Paper and Copyists in Viennese Opera Scores, 1725–1759

What happens when artificial intelligence meets centuries-old opera manuscripts? An innovative research project is exploring exactly thatbringing new digital methods to the study of music history. At its heart are around 190 opera scores collected at the Viennese court between 1725 and 1759. This was a golden age of opera in Vienna, with Italian and French works by composers such as Christoph Willibald Gluck, Antonio Salieri, and many now-forgotten figures dominating the stage. But who actually copied these scoresand on what kind of paper? Surprisingly, these seemingly simple questions have received little attention so far. This project aims to change that with a groundbreaking approach. For the first time in musicology, artificial intelligence is being used to identify music copyistsapplying modern visual recognition tools like those used in analyzing historic handwriting. Just like handwriting recognition in old documents, the AI system is trained to spot subtle differences in musical script. This makes it possible to distinguish individual scribes and track how their handwriting changed over timequickly, accurately, and systematically. The project doesnt stop at handwriting. It also focuses on the paper itself. Special photographic techniques reveal watermarkstranslucent symbols in the paperthat can tell us where the paper was made, how it was traded, and which pages belong together. A key area of interest is paper from Toscolano and Maderno near Lake Garda, which was widely used in eighteenth-century Vienna. All data collectedfrom handwriting features to paper detailsis digitally recorded, preserved, and made publicly accessible. The result is a digital archive that offers new insights into music production at the Viennese courtand provides a valuable foundation for future research. Project leads: musicologist Martin Eybl in collaboration with IT expert Markus Seidl.