News archive
Michael Altenburg in 1621
No fewer than three printed editions containing works solely by Michael Altenburg (1584-1640) were published in 1621. Tragically, this year was also a dramatic turning point in his life. But first things first. As the son of a village blacksmith, Altenburg first studied theology starting in 1598 in Erfurt. After...
1 November 2021 – Musical anniversaries
Three Venetian Manuscripts: Originals or Forgeries?
The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice (I-Vnm) preserves three beautifully designed manuscripts containing solo songs and arias: Cod. It. IV, 740 (=10313) (RISM ID no. 850699985), Cod. It. IV, 742 (=10318) (RISM ID no. 850701873), and Cod. It. IV, 743 (=10317) (RISM ID no. 850702408). The works are by 17th-century...
28 October 2021 – Library collections
André Printed Editions Now Dated to Plate Number 1400
We know that plate and publisher numbers are especially helpful when dating the music editions of many publishers from the 18th and 19th centuries. RISM’s A/I volumes, which documented printed music by a single composer, had very few editions from the Offenbach publisher Johann André that were dated. (One of...
25 October 2021 – New at RISM
Martorell Collection of Opera Scores Now Online from the Library of Congress
We have received the following from Karen Lund (Library of Congress): The Music Division of the Library of Congress is happy to announce the launch of a new digital collection, the “Martorell Collection,” at: https://www.loc.gov/collections/martorell-collection/ The largest subset of the “Martorell Collection” includes 253 uniformly-bound volumes comprising well over 1,100...
21 October 2021 – New at RISM
Digitised music manuscripts update at the British Library
The following is by Chris Scobie (Lead Curator, Music Manuscripts) and was originally published on the Music Blog of the British Library (Creative Commons Attribution Licence): Following our recent blog post about newly digitised material from the Royal Music Library, we thought it might be useful to provide an updated...
18 October 2021 – Library collections
André Guerra Cotta In Memoriam
We were deeply saddened to hear of the recent death of our colleague André Guerra Cotta (1966-2021). André was one of the founding members of RISM Brazil when it was reactivated in 2005 and he represented the working group at conferences in Brazil and abroad. He was a consistent presence...
14 October 2021 – In memoriam
Lute Manuscripts at Cambridge
The following is by James Luff and originally appeared on the MusiCB3 Blog. It is reprinted here with kind permission. I spent quite a bit of my spare time during lockdown learning to play the lute. So naturally, I was excited when I discovered that Cambridge has some extraordinary lute...
11 October 2021 – Library collections
The Hits of the 1790s: Charles Dibdin’s "The Wags"
We have received the following from David Chandler (Retrospect Opera): Charles Dibdin’s The Wags (1790) was by far the most successful of his celebrated one-man shows, or, as he liked to call them (developing the idea of tabletalk), “Table Entertainments.” As the leading singer-songwriter of his era, he would stand...
7 October 2021 – New publications
Unheard of: Solo Sonatas by Albert Louis Frédéric Baptiste in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
The following is by Antje Becker and was first published in a longer form in Dossier Forschung der Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz. It is reprinted here with kind permission. Albert Louis Frédéric Baptiste (also spelled Batiste or Battista) was born in July 1700 in Oettingen (Bavaria). His father, Johann, was from...
4 October 2021 – Library collections
José Avellaneda in RISM
We have received the following from Enrique Payo León (Universidad de Salamanca): José Larena-Avellaneda y Rodríguez (José Avellaneda) was a violinist who lived between 1863 and 1920 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain). The development of his artistic career took him to London several times, but the activities of...
30 September 2021 – Library collections
