News archive
Bad Ischl in the Salzkammergut: European Capital of Culture and musical hotspot
Alongside Tartu in Estonia and Bodø in Norway, Bad Ischl is this year’s European Capital of Culture. The title turns the spotlight not only on Ischl itself, but on the entire Salzkammergut region extending across three Austrian federal states: Upper Austria, Salzburg, and Styria. Putting aside the broader cultural implications,...
16 May 2024 – In the news
Musical Sources of the 19th century in Germany
Last fall we called your attention to a symposium held at the Bavarian State Library in Munich to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of RISM’s German working group. The title – “Musical Sources of the 19th Century in Germany: Challenges and Opportunities” – promised less an overview of...
8 May 2024 – New at RISM
Needles in the Haystack: Correcting Errors in RISM’s Music Incipits
While RISM has been a showcase for large-scale cooperation from its very foundations over seventy years ago, this predominantly affected the cataloguing of primary sources all around the globe by our international working groups. In the past few years, however, the RISM Editorial Center has been increasingly involved in institutional...
25 April 2024 – New at RISM
Samuel Wesley’s Fugue for Mendelssohn
The following is by Dominic Newman and originally appeared on the British Library’s Music blog (© British Library Board, Creative Commons Attribution Licence). Just before the end of his life, Samuel Wesley – the elder composer, 1766–1837, the middle of the three main Samuels in the Wesley dynasty – experienced...
18 April 2024 – Library collections
Vicente Lusitano in RISM
An article last year in Early Music America entitled “Vicente Lusitano – A Legacy Recovered” by Garrett Schumann reminded us of how important it is to ensure that musical sources of underrepresented composers are more visible in the digital environment. Vicente Lusitano (ca. 1522-after 1561) was a Portuguese composer and...
11 April 2024 – New at RISM
Early sources of J.S. Bach's English Suites united in Leipzig
The following originally appeared on the Bach Archiv Leipzig, Germany. It is published here with kind permission. New collectibles from our treasury Early sources of J.S. Bach’s English Suites united in Leipzig The »English Suites« – one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most famous collections of works for keyboard instruments –...
28 March 2024 – Library collections
News from the Czech RISM Working Group
In the field of musicology and music documentation, the most important contributions of the Music Department of the National Library of the Czech Republic involve the cataloging of musical sources in the RISM database. Most of this work forms part of a project supported by the Ministry of Culture of...
21 March 2024 – New at RISM
Annual Report 2023
Crowning the intensive development of several years, by late 2023 the RISM database hit a new benchmark of 1.5 million source records, freely searchable through both the classic RISM Catalog and the recently developed RISM Online interface. This impressive increase in part results from the ongoing cataloging activity of our...
14 March 2024 – New publications
Paper and Copyists in Viennese Opera Scores, 1760–1775
The following guest post is by Martin Eybl (Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Interpretationsforschung, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, Austria): Hundreds of works by Haydn, Gluck, and other Viennese composers are only known from manuscript copies prepared by their contemporaries. As a rule, such manuscripts are undated, which makes...
7 March 2024 – New at RISM
Musical Leap Year Babies
Famous Leap Year Day babies are rare, although among the composers Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) is very well known. But the RISM database has many more people who celebrate their birthdays on February 29. The English composer Humphrey Bralesford (1658-1733; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) has...
29 February 2024 – Events
