News archive
Bach Family Autographs Online
Have you ever seen Johann Sebastian Bach’s Art of the Fugue in the composer’s own handwriting? How about the St. Matthew Passion or the Well-Tempered Clavier? With the Bach Digital database, you have all this and more at your fingertips. If you’re not familiar with this resource, Bach Digital is...
16 April 2018 – Electronic resources
The Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth is open again, in all its Baroque glory
After more than five years of renovation, the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth will reopen in a ceremony today (12 April). This Baroque opera house is one of a kind in the world, with a splendid wooden interior surrounded by tiered boxes, and has been a UNESCO World Heritage site...
12 April 2018 – Events
RISM's B/III (The Theory of Music) Now a Database
We have received this announcement from our colleague Christian Meyer: The catalogs of manuscripts described in RISM’s series B/III (The Theory of Music, 6 vol., Munich: G. Henle, 1961-2003), published online in 2001 through the Lexicon musicum Latinum (LML), is now available as a database. The HTML pages and the...
9 April 2018 – Electronic resources
Byzantine Music Archives join Muscat
We have received the following announcement from Arsinoi Ioannidou on behalf of RISM Greece: The Working Group of the RISM Office in Greece, Maria Aslanidi, Aris Bazmadelis and Arsinoi Ioannidou, is currently embarking on a nationwide project to document Byzantine music in Greece, using Muscat. However, although Byzantine music is...
3 April 2018 – New at RISM
Remembering Danuta Szlagowska (1946-2018)
We were saddened to hear of the death of our dear colleague Prof. Dr. Hab. Danuta Szlagwoska, who passed away on 13 March 2018. Prof. Szlagwoska had been a member of the RISM Poland working group in Gdańsk since 1997. Through her extensive documentation work there, she contributed immensely to...
26 March 2018 – In memoriam
100th Anniversary of Claude Debussy's Death
The following post is by Ulrike Schädel, our intern for winter 2018: This Sunday, 25 March 2018, marks the 100th anniversary of Claude Debussy’s death. He was born in a little French village in 1862 and died at the age of 56 in 1918 in Paris. The RISM database reveals...
22 March 2018 – Musical anniversaries
The Compositions Attributed to G. F. Handel, 1700-1800
This one is new to our bookshelves: Hans Joachim Marx and Steffen Voss, Die G. F. Händel zugeschriebenen Kompositionen, 1700-1800 / The Compositions Attributed to G. F. Handel, 1700-1800 (HWV Anh. B) (Hildesheim: Olms, 2017). ISBN: 978-3-487-15483-1. This book is the result of a project called “Händel-Incerta,” or works of...
19 March 2018 – New publications
Lili Boulanger (21 August 1893–15 March 1918)
The following is a guest post by Dr. Anya Holland-Barry. She received her PhD in Musicology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her dissertation is entitled “Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) and World War I France: Mobilizing Motherhood and the Good Suffering.” Marie-Juliette Olga (“Lili”) Boulanger (21 August 1893–15 March 1918)...
15 March 2018 – Musical anniversaries
The Music Printing History Online Museum
We stumbled upon this interesting online museum: Music Printing History. It details different technological aspects concerning printing music and is richly illustrated. You can see examples of the technology that brought about the historical printed music that RISM currently covers (to about 1800): woodblocks, movable type (image, left), and engraving....
12 March 2018 – Electronic resources
International Women's Day: Women Pianists in RISM
Note: This post was updated in 2022. Today is International Women’s Day. Last year we published a list of the ca. 800 women composers who are found in the RISM online database. In June we added eight more names to the list and in October another twelve were added. This...
8 March 2018 – Events
