The Online Chopin Variorum Edition was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in four successive phases from 2003 to 2017. OCVE provides digital images of the manuscripts and first editions of select works by the Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin. Its principal aim is to facilitate and enhance comparative analysis of these primary sources, attaining a degree of flexibility beyond that of extant printed editions of Chopin’s music and indeed of any composer to date. Users are guided in their consultation of the sources by the background information and sample ‘critical commentaries’ provided by the project team. The end result is a new type of ‘musical edition’, one that users themselves construct dynamically and interactively.
OCVE has exploited emerging technical capacities for text/image comparison as well as recent musicological advances. It is one of three projects featured in the Chopin Online resource.