World War I Music

Presented by Andrew Bullen, MS-LIS

World War One has been called the most musical of all wars. In a joint Pritzker Military Museum and Library and Illinois State Library project, Andrew Bullen has converted scanned musical scores from Pritzker’s collection to playable files using optical musical 

recognition software. The process produces an MP3 file that can be played over the Internet bringing the music of the First World War to life. In many instances, this is the first time that these tunes have been heard in a century. He also compares/contrasts the British and American experiences of the important year of 1916 through contemporary sheet music-in the case of the U.S., the Punitive Raid on Mexico, reaction to Edith Cavell’s shooting, opposition to America’s involvement, and the Preparedness Movement/Plattsburg Movement with Britain’s Battle of the Somme, the appearance of the tank, the battle of Jutland, and the British Shell Crisis.

Andrew Bullen has a AB in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and an MS-LIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently the Information Technology Coordinator for the Illinois State Library. He has a great deal of experience with digital humanities projects, and has worked with the Pullman State Historic Site to bring the images and archives of his neighborhood in Chicago, Pullman, to life. He is part of the team that has developed the Illinois Digital Archives, a statewide CONTENTdm-based repository of image collections, and the Electronic Documents of Illinois, a custom data management system for born-digital state documents.