‘The echo chambers of cyberspace’: the meaning and consequences of reconsidering the digital Michael Mosoeu Moerane Critical Edition as an archive

Abstract

Michael Mosoeu Moerane (1904–1980) was a South African Western art music composer and in 1941 became the first black South African to receive a BMus degree. Spearheaded by Christine Lucia, the Michael Moerane Critical Edition (MMCE) project established the first digital scholarly edition of the surviving works by Moerane: 55–60 compositions that have been transcribed from tonic sol-fa into staff notation, edited from original scores, with a critical commentary, and historically contextualised. This article locates the MMCE within the discourse of digital scholarly editions and reconsiders them as archives, where considerations of power and politics are relevant and essential. This recontextualisation challenges the emerging field of digital humanities to interrogate questions of power, perceived objectivity, and the role of the physical within the praxis of creating and utilising digital scholarly editions. Questions of self-reflexivity, long embraced in archival discourse, could be utilised as necessary tools to consider humanities scholarship in digital spheres.