This summer has been an absolute whirlwind. I've learned so much about digital mapping, Darius Milhaud, and my own researching style and abilities. So, I've compiled a list of things that I've learned this summer along with some tips and tricks to help...

Comme l'a dit Francis Jacob : "La recherche est un processus sans fin dont on ne peut jamais dire comment il évoluera." Cet été, j'ai eu la très grande opportunité d'avoir été acceptée pour un projet de recherche intitulé "La géographie de la musique". Ce projet, qui...

The past few weeks have been for the Musical Geography team a sort of travel through primary sources. Among the many things that were on our agenda, we spent the past week looking at a collection of letters written by/to Darius Milhaud, which Professor Epstein had the...

    We are now up to 321 entries in our Milhaud performances spreadsheet. (Take a look here: <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-mSTi7F4Cw8WLE2q_qfRpJaAy-YzghOioJlrI2aPmbk/edit#gid=0>) But how did we get all this information? We've used a variety...

After WWI, which proved to be a particularly devastating time for France, a new sense of nationalism began to grow in the world of music. Among the new nationalists of the time, Jean Cocteau, French writer, designer and playwright, wrote a book entitled Le Coq et...

You know you're a real researcher when you learn how to use a microfilm reader. Reading and scanning documents minimized onto a tiny roll of film -who knew research could feel so retro and exciting? Our first foray into the world of microfilm was here at St. Olaf's...

«La mode n’existe pas seulement dans les robes. La mode est dans l’air, c’est le vent qui l’apporte, on la pressent, on la respire, elle est au ciel et sur le macadam, elle est partout, elle tient aux idées, aux mœurs, aux événements…»  (Coco Chanel) As Coco Chanel,...

In 1920s Paris, nightlife was inseparable from the social, financial, and artistic life of the city. In the early 20s, Milhaud himself loved spending his weekend-nights entertaining, gallivanting around town, and frequenting nightclubs with his fellow artists. 1 Bar...

  This morning, my research team and I presented our goals for this summer's iteration of the Musical Geography Project at the CURI Symposium. Now that we've had to consolidate our ideas for the project and present them in public, we have a much clearer idea of...

Project Overview My colleagues and I want to change the way you think about music using Musical Geography. But what exactly is Musical Geography? As we understand it, Music Geography is the exploration of the intersection of time, space, and sound using mapping...

This morning, we for the first time gave an introduction of our project in a room filled by faculty and students, all doing research in various areas of the humanities and social sciences. We spent about 6 minutes talking about our project's goals, methodology, as...

Making maps today once again proved to be a very helpful experience. In fact, as proven in yesterday's readings, making maps is not only done for the fact that they offer a visual representation of things but also because they often times help make arguments or...

In her article "How to Play with Maps," Bethany Nowviskie writes that "one cannot 'play with maps' without playing with the truth" (107). We like to think that maps represent an "objective" reality, that "solid, real-world referents underlie everything we see in maps"...

Yesterday, to start learning about musical life in 1920s Paris, we read several chapters from several books, including Roger Nichols' The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929 (pp.6-15, 41-58), Nigel Simeone's Paris -A Musical Gazetteer (pp.11-21), and Jann...

Creating a map was definitely the most exciting part of my day. Even though the data collection was somehow time consuming (more precisely in finding information about the location and descriptions of each of the Parisian cities, art and cultural places), it was very...

As I am starting my first day of CURI, I am really excited not only to learn more about musical geography but also work with a strong and enthusiastic team. Even though I am not a music major nor have a too deep knowledge of music, I am really fascinated by the...

For the past two summers, the Musical Geography Project (as part of St. Olaf College's Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry program) has been mapping the sounds and music of 1920s Paris. My name is Anna Perkins, and I am excited to join this summer's...

We worked in ArcGIS, GoogleMaps, and Carto to display simple pin-drop maps, heat maps, chronological maps, and cluster maps. In some cases, these may be combined to provide the benefits of both styles. Though our some 2,900 cataloged performances of the Ballets Russes...

Yesterday, we held the opening of our exhibit at the Alliance Française in Minneapolis. It will run for two weeks, and then we get to keep pretty, glossy pictures, so really it's awesome. A lot of people came to enjoy the remarks, exhibit, and refreshments provided,...

Dear Future CURI Researcher, Data entry has a bad rep. Sure, typing in all those records can take a long time, and doesn't usually make the top ten list of mentally stimulating activities, but when done right, the process can be downright enjoyable. Listed below are...

Dear future CURI Student, Warm Salutations! I hope this letter finds you well. If you are reading this, you either are a future CURI student or are interested in what I have to say to a future CURI student, so I will direct this letter to the former. First of all,...

Bottleneck: a point of hindrance or slowing down The opening weeks of this summer were pleasing and smooth. The campus was quiet and the weather was friendly. Everyday our team imported numerous new entries into our database, and beyond this we discussed readings,...

From now on, rule number one is "no shortcuts." No more trying to do the same work with less effort, no more ending up with a lower quality product. Maybe shortcuts work for some people, but they don't work for me! Especially not the ones inspired by my hubris as a...

For the past few weeks, we have been struggling with the same great question that confronts all researchers: how can we bring our data to life? After months of digging in the desert, a team of paleontologists must decide how to display the dinosaur skeleton they...

Google map so far has been a great rudimentary tool for us to create a descent map embodying our research works, meaning it presents a good amount of information and only requires basic computer skills. This also means, it has deficiencies in terms of effectively...

From the beginning, Ida Rubinstein's life was anything but average. Born in 1885 to wealthy Jewish parents and orphaned nine years later, she was brought up by a wealthy aunt in St. Petersburg, where she received a top-of-the-line European education (multiple...

As one of my individual projects, I have set myself on the task of cataloging and mapping all of the Ballets Russes and Ballet Suédois performances (I am wishing myself Godspeed). One of the benefits of this is that I get to rationalize looking at websites that have...

Of all the composers at the fore of the early twentieth century, Ravel is one of the most well known. While Poulenc, Milhaud, and Honegger are familiar names among musicologists, Ravel and Debussy have achieved a place in the general public's vocabulary. Most...

The question, "why make maps about music history?" goes back to the question, "why study music history?" The answer is different for everyone, but for me, it is simple: I study music history because the past constitutes the best stories humanity can offer, and because...

What does it mean to know the past? As a student, I first think of sitting down with a textbook to memorize dates and names. In our project, however, we seek to create a more engaging way of learning about history. The maps that we create, as well as the pictures,...

  At the beginning of the film Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson asked, “Can you imagine what would it be like to live in 1920s Paris?” This question leads to a central goal of our research project, that is to...

Why is mapping the music of 1920’s Paris relevant to modern research and individuals? Because through showing the geographical influence, we can help students, researchers, teachers, and the general public to imagine what it might have been like to live in 1920’s...

We're coming up on the end of our first week of research! We've already started mapping a couple of different projects, and we have several more lined up. I'm also finally getting more accustomed to the names and faces of Paris' musical scene in the 1920s. The...