News archive – Rediscovered
An exciting collection
The following article has reached us from Gottfried Heinz-Kronberger of RISM Germany: The music collection from Spitz an der Donau in Austria is preserved in the archives of the Benedictine Abbey Niederaltaich (D-NATk) in southeast Germany. This arrangement has a historical reason. Niederaltaich Abbey, which was founded in 741, stretched...
20 June 2016
First Music Manuscript Discovered in Antarctica
The RISM online catalog documents musical sources from five continents – so far, only Africa and Antarctica were missing from our map. So it came as a surprise, even to us, that Antarctica - of all places - will offer RISM users musical sources in the near future. In a...
1 April 2016
Oldest complete Finnish songbook discovered in Dresden
New year, new discovery: musicologist Suvi-Päivi Koski has uncovered the oldest known complete Finnish songbook at the SLUB in Dresden, according to the SLUBlog. It is entitled Yxi Wähä Suomenkielinen Wirsikiria (“A small Finnish songbook”), published by Hemmingius Henrici Maschoensis, and was printed in 1607 in Rostock, Germany. The first...
7 January 2016
Setting the RISM Records Straight
Since it’s the season for giving, we’d like to share what you, our RISM users, have given us recently: numerous corrections and identifications of anonymous compositions. Misattributions occur occasionally in the database, sometimes because of the wrong composer’s name on the source itself or misidentifications by later catalogers. And “anonymous”...
17 December 2015
New Discoveries of Vivaldi in Dresden
The following is a guest post by Francisco Javier Lupiáñez Ruiz: Two years ago I started to prepare a concert program based on anonymous pieces from the Schrank II collection from Die Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB). The Schrank II contains a large collection of musical works...
8 October 2015
Mozart autograph from Budapest now available online
The head of the RISM national working group in Hungary, Balázs Mikusi (National Széchényi Library, Budapest; H-Bn), has announced that the newly discovered autograph fragment of Mozart’s famous Sonata in A major (K. 331, with the ‘Alla Turca’ finale) is now available online. The National Széchényi Library has just launched...
16 July 2015
The music world will sit up and take notice! On the new Urtext edition of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Major KV 331
This post is by the CEO of Henle Verlag and our very own RISM president, Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, and is reprinted from the Henle blog with kind permission. You presumably know Mozart’s A-major Piano Sonata KV 331 (with the “alla turca” rondo). One of the best-known sonatas, if not THE best-known,...
3 June 2015
Autograph manuscript by Melchior Hoffmann discovered
The following has reached us from Julia Neumann, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: An autograph manuscript by Bach contemporary Melchior Hoffmann has recently been identified at the Berlin State Library as a result of work being carried out by KoFIM (Music Research and Information Competence Centre), a DFG project. This anonymous manuscript,...
16 March 2015
Sensational new source: A previously unknown Carnival song by Beethoven!
The following extremely important announcement has reached us from Henle Verlag and is published here with kind permission: The new series PianoPlus is an ideal entry and re-access to the world of classical music, and likewise for all carnival enthusiasts and carnival grouches, who would like to make music with...
16 February 2015
Niccolò Jommelli rediscovered: International award for essay on autograph extant at the National Library of Portugal
The following article originally appeared on the website of the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (CC BY 4.0) Niccolò Jommelli rediscovered: a new autograph of a 16 voice Laudate pueri, by António Jorge Marques, has received a special mention in the 6th Principe Francesco Maria Ruspoli Musicological Studies International Prize. The...
17 November 2014
