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22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

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Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#51
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The composers who didn't have neat handwriting are forgotten today because nobody could read their (musical) notes...

This is simply not true. Look at Beethoven's manuscripts for instance. https://guides.loc.gov/beethoven/manuscripts

Wow. Can we even be sure we're listening to the right thing? Is it actually possible to read this unambiguously or is there an element of context when reading music, similar to how if you're reading prose the next word is probably grammatically correct and makes sense?

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#52
post #7

I love his handwriting style. I wonder if it was the first draft or a copy [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkqfpkTTy2w

Composers were also handwriting masters. Bach also had incredible handwriting, there's a youtube channel about it.

I see you've never worked your way through a manuscript by Donizetti.

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#53
post #7

I love his handwriting style. I wonder if it was the first draft or a copy [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkqfpkTTy2w

Composers were also handwriting masters. Bach also had incredible handwriting, there's a youtube channel about it.

Beethoven certainly wasn't.

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#54
post #9

Let's hope it is more authentic than the Hitler Diaries[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries

Any time something of popular historical interest like this pops up I think about that. If you've not read it then Robert Harris's (factual) book about the affair is entertaining, not least because such a broad sweep of dislikeable characters were undone by greed and folly!

The whole affair was bizarre. At one point Kujau, the author of the fake diaries, ran out of ideas and let Hitler complain about his flatulence.

There is also a very funny German movie about it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schtonk!) The director later said that he intentionally omitted some facts about the real scandal because the audience would find it too far fetched.

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#56
post #42
post #5

Turns out "technical debt" also applies to national archives.

More than you can possibly imagine. There are warehouses full of unread papers. Any one of which could contain a reference to somebody or something important. There was a recently discovered letter, possibly to Shakespeare's wife, which would completely change our understanding of their marriage, and even the way his plays depict women. The only way to find such things is by hordes of grad students trudging their way…

I hate to say it, but might LLMs transform archival work? Not by replacing researchers, but by inputting everything (or orders of magnitude more than we could previously) and outputting to the researcher a prioritized list of documents / etc to examine?

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozart lived for 35 years Lehrer did 97

> Lehrer did [sic] 97 FYI, most people speak the vast majority of their quotes before the day they die.

I sure hope they speak all of them before they die. Bit hard to understand a corpse.
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