News archive – Rediscovered
A Donizetti Discovery
The following entry is by Nicolas Bell and originally appeared on the British Library Music Blog. It is reprinted here with kind permission. The British Library’s Stefan Zweig Collection of musical, literary and historical autograph manuscripts includes many well-known treasures, but there are other pieces which have proved more difficult...
9 October 2014
Vivaldi Embedded – Violin concerto by Brescianello turns out to be a pasticcio
The following article is by Karl Wilhelm Geck and was originally published on the SLUBlog. We are publishing it here with the kind permission of the SLUB Dresden. Once again, the digital Schrank No: II collection–with its Baroque instrumental repertoire of the Dresden Court Orchestra–has proven to be a reservoir...
11 August 2014
Listen to the world's oldest piano
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: “Dongsok Shin performs the Sonata in d minor, K.9 by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) on the earliest known surviving piano, made by the instrument’s inventor, Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731), in Florence, 1720. Scarlatti’s keyboard compositions were performed on both the harpsichord and the...
28 May 2014
Légende norvégienne: Unknown work by the Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe at the Royal Library of Belgium
The music collections of the Royal Library of Belgium (B-Br) have been recently enlarged by a previously unknown work by the Belgian violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), entitled Légende norvégienne, thanks to the acquisition of the autograph score version. In the spring of 1882, Eugène Ysaÿe toured in Norway. During...
11 April 2014
Unknown lieder by Dutch composer Anna Merkje Cramer discovered in Cologne
In the library of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne (D-KNh), nine previously unknown lieder by the Dutch composer Anna Merkje Cramer (1873-1968) were recently identified. They had been cataloged under the wrong name due to a misreading. Cramer was a pupil of Wilhelm Berger, with whom she...
3 April 2014
Missing Works by Italian Composer Giovanni Francesco Bicchini Discovered
In the attic of the archives of the Ospedale Wolf-Ferrari in Messina, Italy (I-MEow), a collection of important works by the relatively unknown Italian composer Giovanni Francesco Bicchini (d. 1585) was recently discovered by RISM catalogers working in the area. Our view of this composer, previously known only through his...
1 April 2014
Musical Tables
The multifaceted nature of music transmission can be seen in an unusual musical source at the Berchtesgaden Royal Palace, in the southeastern corner of Germany. A song table (Liedertisch)–an etched slab of stone depicting music and set in a wooden frame–is now indexed in the RISM database (RISM no. 450113059)....
22 October 2013
Vivaldi and a Search Engine
Guest post by Michael Talbot (Liverpool, UK): Anyone my age (seventy) has, as it were, “grown up” in parallel with RISM in the various phases of its, and our, evolution. Especially since the transfer of the manuscripts database to an OPAC on the internet, the potentiality to make discoveries, either...
23 August 2013
New Music from Old Fritz: Manuscripts by Frederick the Great Discovered
“Diese Noten haben Ihro Majestät der König Friederich von Preußen eigenhändig geschrieben.” This music was written by Your Majesty the King Frederick of Prussia in his own hand. Three autograph music manuscripts by Frederick the Great that were believed to have been lost were discovered in the Art Collection at...
8 November 2012
Significant Bach Discovery in Stade, Germany
A significant discovery was made while cataloging music manuscripts of the Seminary Library in the northern German town of Stade, held on deposit at the Stade City Archives (D-STs). Steffen Voss, a staff member of the RISM Germany–Munich office, discovered two contemporary scores of so-called Quartalsmusiken by Carl Philipp Emanuel...
14 June 2012
