José Vicente González Valle In Memoriam
Monday, March 18, 2019
It saddened us to learn that the founder of the RISM working group in Spain, Prof. Dr. José Vicente González Valle, passed away on 23 February 2019.
José Vicente, as we called him, was an organist, priest, musicologist, a good organizer, and a kind, dear man. He first encountered RISM during his studies in Munich with Theodor Göllner. Our president at the time, Dr. Harald Heckmann, wrote to his fellow board members in a report dated 23 January 1990: “He studied in Munich and earned his Ph.D. there (Herr Dorfmüller also knows him from there).” (Dorfmüller was the then director of the Bavarian State Library and secretary of the RISM Germany working group.) In this document, Heckmann also reported on the establishment of the Spanish RISM working group in Barcelona: “In December 1988 I was with Dr. Schlichte [previous director of the Central Office] for the formation of a RISM working group in Spain. We primarily have Dr. José V. González Valle, Barcelona, to thank for the fact that work in Spain can now begin. […] Preparations for work in Spain are now to the point where a conference will be organized in Madrid from 7 to 12 May 1990 at which international standards for cataloging, etc. will be discussed.”
To open the conference, González Valle brought together “important people from politics, the church, libraries, documentation centers, and of course also musicology,” thereby securing support from various sides.
These quotations show how commendable José Vicente González Valle’s work was for RISM in Spain.
González Valle was a member in the Association “Internationales Quellenlexikon der Musik e.V.” beginning in 2004.
We will always honor his memory.
Klaus Keil Director, RISM Zentralredaktion
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