News archive
Diversity in RISM
There are over 138,000 people in the RISM online catalog: not all composers or musicians who ever lived, but only those who are connected with a musical source. Biographical information is recorded about each person in a separate record so that we can clearly identify the person and separate them...
26 October 2020 – Library collections
Introductory Muscat Workshops in November (FULL)
The workshops are now full. If you are interested in attending a future Muscat workshop, please write to contact@rism.info and we will let you know when future dates have been set. The RISM Central Office will be hosting an online, introductory two-part workshop on cataloging musical sources using the program...
22 October 2020 – Events
Announcing the new RISM UK Catalogue
The following originally appeared on the Music Blog of the British Library on 16 October 2020 (Creative Commons): RISM UK is pleased to announce the launch of the new RISM UK Catalogue. The catalogue is a subset of the international RISM Online Catalogue of Musical Sources. It contains all data...
19 October 2020 – Library collections
Printed Music and Early Printed Books
We are excited to be included in the list of catalogs on the website Early Printed Books by Sarah Werner, a resource for exploring the history of the medium between 1450 to 1800. The website complements the book Studying Early Printed Books 1450–1800: A Practical Guide (Wiley, 2019) and offers...
15 October 2020 – New at RISM
The Other Giacomo Puccini
No, today we don’t mean the opera composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), who has ca. 100 entries in the RISM database, but rather the composer of sacred music. Giacomo Puccini was the great-great grandfather of the famous opera composer and lived from 1712 to 1781. He studied in Bologna and was...
12 October 2020 – New at RISM
The Fondo Cappella Sistina in RISM
We have received the following from Thomas Schmidt (Dean of Music, Humanities and Media, Professor of Musicology, University of Huddersfield): The catalogue of the music sources of the Fondo Cappella Sistina in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana goes back to a research project under the direction of Ludwig Finscher, funded by...
8 October 2020 – Library collections
Jenny Lind at 200
The famous Swedish soprano Jenny Lind was born 200 years ago, on October 6, 1820. In the RISM database, Lind is not only named on sources as a singer (such as in the Swedish song “Der Hirt” by Isak Berg) but also as a dedicatee, former owner, and even copyist....
5 October 2020 – Musical anniversaries
Eugenia Tadolini
Italian opera of the 19th century presented new challenges for singers, especially for coloratura sopranos. Eugenia Tadolini (1808-1872) delighted the public as well as numerous composers throughout her over twenty-year career. Atypically for a coloratura soprano, she refrained from adding her own coloratura passages, such as in the role of...
28 September 2020 – RISM A-Z
Friedrich W. Riedel (1929-2020)
Prof. Dr. Friedrich W. Riedel, who led the RISM Zentralredaktion from 1960 to 1967 when it was in Kassel, died on 10 September 2020. Friedrich Wilhelm Riedel was born in 1929 in Cuxhaven and studied sacred music in Lübeck and music, history, and liturgics in Kiel, earning his doctorate in...
24 September 2020 – In memoriam
Help RISM identify unknown languages
We were editing some records and found that around 100 vocal pieces in the RISM database have the language code “undetermined.” Do you recognize any of the languages used in the text? Take a look at the table and let us know if anything looks familiar (link also here): ...
21 September 2020 – RISM online catalog
