News archive
Samuel Wesley’s Fugue for Mendelssohn
The following is by Dominic Newman and originally appeared on the British Library’s Music blog (© British Library Board, Creative Commons Attribution Licence). Just before the end of his life, Samuel Wesley – the elder composer, 1766–1837, the middle of the three main Samuels in the Wesley dynasty – experienced...
18 April 2024 – Library collections
Vicente Lusitano in RISM
An article last year in Early Music America entitled “Vicente Lusitano – A Legacy Recovered” by Garrett Schumann reminded us of how important it is to ensure that musical sources of underrepresented composers are more visible in the digital environment. Vicente Lusitano (ca. 1522-after 1561) was a Portuguese composer and...
11 April 2024 – New at RISM
Early sources of J.S. Bach's English Suites united in Leipzig
The following originally appeared on the Bach Archiv Leipzig, Germany. It is published here with kind permission. New collectibles from our treasury Early sources of J.S. Bach’s English Suites united in Leipzig The »English Suites« – one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most famous collections of works for keyboard instruments –...
28 March 2024 – Library collections
News from the Czech RISM Working Group
In the field of musicology and music documentation, the most important contributions of the Music Department of the National Library of the Czech Republic involve the cataloging of musical sources in the RISM database. Most of this work forms part of a project supported by the Ministry of Culture of...
21 March 2024 – New at RISM
Annual Report 2023
Crowning the intensive development of several years, by late 2023 the RISM database hit a new benchmark of 1.5 million source records, freely searchable through both the classic RISM Catalog and the recently developed RISM Online interface. This impressive increase in part results from the ongoing cataloging activity of our...
14 March 2024 – New publications
Paper and Copyists in Viennese Opera Scores, 1760–1775
The following guest post is by Martin Eybl (Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Interpretationsforschung, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, Austria): Hundreds of works by Haydn, Gluck, and other Viennese composers are only known from manuscript copies prepared by their contemporaries. As a rule, such manuscripts are undated, which makes...
7 March 2024 – New at RISM
Musical Leap Year Babies
Famous Leap Year Day babies are rare, although among the composers Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) is very well known. But the RISM database has many more people who celebrate their birthdays on February 29. The English composer Humphrey Bralesford (1658-1733; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) has...
29 February 2024 – Events
Thematic Catalogue of the Music Collection of the Strachota Family from Panenský Týnec
We have received the following publication announcement from Eliška Šedivá (RISM Czech Republic): Catalogus collectionis operum musicalium ex possessione familiae Strachota in Tinez (ed. Eliška Šedivá, translation of the introduction by Andy Letham), Prague: National Library of the Czech Republic, 2023. 2 vols (713 pp.), in: Catalogus artis musicae in...
22 February 2024 – New publications
A new thematic catalogue of the musical works of Johann Georg Pisendel (PW) is now available
We have received the following from Fabrizio Ammetto (University of Guanajuato, Mexico): Three violinists- cum-musicologists hailing from three different countries (Italy, Spain and Colombia) – Fabrizio Ammetto, Francisco Javier Lupiáñez Ruiz and Luis Miguel Pinzón Acosta – have recently produced a new thematic catalogue of the musical works of the...
15 February 2024 – New publications
Enhancing Visibility of American Music Manuscripts at the Library of Congress
We have received the following from Dr. Paul Allen Sommerfeld (Library of Congress) and his Summer 2023 intern, Jasper Forster (University of Michigan): Working as a Junior Fellow for the Library of Congress Music Division during Summer 2023, Jasper Forster created RISM records for music manuscripts by Black American composers...
8 February 2024 – Library collections
