We present a new online resource “Manuscripts of Contemporary Belarusian Authors from the Collections of the National Library of Belarus” on International Music Day.
About 300 pieces by Belarusian poets and composers who have concluded copyright agreements with the Library are available to the users. Among the authors are both famous poets and composers who have earned a well-deserved prestige in the country and abroad, such as Igor Luchenok, Dmitry Smolsky, Andrey Mdivani and others, and very young talented representatives of the musical sphere, such as Vyacheslav Petko, Nikita Beltyukov, Alexei Pilatov and others. The resource contains sheet music of various genres and themes, as well as lyrics to songs. There are folk dances and songs, operas and musicals, symphonies and suites, romances and rap, patriotic songs and lullabies, sacred music and much more.
Musical works to the verses of the classicists of the Belarusian literature take a special place in the resource: P. Brovka ("The Savour of Thyme"), Ya. Kolas ("Autumn", "Dear Images", "Hey you, Horses"), Ya. Kupala ("A Duke was Riding"), M. Bogdanovich ("A Blue-Eyed Night"), U. Karatkievich ("I Miss my Motherland", "Little Fire", "Oh my Wonderful Land"), R. Borodulin ("A Golden Land"), G. Buravkin ("At the Traffic Lights"), A. Mitskevich ("To the Neman") and others.
Each document presented in the online resource "Manuscripts of Contemporary Belarusian Authors from the Collections of the National Library of Belarus" has a description that includes information about the author, year of creation, language, subject area, type and genre of the musical piece.
Documents can be scrolled sequentially, or sorted by title, author, or year of creation.
For the convenience of users, the array of documents is differentiated by content, and as a result, two kinds of collections have been sorted out - "Notes" and "Lyrics".
In addition, the resource provides the opportunity to carry out a multidimensional search for the necessary documents by title, author, year of creation, subject heading, etc.
The names of musical instruments used in the performance of the work are indicated as labels for each document. Therefore, the resource can serve as a good help in learning to play a particular instrument. Using the cue browsing function, you can select the desired musical instrument and easily select the pieces of music where it is used.
It is planned that by the end of 2020 the online resource “Manuscripts of Contemporary Belarusian Authors from the Collections of the National Library of Belarus” will have more than 600 pieces by 98 authors.
The resource will be useful to historians, musicologists, teachers and students of musical institutions, students of music schools and everyone who is interested in the current Belarusian music.
Mr V. Pshybytko, Head of the Digitization and Preservation of the Library Documents Centre.
