News archive – Library collections
Microfilms? Microfilms! 70 Years of the German Archive of Music History
On 1 October 1954 the Musikgeschichtliche Kommission, a free association of renowned musicologists and music librarians, laid the foundation stone for the German Archive of Music History (Deutsches Musikgeschichtliches Archiv, DMgA), which has been located in Kassel since its founding. With an eye to the substantial changes caused by the...
14 November 2024
Digitised music manuscripts made available online
The following originally appeared on the Music Blog of the British Library and is posted here under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence. Following the cyber-attack on the British Library last year, staff have been working behind the scenes to restore access to the Library’s digitised manuscripts. The Library has now...
24 October 2024
Musical discoveries from English local archives
The previous RISM news item introduced the project Music, Heritage, Place: Unlocking the Musical Collections of England’s County Record Offices, led by Royal Holloway, University of London. This article introduces some of the sources recently discovered or catalogued in the project, to show the range of musical heritage found in...
4 October 2024
Music from English local archives in RISM
The following guest post is by Stephen Rose (Head of Music Department, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK): Until recently, RISM’s records for the United Kingdom have focused on the holdings of major research libraries such as the British Library, Cambridge University Library and Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Now a richer...
26 September 2024
‘The Seven Last Words of Christ’ by Haydn and Barbieri
An ambitious digitization project targeting the musical heritage collections of the National Library of Spain has provided access to 31,000 musical sources that were long accessible only in the reading room, thereby inspiring both musicians and scholars to new discoveries. In the following we reprint from the library’s blog –...
18 July 2024
Samuel Wesley’s Fugue for Mendelssohn
The following is by Dominic Newman and originally appeared on the British Library’s Music blog (© British Library Board, Creative Commons Attribution Licence). Just before the end of his life, Samuel Wesley – the elder composer, 1766–1837, the middle of the three main Samuels in the Wesley dynasty – experienced...
18 April 2024
Early sources of J.S. Bach's English Suites united in Leipzig
The following originally appeared on the Bach Archiv Leipzig, Germany. It is published here with kind permission. New collectibles from our treasury Early sources of J.S. Bach’s English Suites united in Leipzig The »English Suites« – one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most famous collections of works for keyboard instruments –...
28 March 2024
Enhancing Visibility of American Music Manuscripts at the Library of Congress
We have received the following from Dr. Paul Allen Sommerfeld (Library of Congress) and his Summer 2023 intern, Jasper Forster (University of Michigan): Working as a Junior Fellow for the Library of Congress Music Division during Summer 2023, Jasper Forster created RISM records for music manuscripts by Black American composers...
8 February 2024
The Cantata of the Last Things of Man by Ladislav Vycpálek
The following guest post is by Pavel Kordík (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), National Library Prague): Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the establishment of its Music Department (1923–2023), the National Library of the Czech Republic exhibits a printed edition of an important work by its founder, composer Ladislav Vycpálek...
23 November 2023
The 'Master Muñoz Pedrera' collection in RISM
We have received the following from Juan Francisco Murcia Galián (Conservatorio Superior de Música “Manuel Massotti Littel” de Murcia, Spain) (Spanish follows): Pedro Muñoz Pedrera (1865-1925) was a musician born in Murcia, Spain. He began his musical education with Julian Calvo, composer and organist of the cathedral of Murcia. Later...
14 September 2023
