News archive
A Donizetti Discovery
The following entry is by Nicolas Bell and originally appeared on the British Library Music Blog. It is reprinted here with kind permission. The British Library’s Stefan Zweig Collection of musical, literary and historical autograph manuscripts includes many well-known treasures, but there are other pieces which have proved more difficult...
9 October 2014 – Rediscovered
New (and first) siglum for Monaco
At the beginning of June 2014, the first RISM library siglum for the Principality of Monaco was created: MC-MCpgil, for the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco-Ville. The heart of the collection is made up of songs of Irish-American origin and Irish books. Many of the music scores were collected...
6 October 2014 – New at RISM
Who was František Ignác Tůma (1704-1774)?
Today marks the 310th birthday of František Ignác Tůma. But who is celebrating? Probably nobody, because only a few people today have heard of him. A stele with organ pipes commemorates the Czech composer at his birthplace Adlerkosteletz (today Kostelec nad Orlicí). Tůma received his musical education in Prague and...
2 October 2014 – Musical anniversaries
Robert Eitner
We are pleased to present the following article written by our intern, Martin Bierwisch: Who hasn’t heard of Robert Eitner (1832-1905)? If you are a musicologist, it’s hard to avoid him and his Biographisch-Bibliographisches Quellenlexikon (Bio-Bibliographical Source Lexicon). This work also happens to be available online through the University of...
29 September 2014 – RISM A-Z
Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek
Ten years ago, in September 2004, a devastating fire broke out at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar (D-WRz). In total, 196,000 books and manuscripts, including music materials, were in the building that burned. 28,000 were spared but 50,000 were completely destroyed. A further 118,000 items sustained damage during...
25 September 2014 – Musical anniversaries
IAML Poland Celebrates 50 Years
This week, our Polish colleagues are celebrating the 50th anniversary of IAML Poland with a conference in Warsaw on 23-24 September 2014. The topic of the conference is Music Information in the Future (Muzyczna Informacja Jutra). IAML president Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie has been invited to deliver a presentation about the...
22 September 2014 – Events
Mozart: New Documents
From the AMS we have received the following announcement: We are pleased to announce the availability of a new online resource, Mozart: New Documents. The site will present recently uncovered references to Mozart and his music from the composer’s lifetime that have yet to appear in the scholarly literature. Many...
18 September 2014 – Electronic resources
Matthew Dubourg
Today, our series RISM from A to Z brings us to Matthew Dubourg. Though there are only 7 works by him in the RISM database, one of those is a digitized copy of his Violin Concerto in D major, for which no published edition had previously existed. For RISM’s concert...
15 September 2014 – RISM A-Z
250th anniversary of Jean-Philippe Rameau's death
Jean-Philippe Rameau died 250 years ago today. The RISM online catalog has 230 works by him in over 40 libraries. The sources are widely disseminated throughout Europe and the United States and are mostly of Rameau’s stage works. There is also one autograph manuscript among them: sketches to a keyboard...
12 September 2014 – Musical anniversaries
Jommelli at 300
Along with C. P. E. Bach and Christoph Willibald Gluck, there is another composer who was born exactly 300 years ago: Niccolò Jommelli (1714 – 1774). Jommelli was famous in his lifetime for his numerous operas and also wrote a number of oratorios, masses, and other sacred vocal music. While...
10 September 2014 – Musical anniversaries
