News archive
Musical Leap Year Babies
Famous Leap Year Day babies are rare, but among the composers, Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) is probably the best known. But the RISM database has even more people who celebrate their birthdays on February 29. The English composer Humphrey Bralesford (1658-1733) has almost only manuscripts for services in RISM, which are...
27 February 2020 – Events
Copies of Opera Scores at the Library of Congress and an Identified Copyist
Research on musicians of the Central Rhine region in Germany sometimes leads to the Library of Congress. Hugo Willemsen (1844-1918), who was born in Elberfeld and whose career took him to Bingen, Speyer, and Saarbrücken, settled in London around 1895. Beginning around 1907, he received orders through Oscar Sonneck to...
24 February 2020 – Library collections
Richard Strauss Digital
We are reprinting the following with the kind permission of the SLUB Dresden: At last, Richard Strauss is in the public domain. As of 1 January 2020, his works may be made available to the public without any special permission or payment. The SLUB Digital Collections now feature selected Straussiana...
20 February 2020 – Electronic resources
Henry Vieuxtemps at 200
We have received the following from Marie Cornaz (Bibliothèque royale de Belgique - Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België/RISM Belgium): In 2020, Belgium celebrates the 200thbirthday of one of its main musical figures: violinist and composer Henry Vieuxtemps (1820-1881). Vieuxtemps was a child prodigy from Verviers, a small town near Liège. He...
17 February 2020 – Musical anniversaries
Lovey-Dovey
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day! The turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) is an ancient symbol of love, devotion, and affection in many cultures. The bird makes a distinctive cooing sound and is known to be true to its mate. Medieval readers of the Physiologus knew of the bird’s fidelity: upon the death...
13 February 2020 – Events
Articles about Spanish printed music in the 16th century
Spanish below (thanks to Carmen Álvarez Escandell) Recently, we at RISM have read three interesting articles about Spanish printed music in the 16th century: “Printed polyphony acquired by Toledo Cathedral, 1532-1669” by Michael Noone, in Early Music Printing and Publishing in the Iberian World, ed. Iain Fenlon and...
4 February 2020 – New publications
Release of Muscat 6.0 and Import of the Swiss dataset
Muscat 6.0-the latest version of RISM’s central cataloging program for musical sources-is the culmination of several months of work from the development team. This new version brings many “under the hood” improvements and includes various new features. Import of the Swiss dataset Most importantly, Muscat 6.0 was made to merge...
29 January 2020 – RISM Digital Center
Version 4.0 of Weber Complete Edition Digital Edition Published
The digital edition of the Carl Maria von Weber Complete Edition has just released its Version 4.0. It offers a number of interesting new developments from both technical and content points of view. From the technical side, the site’s responsive web design was improved so that the pages can be...
23 January 2020 – Electronic resources
RISM and Katy Perry
Fifteen musicologists from institutions around the world have come together to argue that singer-songwriter Katy Perry was wrongly convicted of copyright infringement. What is their evidence? Music found in the RISM database, among other things. In 2019, Perry was ordered to pay $2.8 million when a jury found her guilty...
20 January 2020 – In the news
Looking Back on 2019
The year 2020 is still young, but let’s take a moment to look back on 2019 at the most popular stories from the world of musical sources that we published here on the RISM blog. May 2020 be as rich with discoveries! New Music Manuscripts from...
16 January 2020 – New at RISM
