News archive – Library collections
Music Manuscripts from the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg to the Mid-17th Century: Cataloging, Digitizing, and Watermark Thermography
We have received the following from Bernhard Lutz (Bavarian State Library): Starting November 2020, the Bavarian State Library will catalog and digitize ca. 80 music manuscripts from the dawn of music notation to the mid-17th century owned by the State and City Library of Augsburg (Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg; RISM...
2 November 2020
Diversity in RISM
There are over 138,000 people in the RISM online catalog: not all composers or musicians who ever lived, but only those who are connected with a musical source. Biographical information is recorded about each person in a separate record so that we can clearly identify the person and separate them...
26 October 2020
Announcing the new RISM UK Catalogue
The following originally appeared on the Music Blog of the British Library on 16 October 2020 (Creative Commons): RISM UK is pleased to announce the launch of the new RISM UK Catalogue. The catalogue is a subset of the international RISM Online Catalogue of Musical Sources. It contains all data...
19 October 2020
The Fondo Cappella Sistina in RISM
We have received the following from Thomas Schmidt (Dean of Music, Humanities and Media, Professor of Musicology, University of Huddersfield): The catalogue of the music sources of the Fondo Cappella Sistina in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana goes back to a research project under the direction of Ludwig Finscher, funded by...
8 October 2020
Taking on “Anonymous”
Thanks to numerous tips from several colleagues, we are now able to provide more specific information about collections of arias that are housed at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena (I-MOe). Many of the composers of unattributed arias have been identified, as well as the operas that the arias are from....
24 August 2020
The anonymous cantata "Chiuso è già Borea nevoso"
Over 230,000 sources in the RISM online catalog are anonymous and often languish unnoticed. One cantata, however, shows that it is sometimes worth it to leave trusted paths of inquiry: this beautiful manuscript from 1716. As a matter of fact, we know quite a bit about the work: Antonio Ottoboni...
20 August 2020
Gaetano Brunetti manuscripts online at the Library of Congress
We have received the following from our colleagues at the Library of Congress: The Library of Congress’ Music Division has put 53 holograph and 64 copyist manuscripts of Italian composer Gaetano Brunetti online. Gaetano Brunetti (1744-1798) was an Italian composer and violinist who moved to Spain as a teenager in...
3 August 2020
New Records from the Moravian Music Foundation now in RISM
We have received the following from Barbara Strauss, Moravian Music Foundation (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA). The Salem Collegium Musicum Collection is now in RISM (library siglum: US-WS). The Salem Collegium Musicum collection includes primarily instrumental chamber and small-orchestra music, as well as some oratorios, vocal collections, keyboard music and band...
13 July 2020
The Gerald Coke Handel Collection at the Foundling Museum
The following is by Katharine Hogg (The Foundling Museum, GB-Lfom) and originally appeared on the IAML UK & Ireland blog. It is reprinted here with kind permission. The Gerald Coke Handel Collection at the Foundling Museum comprises over 12,000 items from the eighteenth century to the present, and is a...
6 July 2020
Was this book of Pleyel sonatas once part of Jane Austen's circle?
Music is part of the atmosphere of any Jane Austen novel. Eighteen music books containing almost 600 pieces in print and manuscript form and belonging to the Austen family were digitized in 2016. We know that the novelist used or compiled several of the books herself, representing some of the...
18 June 2020
