THE SOFTWARE
(TECHNICAL NOTES)

The ITMI Software has been developed by:
Stefano Ariani, Stefano Francalanci, Guido Nardi - Firenze
e-mail: nardiguido@yahoo.it

The ITMI-Software is the result of a strict co-operation between developers and experts of the musical matter, who put their skills together. This interaction was aimed mainly to analyse the problems and different situations the compilers would face during the data-insertion phase. The structure of the software has been devised to achieve ease of use, information consistency and, first of all, flexibility; the latter property comes from the availability of several indexes. The software is based upon the Borland Delphi©; engine; file type .dbf has been used for data files and .mdx for index files, respectively. Since the data insertion is performed independently various compilers on several sets of files, in order to achieve our goal and maintain data-coherency, the work-flow has been segmented by dividing the acquisition process into different phases.

Consequently, the package consists of three programs:

• ITMI-Keyword-dictionaries, to be used by the compilers to insert theorists and treatises
• ITMI-Management, to be used by the coordination center, to allow the merging of the data taken from the compilers
• ITMI-Quotations, to be used by the compilers to insert the quotations taken from the treatises 
• ITMI -QuotationsManagement, to be used  by the coordination center, to allow the organization and the merging, of all the quotations

The following are some examples of the queries allowed on the ITMI database:

• list of quoted theorists / composers;
• list of quoted treatises / musical pieces;
• list of treatises (both in printed or manuscript form) that appeared during a given year;
• list of citations of a given theorist / composer within a treatise;

Examples: 

ZARLINO, in Battuta 1611
DESPREZ, in Specchio 1631

• List of citations of a given treatise / musical piece within a given treatise. 

Examples:

ZARLIst, in BANCHCartella 1614
DESPRÈZ, Miserere, in AARTrat1523

• Total number of quotations of a given theorist / composer within the whole time-span of the project or subdivided by centuries. 

Examples:

ZARLINO, in treatises from 1600 until 1630
DESPRÈZ in treatises from 1540 until 1580

• Total number of quotations of a given treatise / musical piece within the whole time-span of the project or subdivided by centuries. 

Examples:

ZARLIst in treatises from 1700 until 1750
DESPRÈZ, Ave Maria in treatises from 1580 until 1620

• Cross-references
• Ability to assert within which sources and with which frequency the name of a given theorist / composer associated with a given subject. 

Examples:

ZARLINO, modi;
DESPRÈZ, contrappunto

• Ability to assert with which frequency a given set of theorists is associated with a given subject. 

Examples:

VICENTINO-ZARLINO, tactus

• Ability to assert with which frequency a given author quotes another given author 

Examples:

ZARLINO-Pitagora o ZARLINO-Willaert (these queries would yield the quotations of the second author by the first in each couple)

© ITMI 2001