The targeted digitisation project ‘Digital Music Unica in Switzerland’ (D-MUS)

Claudio Bacciagaluppi

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Historically, digitisation of printed publications - historical or recent - was initiated more than 20 years ago with large-scale projects such as Gallica and Google books. Today, it is necessary to initiate targeted projects to specifically document rarer sources. As we know - and see in this regard the news post of 2 May 2025 - a large number of printed music editions have been preserved in a single copy. The digitisation project of RISM Switzerland, Digital Music Unica in Switzerland, aims to document all the unique copies preserved in Switzerland in the coming years. This is an impressive number of 1,400 titles, of which about 10% have been digitised so far.

The most recent digitisation campaign concerned the music library of the Benedictine monastery in Engelberg (RISM library siglum: CH-EN (RISM Catalog | RISM Online)) which, following a fire destroyed the complex in 1729, contains musical sources mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries that were in use in the monastery itself and in the abbey school (Stiftsschule). The digitised sources include, among others, late 18th-century Lieder by Franz Ludwig Bauerschmidt (RISM Catalog | RISM Online) and Johann Gottlieb Ulrich (RISM Catalog | RISM Online). Of particular interest for local history are the works of the Lucerne composers Franz Joseph Leonti Meyer von Schauensee (RISM Catalog | RISM Online) and Joseph Franz Xaver Dominik Stalder (RISM Catalog | RISM Online).

Image: Panorama of Engelberg from the courtyard of the monastery. Photo courtesy of the author.

Category: New at RISM