Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive needs help

Posted on behalf of Emily Ezust, lieder.net

I run the Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive, a project I began
in 1995 to provide free access to texts and translations to as many
art songs and choral works as possible. With over 900 volunteers and
over 16,000 translations in a database that indexes almost 120,000
vocal pieces in over 100 languages, the website has a devoted
world-wide following among singers, musicologists, composers,
librarians, concert producers, etc. Since September 1st we've had over
1.5 million unique visitors and close to 7 million page views.

When students ask for translations, I can often find a volunteer to
write one within a week. Most of the translators allow their
translations to be reprinted for free by students and faculty, and our
translations have appeared in concert programmes all over the world
(not always with proper credit, unfortunately). Texts are treated
rigorously, both as works of poetry and as sung texts, with footnotes
to indicate changes, as you can see in this
sample page.

Relationships between texts are shown, for example, on the following
page we show three composers have set three different German
translations of the same Serbian text, which we managed eventually to
find and post.

And a perusal of the following page gives a glimpse of the fascination
composers of many countries have toward Heine, both in German and in
translation.

Since I'm not affiliated with a university and my undergraduate and
graduate degrees are in math and computer science, I have been turned
down repeatedly for public funding in Canada, and subsist on a meager
income of individual donations and ad revenue, but I remain convinced
that this ever-expanding project has substantial cultural importance
and deserves a sustainable future. With adequate funding or
sponsorship this huge, unique project might have some hope of
outliving me; at the present moment, it has none. Although my mailbox
is always brimming with material from volunteers, I am the only one
with access to the database and I am the only one who maintains the
underlying code. I can reasonably hope to have several more decades to
work on this project, adding new material almost every day, but the
financial strain on my family is becoming impossible to ignore.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts and advice on my
predicament, or suggestions of other organizations that might be able
to help me find funding or sponsorship.

Thank you for your attention, and best wishes from Toronto,
Emily

--
Emily Ezust, emily@lieder.net
The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive: http://www.lieder.net/