KISS Considered Harmful in Digitization of Medieval Chant Manuscripts

The KISS principle (´Keep It Simple, Stupid´) is harmful in projects about digitizing medieval chant manuscripts. Such manuscripts contain various kinds of musical notations called ´neumes´. Some recent initiatives in this area have garnered recognition but have a troublesome disregard for normal scientific protocols of literature search and peer review. KISS methods of transcription that cover only late medieval, square-neume notation are harmful because they tend to fragment digital libraries of chant. In particular, early manuscripts with non-pitched neume notations are hugely important to chant scholarship; KISS data representations for pitched music on a cleffed staff are, however, not capable of handling the complexities and uncertainties of early neumation. Patience and serious scholarship are needed during the development of a unified data representation covering all neume notations. In the meantime, much important work can proceed in other areas such as cataloging, digital imaging, and transcription of chant texts.