Essen Folk Song Database

This is a collection of about 8000 European and Chinese folk songs written in Essen Associative Code (EsAC). This database was started under the direction of the late Helmut Scaffrath who invented the EsAC code. I converted the database into abc music notation using a tcl/tk script that I wrote. I am grateful to Damien Sagrillo and Ewa Dahlig-Turek who made available several other collections (HAYDN.SM, IRL.SM, LUX.SM, LOT.SM, HAN1.SM and HAN2.SM which were not publicly available.)

A few more collections were found on the web site ccarh.org. in the form of kern scores. They were converted into abc files using hum2abc producing chinese collections - natmin.abc, and shanxi.abc. The Polish database was found in the esac folder (dwok01_*.sm) and converted into abc files using my software. They were added to this collection in October 2013.

altdeu10.abc	altdeu20.abc	ballad10.abc	ballad20.abc
ballad30.abc	ballad40.abc	ballad50.abc	ballad60.abc
ballad70.abc	ballad80.abc	boehme10.abc	boehme20.abc
dva0.abc	erk10.abc	erk20.abc	erk30.abc
erk5.abc	fink0.abc	HAN1.abc	HAN2.abc
HAYDN.abc	IRL.abc	kinder0.abc	LOT.abc
LUX.abc	test0.abc	test1.abc	testd.abc
teste.abc	variant0.abc	zuccal0.abc	natmin.abc
shanxi.abc	dwok01_1	dwok01_2	dwok01_3
dwok01_4	dwok01_5	dwok01_6	dwok01_7

Tcl script for converting EsAC code to abc: esac2abc.tcl

everything in a zip file

Note I fixed ballad80.abc on October 6 2010. See readme.txt in esac.zip for more details. November 18 2010: many of the measures (bars) do not correspond to the length indicated in the time signature. I regenerated all the abc files but some problems still persist (see readme.txt).

For reference, the kern files were converted to abc files using the command
hum2abc --no-slur --dir myfolder > myfolder.abc

Hum2abc was found on the page extra.humdrum.org/man/hum2abc/. seymour.shlien@crc.ca.

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