Archive des actualités – Nouveau au RISM
Card indexes of music prints from the RISM offices in Munich and Dresden digitised
The two German offices of the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales in Dresden and Munich hold extensive card indexes from the first decades of their activities. The card index of series A/I (“Music prints before 1800”) documents the data collected on music prints owned by institutions in Germany during the...
16 October 2025
RISM for Musicians
Although at the time of its founding RISM was designed for libraries and scholars, there are of course many cases where our database can be a particularly valuable resource for musicians. Those who simply want to play from the latest commercial edition of a work will not find what they...
9 October 2025
Private Collections and Libraries - Part 2
In this second part of our introduction to private collections and libraries, we would like to focus on collections that have a long history of continuity, or happen to be relatively young but have already found a safe haven in an institution. In addition, we will also discuss the relocation...
18 September 2025
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...
10 July 2025
Le projet de numérisation ciblée ‘Digital Music Unica in Switzerland’ (D-MUS)
Historiquement, la numérisation des publications imprimées - historiques ou récentes - a été initiée il y a plus de 20 ans avec des projets de grande envergure tels que Gallica et Google books. Aujourd’hui, il est nécessaire de lancer des projets ciblés pour documenter spécifiquement des sources plus rares. Comme...
26 June 2025
New Contact Page for RISM
We enjoy hearing from our users. Your feedback and expertise help improve the RISM database for users worldwide. The RISM website now has a new page to make contact between our audience and RISM even easier. Please visit RISM’s Contact page to see how to get in touch, whether through...
5 June 2025
Popes in RISM
On 8 May 2025, Robert Francis Prevost was elected the 267th head of the Roman Catholic Church. The new pope chose the name Leo XIV, and celebrated the inauguration mass of his pontificate on May 18. Of the approximately 150,000 personal names in the RISM database, composers tend to receive...
28 May 2025
Private collections and libraries - Part 1
The following contribution presents the first part of a two-part news item meant as a first introduction to private collections and libraries. RISM currently (as of 13 May 2025) lists 9,122 library sigla. Of these, 637 refer to private collections or libraries, i.e. just over 7 % of all our...
15 May 2025
Finding Unica in the RISM Database
The ability to trace the distribution of musical sources is one of the strengths of the RISM database. Music manuscripts are by their very nature unique, while any given printed edition potentially exists in multiple copies. Finding those printed editions that have only survived in a single known copy has...
2 May 2025
How to Cite RISM
Many publications, whether online or in print, use their own style guides. However, citation styles frequently do not capture the nuances of historic music manuscripts and printed editions, making it difficult to identify the item with absolute clarity. RISM has recommendations for researchers and librarians when citing musical sources, including...
24 April 2025
