Looking back at 2014

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Before we get too far into 2015, let’s take a look back at 2014 and allow us to share some stories from the past year.

The ten most popular stories on our website were (according to our website statistics):

1. New Version of the RISM Online Catalog

2. Missing Works by Italian Composer Giovanni Francesco Bicchini Discovered (our April Fool’s joke)

3. Mozart: New Documents

4. Listen to the world’s oldest piano

5. Niccolò Jommelli rediscovered: International award for essay on autograph extant at the National Library of Portugal

6. An Evening of Irish Music

7. Légende norvégienne: Unknown work by the Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe at the Royal Library of Belgium

8. RISM at the AIBM Conference

9. New Coordinating Committee Elected

10. Vivaldi Embedded – Violin concerto by Brescianello turns out to be a pasticcio

This list also highlights the work of our colleagues in different countries: Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.

The most popular links on our Facebook page were:

1. “Frère Jacques” a été composé par Jean Philippe Rameau ! (Radio France): The discovery by musicologist Sylvie Bouissou that the famous canon “Frère Jacques” was written by Jean-Philippe Rameau

2. Long-lost original score of Mozart masterpiece found in Budapest (CTV News): Our RISM Hungary colleague Balazs Mikusi’s discovery of a Mozart autograph in Budapest

3. And a video from the ceremony where the autograph was unveiled to the public:

1. Canadian musicologist makes 900 year old discovery (Radio Canada International): About early music notation

2. Joseph Haydn’s Real Wife: Michael Lorenz has identified Haydn’s wife as Maria Anna Theresia Keller (born 25 September 1730), not Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller

As you may have noticed from this list, 2014 was a year of exciting discoveries.

RISM was also mentioned in the following articles, which we have listed on the RISM bibliography:

• Geck, Karl Wilhelm. “Knowing what exists …: Akademienunion verlängert Förderung der deutschen RISM-Arbeitsstellen.” BIS: Das Magazin der Bibliotheken in Sachsen 7:3 (2014), 179. Available online

• Herrmann-Schneider, Hildegard. “Throwing Some Light on the History of Verdi and Wagner Reception in Tyrol,” Fontes artis musicae 61, no. 2 (2014): 163-172.

• Martin, Cheryl. “RISM Canada Report.” CAML Review 42:3 (November 2014): 23-26. Available online

• Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. “Search engines for digitally encoded scores,” Early Music 42: 4 (November 2014): 591-598. Available online

• Voss, Steffen. “Friedrich der Grosse würde sich freuen. Finanzierung deutscher RISM-Arbeitsstellen bis 2025 gesichert.” Bibliotheksmagazin: Mitteilungen aus den Staatsbibliotheken in Berlin und München 2 (2014): 48-52. Available online

• Voss, Steffen. “Anna Merkje Cramer. Unbekannte Lieder von niederländischer Komponistin in Köln entdeckt.” VivaVoce 98 (Frühling 2014): 12-13. Available online

We are always interested in hearing about work from our RISM national groups as well as news about manuscripts and other historical sources. If you have anything you’d like to share, please drop us a line. Visitors to the RISM website come from all over the world, as you can see from the blue on the map on the left.

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Category: New at RISM

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