Digital Prosopography for Renaissance Musicians: Discovery of Social and Professional Networks

As part of Web 2.0 (Semantic Web), there is a new technology called FOAF (Friend of a Friend), describing relationships between people. We will investigate the applicability of FOAF for describing relationships between musicians of the past, thereby establishing a new biographical tool. Musicians have complex relationships,particularly those between teachers and students and those within ensembles of various sizes. Visual artists may have similar teacher-student relationships, but typically do not create their work together. Dancers may perform together, but they are usually taught in groups. Similarly, athletes may compete in groups, but they do not usually perform in public with their coaches. For this project we will focus specifically on relationships among Renaissance musicians and how to extract the biographical and relational data automatically from existing documents using natural language processing technology, creating a model applicable to other time periods and disciplines