The R Projects in Beijing

Thursday, August 16, 2018

RISM is one of four major international music bibliographic undertakings that are collectively known as the Four R Projects. While RISM documents musical sources, RILM indexes secondary literature, RIdIM focuses on music iconography, and RIPM deals with music periodicals. For some time now, these projects have intensified their cooperative efforts and a joint website is available, http://www.r-musicprojects.org/, which provides short introductions to each R project.

In addition, representatives from each of the organizations travel to conferences and present their projects in joint sessions. This has already taken place at 13 conferences, as can be read on the website of the Four Rs under Presentations. A joint poster was designed for the most recent conference (see image): “Approaches to Research on Music and Dance in the Internet Era” (3rd Forum of the International Council for Traditional Music) took place in July 2018 in Beijing, at which Klaus Keil represented RISM. During the conference, a session was held, led by Zdravko Blažeković, which presented the R projects. The conference was sponsored by six scholarly societies: the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), International Musicological Society (IMS), International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), and the Association for Traditional Music in China (ATMC).

Having project representatives appear together at conferences is of great benefit to everyone. As a result, RISM has been able to launch initiatives in Chile, China, Cuba, and Mexico. One result of attending these events was the conference “Documenting Musical Sources in Latin America” in September 2016 in Mainz.

Category: Events