News archive – RISM A-Z
Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785)
The 2014/2015 opera and theater season is wrapping up, so let’s take the opportunity to combine our series RISM A–Z with a current production. On June 20, the opera Alessandro nell’Indie by Baldassare Galuppi (libretto by Pietro Metastasio) premiered at the Mainfranken-Theater in Würzburg. The last performance is tomorrow, July...
13 July 2015
Sofia Gubaidulina
Today’s installment of the series RISM A–Z takes a look at Sofia Gubaidulina, a Russian composer born in 1931. Wait, a living composer in RISM? Yes! While RISM has traditionally maintained an emphasis on music manuscripts dating from between 1600 and 1800, the unique configuration of individual national working groups...
29 June 2015
Lucia Facchinelli
Today, F is for Lucia Facchinelli, an Italian singer who flourished between 1724 and 1739. Very little is known about her; of the major reference works she receives only 11 lines in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera and just a few more in the Großes Sängerlexikon. The soprano’s first...
18 May 2015
Frederick the Great
Music at the court of Frederick the Great has fascinated scholars for decades and a flury of activity arose when “Old Fritz” celebrated his tercentenary in 2012, with books, concerts, and conferences around the world. Work from our colleagues at RISM Germany even turned up an autograph manuscript by the...
8 April 2015
Elizaveta, Elisabeth, and Elizabeth
Today, our series RISM from A–Z takes us on a journey that spans three centuries as we visit the lives of an Elizaveta, Elisabeth, and Elizabeth. The first is Elizaveta Alexievna (1779-1826), the Empress of Russia. She was born Princess Louise of Baden (Germany) and married Alexander I of Russia....
23 February 2015
Robert Eitner
We are pleased to present the following article written by our intern, Martin Bierwisch: Who hasn’t heard of Robert Eitner (1832-1905)? If you are a musicologist, it’s hard to avoid him and his Biographisch-Bibliographisches Quellenlexikon (Bio-Bibliographical Source Lexicon). This work also happens to be available online through the University of...
29 September 2014
Matthew Dubourg
Today, our series RISM from A to Z brings us to Matthew Dubourg. Though there are only 7 works by him in the RISM database, one of those is a digitized copy of his Violin Concerto in D major, for which no published edition had previously existed. For RISM’s concert...
15 September 2014
Olga Diener
Who was Olga Diener? The RISM database contains 236 works by Swiss composer Olga Diener (1890-1963), most in her own hand, all held by the Swiss National Library (CH-BEl). Many of the pieces are either for string quartet or piano. Her scores are part of the Olga Diener Collection and...
19 August 2014
François Couperin
A recent study by Byron Sartain details the locations of some pieces by François Couperin: Byron Sartain, “The manuscript dissemination of François Couperin’s harpsichord music,” Early Music Vol. XLI, No. 3 (2013): 377-391 In the article, the author traced the current locations of Couperin’s harpsichord music and found 77 manuscripts...
6 August 2014
Francesca Caccini
The series RISM A–Z is moving on to the letter C, which today stands for the Baroque composer and performer Francesca Caccini (1587-c.1640). She was a musica in the Medici court in Florence from 1607 to 1627 and from 1633 to 1641: a composer, singer, instrumentalist, voice teacher, and concert...
24 July 2014
