News archive
Musician Anniversaries in 2022
Happy New Year! As in past years, we are using the beginning of the year to look at significant anniversaries of birth or death for people found in the RISM catalog. We are listing not only our RISM composers, but also librettists, performers, dedicatees, or other people who are connected...
10 January 2022 – Musical anniversaries
Happy Holidays 2021!
The RISM Editorial Center wishes you all the best for a festive holiday season, fittingly with a historical Christmas and New Year’s card from as early as 1843. We are grateful for your interest in our work and in particular for your valuable contributions that help us improve our service...
20 December 2021 – Events
RISM: How is it good for musicians?
As its multilingual name suggests, the Association Européenne des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen seeks to represent the interests of higher music education institutions on an international level. Besides its annual congresses, the AEC organizes several events dedicated to more specific areas, most recently the Early Music Platform 2021,...
16 December 2021 – Events
New Catalogue of the Diocesan Library in Sandomierz, Poland
We have received the following from Magda Walter-Mazur (RISM Poland). We previously reported on this cataloguing project in August 2021. The first part of the catalogue documenting the music collection of the Diocesan Library in Sandomierz has just been released. The book is the work of Magdalena Walter-Mazur, Karolina Kaźmierczak...
13 December 2021 – New publications
Caroline Unger, A Prima Donna for Donizetti
The godmother of the later opera singer Caroline Unger (28 October 1803, Vienna - 23 March 1877, Florence) was no less than the writer Caroline Pichler, who lived close to the Unger family. Unger grew up at a boarding school. Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart was one of her first piano...
9 December 2021 – RISM A-Z
Liturgical Festivals in the Western Church for the Christmas Season
The church year in Western Christianity begins with the First Sunday of Advent during the Christmas season. Ever since the liturgical reform after the Second Vatican Council, the Christmas cycle in the Roman Catholic church lasts forty days, until Epiphany (Trium Regum in RISM) on 6 January. Prior to the...
6 December 2021 – Events
Karl Gottlieb Umbreit (1763-1829)
The Thuringian organist Karl Gottlieb Umbreit was a pupil of the Erfurt organist Johann Christian Kittel (1732-1809), who in turn had been a pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach. Umbreit’s compositions and especially his pedagogical works and influence center around role of the organ in church services. His Allgemeines Choral=Buch für...
2 December 2021 – RISM A-Z
The Robin and Music
The fall bird migration is just about over here in Germany and many species have found their way to their winter quarters. But the European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) stays with us throughout the year and continues to show up at backyard feeders even as the days grow colder and darker....
29 November 2021 – In the news
Of Misspelt and Corrected Title Pages
Imagine you are an engraver and have spent hours if not days bent over the plate of a title page that you were asked to make by a music publisher – and then you notice an error. What now? Start over? Leave the error? Or is there some way of...
25 November 2021 – New at RISM
Frescobaldi Thematic Catalogue Online: New Edition
We have received the following from Alexander Silbiger (Professor Emeritus, Department of Music, Duke University): Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) was the first major composer in the history of Western music to concentrate on instrumental music. In quantity, his surviving keyboard works far surpass those of any predecessor or contemporary; he was...
22 November 2021 – Electronic resources
