Encoding polymeter: A corpus of Hugo Distler's «Der Jahrkreis» op. 5 in different symbolic formats

Abstract

We present DistlerCorpus, a corpus of Hugo Distler’s Der Jahrkreis op. 5 (1933), a collection of 52 predominantly three-voice motets. The corpus is provided in Humdrum and MEI formats. The creation of the data set addresses Distler’s distinctive notational treatment of polymeter: voice-specific time signatures and the resulting non-aligned barlines, combined with frequent homometric meter changes. These characteristics expose limitations in current symbolic music encoding formats (MusicXML, MuseScoreXML, MEI, Humdrum) and motivate our proposed recommendations for encoding polymetric notation in digital music corpora.