been transferred over time. We address the question of "creative transfer" within the field of music. Due to the everlasting significance of musical works, relationships between musicians – the entry point for such an investigation – are well documented in archives, libraries and museums. In print media, usually only a single relation between two musicians is narrated. Furthermore, it is common for the biography of only one of the two musicians to report on the relationship. Larger overviews of social networks between several musicians seldom exist. Although some digital resources exist, these are often reduced to the milieux of popular musicians like Mozart and Beethoven. Since 2005, musicologists of the project Bavarian Musicians Encyclopedia Online (Bayerisches Musiker Lexikon Online, BMLO) have systematically collected biographical data (an example is given in Figure 1) and examined relationships between musicians from print media – a tedious work that results in a unique database of great value for musicology. The BMLO contains musicians from all kinds of musical professions (e.g., composers, singers, musicologists, instrument makers, ...), most of whom had an active lifetime period living in Bavaria or a considerable influence on Bavaria. Now providing information about around 28,000 musicians, the BMLO has achieved global scope, one that is underpinned by the many musicologists worldwide who use the BMLO for their daily work. Figure 1: Biographical information about Robert Schumann in the BMLO. Alongside information about a musician’s lifetime, denomination, professions or places of activity, the database provides a number of relationships by type. Next to his partner Clara Schumann, further relations are listed to Robert Schumann’s father in law, to his students, colleagues, and other acquainted musicians in his social network