News archive – Library collections
Franz Liszt at the Library of Congress
We have received this announcement of the new Franz Liszt portal from Susan Clermont (Music Division, Library of Congress): The Music Division is a vital resource for primary source material related to the life and work of Franz Liszt (1811-1886). From the earliest days of the Music Division, 1st editions...
17 November 2022
Magdalene Partbooks
We have received the following from Catherine Sutherland (Magdalene College, UK): The Magdalene Partbooks (RISM ID no. 1001209736; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) are a collection of over 650 pieces, many of which have been identified as arrangements of incidental music from plays of the 17th and early 18th centuries,...
27 October 2022
Bel canto and beyond
The following is by Christina Linklater (U. S. RISM Office, Harvard University) and originally appeared on the Loeb Music Library’s blog. It is reprinted here with kind permission. The Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library has recently acquired the personal collection of Italian accompanist, conductor and vocal coach Luigi Ricci (1893-1981):...
6 October 2022
IFMuC: Musical Heritage in Catalonia
We have received the following from Josep Maria Gregori i Cifré (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona): Catalonia is one of the few European regions on its way to discovering the richness of its musical heritage with respect to the repertory of compositions by its chapel masters, organists and musicians, which are...
30 June 2022
Historical Music from the Badische Landesbibliothek (D-KA)
The Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe has completed a massive project to catalog all notated music in its collections. A report of this undertaking by Julia von Hiller was originally published on the BLBlog. The portions mentioning RISM are summarized here; for the full version, please switch to the German page...
30 May 2022
RISM at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The following is by David Floyd, Binghamton University and Kirstin Dougan Johnson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Kirstin Some of you may recall my presentation at IAML 2018 in Leipzig where I reported on the early findings of my institution’s work to inventory our holdings reported in RISM under...
5 May 2022
Conserving creativity—the case of Beethoven’s ‘Kafka’ sketch miscellany
The following originally appeared on the British Library’s Music blog (© British Library Board, Creative Commons Attribution Licence). In this blog post we look at a recent conservation project involving an important Beethoven manuscript known as the ‘Kafka’ sketch miscellany (Add MS 29801). How did the manuscript come to be...
28 April 2022
Music Manuscripts from the Święta Lipka Collection (Poland)
Our Polish contributors at the University of Warsaw have recently finished cataloging the collection of Święta Lipka (Województwo warmińsko-mazurskie), known historically in German as Heiligelinde (East Prussia), which is preserved at the Bobolanum in Warsaw (RISM library siglum: PL-Wb). The descriptions of the sources have now been published in the...
7 April 2022
Royal Library of Belgium acquires César Franck autograph manuscript
We have received the following from Marie Cornaz (RISM Belgium): Last December, the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) acquired the complete autograph manuscript of the orchestrated version of the Messe for three voices in A major by the Liège composer César Franck (1822-1890), a work listed under the reference CCF...
30 March 2022
Beethoven at the British Library – a list of online resources
The following is by Chris Scobie and originally appeared on the British Library’s Music blog (© British Library Board, Creative Commons Attribution Licence). The British Library is currently hosting an exhibition about Beethoven, which can be viewed until the end of April. Our Beethoven exhibition draws on the British Library’s rich collection...
15 March 2022
