This is a README file for a data repository originating from the DCML corpus initiative and serves as welcome page for both

• the GitHub repo https://github.com/DCMLab/peri_euridice and the corresponding
• documentation page https://dcmlab.github.io/peri_euridice

For information on how to obtain and use the dataset, please refer to this documentation page.

Jacopo Peri – Euridice (1600) (A corpus of annotated scores)

This is, decisively, the oldest surviving opera; the first opera, the lost Dafne, was written by the same composer. The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice was a powerful inspiration for the earliest opera composers, having also been adapted in the few years after by Giulio Caccini (Euridice, 1602) and Claudio Monteverdi (Orfeo, 1607, the most widely performed of these). Peri, Caccini, and (likely) librettist Ottavio Rinuccini were all members of the Florentine Camerata, a group which sought to return Western music to its Ancient Greek roots by supplanting the lush choral counterpoint of the day with bare solo singing over simple accompaniment, often using speech-like prosody. It is interesting to observe, compared to later opera, how seldom vocal virtuosity is highlighted: we do not see the contrast of elaborate aria and dry recitative that would be established as a convention of the form soon after. This is one of the oldest works in the DCML corpora (Sweelinck's Fantasia cromatica may or may not be older), and its analysis reflects, in nearly the simplest of possible uses, the frameworks that continued to emerge in tonal harmony for centuries after.

Getting the data

• download repository as a ZIP file
• download a Frictionless Datapackage that includes concatenations of the TSV files in the four folders (measures, notes, chords, and harmonies) and a JSON descriptor:
  • peri_euridice.zip
  • peri_euridice.datapackage.json
• clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/DCMLab/peri_euridice.git

Data Formats

Each piece in this corpus is represented by five files with identical name prefixes, each in its own folder. For example, the Prologo has the following files:

• MS3/peri_euridice_scene_0.mscx: Uncompressed MuseScore 3.6.2 file including the music and annotation labels.
• notes/peri_euridice_scene_0.notes.tsv: A table of all note heads contained in the score and their relevant features (not each of them represents an onset, some are tied together)
• measures/peri_euridice_scene_0.measures.tsv: A table with relevant information about the measures in the score.
• chords/peri_euridice_scene_0.chords.tsv: A table containing layer-wise unique onset positions with the musical markup (such as dynamics, articulation, lyrics, figured bass, etc.).
• harmonies/peri_euridice_scene_0.harmonies.tsv: A table of the included harmony labels (including cadences and phrases) with their positions in the score.

Each TSV file comes with its own JSON descriptor that describes the meanings and datatypes of the columns ("fields") it contains, follows the Frictionless specification, and can be used to validate and correctly load the described file.

Opening Scores

After navigating to your local copy, you can open the scores in the folder MS3 with the free and open source score editor MuseScore. Please note that the scores have been edited, annotated and tested with MuseScore 3.6.2. MuseScore 4 has since been released which renders them correctly but cannot store them back in the same format.

Opening TSV files in a spreadsheet

Tab-separated value (TSV) files are like Comma-separated value (CSV) files and can be opened with most modern text editors. However, for correctly displaying the columns, you might want to use a spreadsheet or an addon for your favourite text editor. When you use a spreadsheet such as Excel, it might annoy you by interpreting fractions as dates. This can be circumvented by using Data --> From Text/CSV or the free alternative LibreOffice Calc. Other than that, TSV data can be loaded with every modern programming language.

Loading TSV files in Python

Since the TSV files contain null values, lists, fractions, and numbers that are to be treated as strings, you may want to use this code to load any TSV files related to this repository (provided you're doing it in Python). After a quick pip install -U ms3 (requires Python 3.10 or later) you'll be able to load any TSV like this:

import ms3

labels = ms3.load_tsv("harmonies/peri_euridice_scene_0.harmonies.tsv")
notes = ms3.load_tsv("notes/peri_euridice_scene_0.notes.tsv")

Version history

See the GitHub releases.

Questions, Suggestions, Corrections, Bug Reports

Please create an issue and/or feel free to fork and submit pull requests.

Cite as

Johannes Hentschel, Yannis Rammos, Markus Neuwirth, & Martin Rohrmeier. (2025). Jacopo Peri – Euridice (1600) (A corpus of annotated scores) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14996445

License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Overview

file_name	measures	labels	standard	annotators	reviewers
peri_euridice_scene_0	14	31	2.3.0	Davor Krkljus	ST
peri_euridice_scene_1	119	342	2.3.0	Davor Krkljus	ST
peri_euridice_scene_2	288	732	2.3.0	Davor Krkljus	ST
peri_euridice_scene_3	135	323	2.3.0	Davor Krkljuš	ST
peri_euridice_scene_4	304	721	2.3.0	Davor Krkljus	ST
peri_euridice_scene_5	260	735	2.3.0	Davor Krkljus	ST

Overview table automatically updated using ms3.