News archive
RISM and Beethoven and the 19th Century
Ludwig van Beethoven is certainly the most prominent of the 2020 musician anniversaries. But his birth year of 1770 was unlucky for him in the early days of RISM. As many in the RISM community know, many RISM projects traditionally stopped at the year 1800, excluding much of Beethoven’s oeuvre....
12 March 2020 – Musical anniversaries
"In Frankfurt a/m zu haben bey Musikus Ludwig": Identifying the Copyist Johann Wilhelm Ludwig
By fortunate coincidence, a short while ago we were able to identify the previously unknown “Musikus Ludwig,” who produced custom-made manuscript copies of Italian and German vocal music at the beginning of the 19th century in Frankfurt am Main. Starting with an advertisement in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (AmZ), we...
9 March 2020 – Rediscovered
New Imported Records from France
After receiving a batch of records from the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and after an intensive period of technical preparations, we gained some experience and found some ways for an automated data conversion. In fall 2019, ca. 19,000 records for handwritten musical sources were then transferred to the...
5 March 2020 – Library collections
The 2019 Annual Report
The 2019 annual report for the RISM Central Office has now been published. You can read the report in its entirety on the RISM website. Here are some of the highlights: New Board of Directors: President: Prof. Dr. Klaus Pietschmann, Mainz Vice President: Prof. Dr. Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl, Salzburg Secretary: Dr....
2 March 2020 – New publications
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
