We have nearly forgotten that many poems from the English Romantic Era were set to music and circulated as songs during a time when books were extremely expensive by modern standards. When we read these poems today simply as text in a book, we miss much of the experience of the work as its audience originally knew it.
Romantic-Era Lyrics seeks to bring these poems back to life as songs using modern computer technology. Here you will find hundreds of rare musical scores, accompanied by information about the poets, publishers, and composers. You can also hear performances of the songs and download them for later enjoyment, research, or teaching.
The database contains {{ genInfo.score_count }} scores, including {{ genInfo.collection_count }} collections, with {{ genInfo.composer_count }} composers, {{ genInfo.lyricist_count }} poets, and {{ genInfo.publisher_count }} publishers on record.
We have adopted some specific terminology to organize and distinguish the scores in our database:
A score is an individual piece of sheet music. A score has a poet, who wrote the lyrics on the sheet music, and a composer, who wrote the music itself. These are sometimes both the same person. Some poets, such as Caroline Norton, were composers as well.
We distinguish between a work of literature versus an individual score. Each individual score corresponds to a work of literature, and multiple scores may be based on the same work. For example, we have multiple scores representing the work of literature Auld Robin Gray.
A collection is simply some work of literature that contains multiple scores, such as a book of sheet music.
The search page allows users to search for items in each of the categories outlined above: score, work, artist, publisher, and collection. Searching is based on a different set of criteria for each item, such as by title, poet, lyricist, or publisher for musical scores. All of these criteria are selected by default, but can be deselected if more specific search functionality is desired.
The search page selects records from our data by looking for records for which at least one of the selected search criteria match for each separate search term the user submits. For example, if a user submits the search terms "love norton" for scores in all criteria, scores or "I Do Not Love Thee" and "Love Not" by Caroline Norton will be displayed because "love" is found in the title, and "norton" matches the composer or poet criteria. Both "love" and "norton" must be found in at least one of the criteria.
In addition to search criteria, there are additional options to limit search results for several of the categories. For example, the user can limit the search to scores for which performances are available.
The data for the individual scores, originally written in the Dublin Core standard, was imported into a MySQL database. From this data information about publishers, composers, and poets was extrapolated.
This separate follows the model-view-controller concept, meaning the data about the webpages through which the data is viewed are separate in development. This allows users who wish to access the raw data about any scores to do so through the website API. This also allows us to make simple aesthetic changes to the website without disrupting functionality.
The backend of this website was built on top of a MySQL database and an API written in PHP.
The frontend was developed using AngularJS, a front-end javascript framework that allows for templating of the data from the database.
The API structure matches the structure of the HTML pages.
The API consists of PHP files of the same name as the HTML page.
For example, to access the appropriate data for a specific score page:
The page url:
.../score.html#?id=40
The api url:
.../api/score.php?id=40
Major support for this project was provided by the Office of the Provost’s Internal Grant Programs at the University of South Carolina. Additional funding was obtained through the Magellan Scholar program for undergraduate research.
Further assistance was provided by the Center for Digital Humanities and the University of South Carolina Libraries, and much of the displayed scores came from the private collection of Paula Feldman.
Paula R. Feldman
Victor Reynolds
Matt Short
Aidan Zanders
Victor Reynolds
Courtesy of Joanna Swafford
We would like to thank Joanna Swafford for allowing us to use Augmented Notes to provide the visualizations for our recorded pieces.
The frontend of this website was built using AngularJS and Bootstrap.
The backend of this website was built with MySQL and PHP.
We would also like to thank the creator of the Glyphicon Halflings set for allowing us to use the icon set through Bootstrap.
In addition, we thank Damien Corzani for the smartJQueryZoom plugin and Michael Bromley for the AngularJS Pagination directive.