About the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales
The Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales (ICCMU) is Spain’s leading academic centre dedicated to music. As part of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the ICCMU boasts over 30 years of experience in scientific research, the recovery and dissemination of musical heritage, and specialized music education. We are committed to promoting activities related to the creation, performance, and dissemination of music. The ICCMU is currently a partner in several major research projects, including two ERC Advanced Grants and the new synergistic project ChordIA-CM, funded by the Comunidad de Madrid.

About the ChordIA Project
Funded by the Comunidad de Madrid , is a groundbreaking synergistic research initiative focused on studying the emergence and consolidation of the tonal system in Western music (1580-1750). This collaborative project brings together researchers from the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales (ICCMU) and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED-LENAR), under the leadership of Prof. Álvaro Torrente Sánchez-Guisande and Prof. Salvador Ros Muñoz.

Project Aims
ChordIA’s core objectives are:

1. To create a large-scale, multimodal dataset of thousands of musical works (1580-1750), including digital scores (MusicXML, MIDI, MuseScore), harmonic annotations, text, and audio.
2. To develop an optimized sequencing format for training Large Language Models (LLMs) on symbolic music data.
3. To conduct a diachronic study of the relationship between poetic structure and harmonic planning using NLP techniques.
4. To design an agent-based architecture and multimodal models for the advanced analysis of harmony.
5. To establish a comprehensive evaluation framework and leaderboard for musical language models.

The Role: Senior Music Corpus & Editorial Quality Specialist
The ChordIA project seeks to hire a Senior Music Corpus & Editorial Quality Specialist to oversee the musical transcription workflow, quality assurance, and digital encoding of the project’s musical corpus. Reporting directly to the Scientific Coordinator (Dr. Ana Llorens) and the Principal Investigator (Prof. Dr. Álvaro Torrente), the primary focus of this role is to ensure high editorial standards across all digital scores, conduct critical proofreading of musical transcriptions, prepare and manage digital score templates, and directly undertake the transcription and critical editing of historical musical sources (1580–1750).

Key Responsibilities:

• Coordinate and monitor the day-to-day workflow of project copyists and transcribers using Trello and internal management documentation, tracking progress, milestones, and deliverables.
• Prepare, curate, and organize historical sources for the team, including segmenting, standardizing, and creating bookmarked digital PDFs to streamline the transcription and analytical workflow.
• Execute digital transcription, basso continuo realization, and critical editing of complex manuscript and printed musical sources (1580–1750) using MuseScore and related engraving software.
• Prepare, configure, and standardize base score files, engraving templates, and project metadata (MuseScore, MusicXML, MIDI) prior to distribution to copyists.
• Perform thorough editorial quality control, critical proofreading, and error detection on transcriptions submitted by the team, ensuring strict compliance with the ChordIA Editorial Guidelines.
• Resolve day-to-day musicological and editorial queries from copyists regarding notation standards, editorial criteria, and paleographic reading under the supervision of the Scientific Coordinator.
• Supervise score file versioning, repository cleanliness, metadata integrity, and formatting consistency across the digital musical corpus.
• Collaborate closely with the computational research team to ensure data consistency, clean tokenization, and schema compliance for downstream AI analysis and public dataset releases.

Candidate Profile:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Musicology, Music Theory, Composition, or equivalent advanced professional musical qualification.
• Demonstrable track record (minimum 3–5 years) in digital musical transcription, critical editing, and corpus preparation within academic or institutional research environments.
• Advanced mastery of MuseScore (essential), music notation software (Dorico/Sibelius/Finale), and standard symbolic interchange formats (MusicXML, MIDI).
• In-depth knowledge of historical notation, counterpoint, basso continuo realization, and 16th-to-18th-century musical repertoire.
• Proven experience in quality assurance and critical proofreading of complex scores, paired with strong organizational skills for tracking tasks and team deliverables (e.g., Trello, spreadsheets).
• Working proficiency in Italian for source reading and musicological interpretation; reading knowledge of additional languages (Latin, German, French, Spanish) will be an asset.

We Offer:

• Full-time contract for an initial period of 18 months, renewable subject to project extension and funding availability.
• Salary: Gross annual salary of € 33.439,84.
• The salary will be paid in 12 instalments with prorated bonus payments.
• Work with an ambitious and interdisciplinary team of experts in musicology, AI, and computer science.
• Access to a new, curated dataset of thousands of annotated scores from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Job Details:

• Start Date: January 1, 2027
• Working Hours: Full time (37.5 hours per week).
• Work Arrangement: A combination of in-person and remote work is possible.
• Location: UCM, Calle de Donoso Cortés 63, Madrid, Spain.

Application Process:

• Submission: Interested candidates should submit a CV, a motivation letter (outlining relevant experience), a portfolio of work (e.g., sample scores), and at least one professional reference letter to: chordia@iccmu.es
• Deadline: Friday, November 29, 2026 (23:59 CET)
• Technical Interviews (online): December 1-11, 2026
• A reserve list will be established with qualified candidates who successfully pass the evaluation stages. Candidates included on this list may be contacted to fill future vacancies, potential project extensions, or additional research needs within the project.

ICCMU and the ChordIA project value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, and disability.