“Zoom In and Find Out”: How a ‘Smart’ Painting Reveals Two Piano Works From London 1806

Sheet music and musical notation in visual art can be many things: the attribute of a musician, composer, or performer, as well as a pictorial element used to suggest a context of music or simply to depict a setting of music-making. But the level of accuracy varies widely, ranging from...

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Felix gives you wings! A previously unknown source of a known Mendelssohn lied

The following post by Roland Schmidt-Hensel was first published on the blog of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The manuscript described here can be found in RISM under RISM ID no. 1001329438 (RISM Catalog | RISM Online). Even though Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) left behind more than 100 lieder...

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The four versions of Leonardo Leo’s opera Demetrio

Like many other opera composers of the eighteenth century, Leonardo Leo often set the text of a given “dramma serio” several times, realizing the work in different musical versions. Sorting out the diverse versions of an opera can at times become an arduous musicological task, since the available librettos are...

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The targeted digitisation project ‘Digital Music Unica in Switzerland’ (D-MUS)

Historically, digitisation of printed publications - historical or recent - was initiated more than 20 years ago with large-scale projects such as Gallica and Google books. Today, it is necessary to initiate targeted projects to specifically document rarer sources. As we know - and see in this regard the news...

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European Capitals of Culture 2025

Each summer we are happy to seize the opportunity offered by the European Capitals of Culture to call attention to a few special musical events or the characteristic musical culture of the regions in question. In 2025 the cultural world is focusing on Chemnitz in Germany and the city of...

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