Data overview

Mapping the Musical Renaissance draws on primary documents and secondary sources to present information about the movements of composers, performing musicians, and other prominent figures, including visual artists and political leaders—a total of events. The following list of composers gives a sense of coverage to date:

Complete

    Nearly Complete



      Technical Documentation

      Events

      The project is built on a relational database of what we call Events. Each event records a person (or group) in a specific location at a specific time. Individual events are sometimes linked to an institution or occasion.

      Each event has an unique Event ID that makes it possible to cite the event via a stable web address (e.g., Event 3 places Josquin des Prez as a singer at the papal chapel.) The format of the ID citation is:

      https://renaissancemapping.org/ + ?eventid= + the ID number (for Josquin, 00003)

      thus

      https://renaissancemapping.org/?eventid=00003


      Relational Database

      The relational database is created through linked data on a series of Google Sheets that track locations, biographical and bibliographical information, institutions, and occasions.

      • Events
        Whereabouts of individuals/groups at places over time; links to all other sheets via IDs. Considers questions of certainty for events, locations, and people.

      • Locations (LOC)
        Location IDs like LOC:City or LOC:City-Place (ASCII only), with native-language names, Google Maps URLs, and coordinates. Ambiguous locations for events can be modeled via city-level locations or by creating multiple events.

      • Biographies: Composers (BCO) / Musicians (BMU) / Non-musicians (BNO)
        IDs in the form PREFIX:Firstname_Lastname include aliases, certain birth and death dates, roles/labels, and targeted bibliography. Entries for composers store DIAMM or RISM identifiers/links.

      • Institutions (INS)
        People and events are grouped by musical, political, or ecclesiastical institution.

      • Occasions (OCC)
        Battles, treaties, natural disasters, public meetings, and other non-person-centered happenings that can be linked to Events.

      • Document Entries (DOE)
        Document Entry IDs like DOE:City_Archive_Number link to archival documents, give type/subtype, metadata, show related people and institutions, and point to a full text version and translation that are stored externally on GitHub. Where possible, entries include photos of the relevant archival documents.

      • Bibliography (BIB)
        Structured citations and, where relevant, page references. This information is cited by Events, Document Entries, and Biographies.

      • Headers
        A special restricted and not user-facing sheet that maps verbose spreadsheet column names to concise JSON/JavaScript keys and enables team members to change headings without breaking the technical implementation.


      Linking Data

      Most connections use exact-match VLOOKUP against named ranges such as Loc_ID, Bio_Comp_ID, Bio_Mus_ID, and Bib_ID. For example, =VLOOKUP("LOC:Vatican", Loc_ID, 1, FALSE) looks for the Vatican on the Location ID sheet and returns the first column on that sheet (in this case, the name of the location ID).


      Website

      Leaflet

      This project uses Leaflet with the open-source base layer OpenStreetMap to render an interactive map of early-modern musical events. Markers represent individual events and update dynamically based on user selections and filters.

      • Marker Representation
        Events are rendered as CircleMarker elements with colors that change based on selected people, certainty flags, and date filters.

      • Marker Clustering
        Uses Leaflet.MarkerCluster to group dense areas of events. Cluster colors adapt to the colors of the markers inside them.

      • Search and Filtering
        A live search bar allows filtering by person, place, year, and event keyword. Selecting multiple individuals recolors events associated with them using a multi-hue palette while updating clusters, the sidebar, and the histogram. A synchronized sidebar lists all events currently visible on the map; clicking on an event zooms to its location.


      GitHub

      Files for Mapping the Musical Renaissance are hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/benory/Renaissance-mapping-website

      Translations and transcriptions of document entries are stored in a separate repository: https://github.com/benory/Renaissance-mapping-data

      The website is served through GitHub pages and uses the markdown language Jekyll.


      Data

      The site’s full dataset is available for download (last updated: 2025-12-02).