Switzerland : Bern : Swiss RISM branch

Since 1996, the Swiss RISM branch has been organized as an independent association financed mainly through contributions for specific projects and cataloging/inventory commissions by libraries and archives.

Visit the website of the Swiss RISM branch for complete descriptions of ongoing projects, news, online resources, and the database of Swiss musical sources.

New publications: Kapellmeisterbuch

The Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln, Switzerland holds a rare manuscript, the Kapellmeisterbuch, which has recently been transcribed and made freely available online (for access, click here). In this book, music performed at the abbey on Sundays and feast days was recorded by the Kapellmeister from 1805-1884, with the most regular entries between 1813 and 1852. The book, about 340 pages long, is a unique document and an extremely valuable resource for musicologists to the study musical life in 19th-century Switzerland.

In order to make it available and easily browsable for scholars, the book has been fully transcribed using TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) and published online. The TEI transcription of the Kapellmeisterbuch enabled the creation of different indexes, which allow the user to browse by date, composer and liturgical feast. In the transcription, doubtful passages and the completion of the numerous abbreviations were also encoded. Because it is a handwritten document that can be sometimes very hard to read, having the ability to provide the user with this information is an asset of the approach.

The transcription of the Kapellmeisterbuch is an online resource realized in 2009-2010 by the Fribourg University Institute of Musicology and the Swiss RISM office, with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (“Musical Repertoire in Swiss Collegiate and Monastic Churches,” project no. 100012-124416).