General Principles

Music incipits help identify works and facilitate the comparison of historical musical sources.

Which music incipits to enter depends on the kind of music. Best practice for instrumental music is to enter incipits for the violin or the highest part. For vocal music, enter the highest voice plus the first violin or the highest instrumental part.

The incipit should be neither too long nor too short, and make as much musical sense as possible. It should contain at least 3 bars or 10 non-repeated notes.

The code should be written on a single line. When using MARC-format subfields, omit the special characters that precede the encoded notes.