News archive
New Members of the RISM Commission Mixte Announced
RISM operates under the auspices of the International Musicological Society and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. When RISM was founded, a Commission Mixte (CM) was established that consists of delegates from both of these societies. The CM was reorganized in 2007 by then-president Christoph Wolff....
10 August 2017 – New at RISM
Liturgical Festivals in the RISM Database with Three Examples
These holidays are familiar to many: saint’s feast days, the celebration of name days, and the Christian holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. But did you know that the Church also celebrates historical events such as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross? One clear example of the significance of...
7 August 2017 – RISM online catalog
New RISM Brochure Available in Portuguese
RISM is pleased to announce that the brochure “RISM: An Overview” is now available in an English-Portuguese version entitled “RISM: Uma visão Geral.” It can be downloaded from the RISM website. We would like to thank Beatriz Magalhães Castro (RISM Brazil) and Sílvia Sequeira (RISM Portugal) for translating the brochure...
3 August 2017 – New publications
Amélie-Julie Candeille at 250
Child prodigy, singer, actress, composer, librettist, harpist, pianist, playwright, comedian, or maybe simply polymath…few of the people in the RISM database can lay claim to so many roles. Amélie-Julie Candeille (1767-1834), who was born 250 years ago today, found success on a number of fronts in Parisian musical life and...
31 July 2017 – Musical anniversaries
Riga, RISM, Līgo
Four people from the RISM Central Office attended the annual IAML Congress in Riga, Latvia in June 2017. The following is a congress diary from all four participants that was originally published on the IAML website. In keeping with the Congress Diary tradition, the reflections are presented in the native...
27 July 2017 – Events
Mark the Music! Uncovering Musical Sources in Sweden
Last month, the week before the IAML Congress in Riga, the Svenska musikbiblioteksföreningen (the Swedish branch of IAML) hosted a course called Mark the Music — a course for librarians working with music. Pia Shekhter (University of Gothenburg’s Music and Drama Library) invited me (Jennifer Ward) to give a presentation...
24 July 2017 – Events
Timothy Swan (1758-1842): An Early American Composer
We might be able to call Timothy Swan one of the first American composers. Born on July 23, 1758, in the British colony of Massachusetts, Swan initially worked as a merchant in his youth and learned the trade of hatmaking. He had very little music training (three weeks of vocal...
20 July 2017 – Musical anniversaries
A Musicological Summer in Frankfurt
Our intern in the summer of 2017 was Vivian Tompkins, and what follows is a report of her experiences: Musicology, music librarianship, and German language study are the three main interests that I discovered in the course of my undergraduate career, so it was thrilling for me to find out...
17 July 2017 – New at RISM
Eva Judd O’Meara: A Music Librarian in a New Profession
The series RISM A–Z brings us to the letter O, which today stands for Eva Judd O’Meara. Miss O’Meara is the first music librarian that features in our series. Richard Boursy, archivist at the Gilmore Music Library, Yale University, tells us about the life and career of someone who was...
13 July 2017 – RISM A-Z
Deciphered any initials today?
The following article is by Martin Bierwisch, a student worker at the Central Office. From time to time, diligent users of the RISM online catalog send us information regarding the identification of pieces, particularly printed editions, where the composers are named only by initials (these are the pieces with A/I...
10 July 2017 – RISM online catalog
