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IDEM
Integrated Database for Early music
IDEM – Integrated Database for Early Music

IDEM is an interdisciplinary and multifaceted database of manuscripts and printed books that are relevant to the Alamire Foundation's research and activities. It therefore especially focuses on the musical heritage of the Low Countries from the early Middle Ages until 1800.

IDEM contains digital images of manuscripts and prints digitized by the Alamire Digital Lab, the high-technology photography centre of the Alamire Foundation (KU Leuven – Musicology Research Unit). Its state-of-the-art equipment allows musical sources to be photographed following the strictest standards and quality requirements.

The core database is complemented by interrelated sub-databases that enable the consultation and study of manuscript and printed sources from multiple perspectives. IDEM will eventually contain information about every aspect of the manuscripts and books concerned, including their physical characteristics, their content and illumination, as well as recordings, editions and so-called 'fake-similes' (adapted versions of the original images, facilitating performance from the original notation).

IDEM is thus designed to be an online, freely accessible platform and tool for the preservation, study, and valorisation of the music heritage of the Low Countries.

July 2026 – In the spotlight: Rediscovered Carillon Manuscripts from Berlin

In November 2024, the Alamire Foundation launched an ambitious project: the publication of a substantial number of carillon manuscripts from the Ancien Régime on the Integrated Database for Early Music (IDEM). The first phase included manuscripts from Antwerp, Leuven, Brussels, Paris, Asten, Saint-Omer, and Delft, followed by a second series of sources from Gdańsk, Lake Wales (Florida), Salzburg, and Darmstadt.

The project was recently completed with the digital release of a collection of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century carillon music originating from the Evangelical Parochialkirche in Berlin. By chance, a set of entirely handwritten music books was discovered in the cupboard of a former pastor: fourteen notebooks, comprising around six hundred pages of music by various composers. They mainly contain arrangements of sacred works such as chorales, psalm tunes, and Lutheran hymns, alongside a number of secular preludes and fugues. The pieces were arranged by the Parochialkirche’s first carillonist, Arnold Carsseboom, and his successors Andreas Seidel, Georg Friederich Seelig, and the father and son Kaufmann. The two-part texture of these arrangements, a frequent feature, gives the bells a clear and resonant sound.

Thanks to Anna Kasprzycka, the current carillonist of the Parochialkirche, the sources could be transported to Leuven for digitization by the Alamire Digital Lab. The images are now available for consultation here on the IDEM website. On 29 June, from 15:00 onward, the carillons of Park Abbey in Leuven and the Parochialkirche in Berlin will perform the first prelude and fugue from ms. 3928 every hour.

View the Berlin carillon manuscripts here.

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