News archive – Musical anniversaries
Musical Anniversaries in 2016
Happy New Year! Once again, the new year brings us many opportunities to celebrate musicians who have big (sometimes very big) birthdays and remember those who have died. We’ve found over 800 people in the RISM database who will have their semicentennials, centennials, and various combinations thereof in 2016. These...
4 January 2016
Jean Sibelius at 150
“We can say that Jean Sibelius is one of the most brilliant tone poets of the present time.” -Erik Furuhjelm, 1916 “Sibelius, the worst composer in the world” -René Leibowitz, 1955 (Quotations from the Finnish Club of Helsinki) For many people, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is the only Finnish composer they...
8 December 2015
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) at the British Library
Jacques Offenbach died 135 years ago today. To mark the occasion we’re bringing you this post by Susan Halstead, which originally appeared on the British Library’s European Studies Blog (CC-BY). The RISM database has 125 works relating to Offenbach. A dish fit for the gods: 150 years of Offenbach’s ‘La...
5 October 2015
Happy Birthday, Brahms and Tchaikovsky!
This post is an excerpt of an article by David Plylar that originally appeared on the Library of Congress’s “In the Muse” blog. On May 7, Brahms and Tchaikovsky share a birthday—an annual event since Tchaikovsky waltzed into the world in1840, seven years after Brahms. Recognition of this coincidentally shared...
7 May 2015
Bach 330: The Brandenburg Concerto Manuscript at the Library of Congress
It’s Johann Sebastian Bach’s 330th birthday on Saturday! Please enjoy this article about a Bach manuscript at the Library of Congress, written by Daniel Boomhower (who is also a member of RISM’s Coordinating Committee). It originally appeared on the library’s In the Muse blog. In May, 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach...
19 March 2015
New Year's Greetings and Composer Anniversaries
Happy New Year! We are looking forward to celebrating the anniversaries of the following musicians and other people that you can find in the RISM online catalog. We’ve listed their names, dates, and function in the catalog: http://opac.rism.info/ We will start with Ambrosius, our oldest birthday boy… c= circa a=...
6 January 2015
Erwin und Elmire in the Collection of the Deutsches Nationaltheater, Weimar: For the 275th Birthday of Anna Amalia, Duchess of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach
The following article was written by our RISM Germany colleague, Undine Wagner, of the Thüringisches Landesmusikarchiv. The Court of the Muses in Weimar and Anna Amalia’s roundtable salon, to which luminaries such as Goethe, Wieland and Herder belonged, have become catchphrases in the cultural history of Weimar. Anna Amalia (born...
24 October 2014
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
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
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
