Music Processing Technologies for Rescuing Music Archives at Teatro alla Scala and Bolshoi Theatre

In this paper we characterize special features of music archives concerning how to preserve and organize them by means of computer technologies. We consider two representative case studies: the Music Archive at Teatro alla Scala and Bolshoi Theatre. We consider all the kind of materials involved – i.e., audio tapes, music sheets, photos, videos, etc. – with particular emphasis on audio media and scores. Both qualitative and quantitative aspects of these materials are considered in order to allow us to define a basic scheme for designing a computerized processing of information within a music database framework.