Music for Advent

Martina Falletta

Thursday, November 27, 2014

On Sunday, the Christmas season will be in full swing: It’s the first Sunday of Advent.

This time is peak season for church musicians. At no other time of the year are churches host to so many musical events and concerts. But how can you put together an interesting program? By using the RISM online catalog, that’s how!

www.rism.info or opac.rism.info

If you do a simple search you’ll get a lot of hits, no mater what the language: Advent (950 results), avent (10), avvento (150), or adventus (3,100).

Alternately, try selecting the index Liturgical festival in the drop-down list of the advanced search and enter adventus. This search will lead to a lot of results (over 3,000 hits), but as you type, the autocomplete feature will prompt you with additional Latin terms for the Advent Sundays that you can use to limit your search. On the page of results, the search filters in the left column can help you narrow your results by genre, composer, and scoring.

Now you just have to find a modern edition of the composition you have chosen or contact the holding library to inquire about ordering a reproduction.

Category: Events