Upcoming events
IAML Deutschland conference in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 17-20 September 2024. Details here
The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) - International Inventory of Musical Sources - is an international, non-profit organization that aims to comprehensively document extant musical sources worldwide: manuscripts, printed music editions, writings on music theory, and libretti that are found in libraries, archives, churches, schools, and private collections. RISM’s over 1.5 million records can be searched at no cost through the RISM Catalog and RISM Online. RISM was founded in Paris in 1952 and is the largest and only global organization that documents written musical sources. RISM records what exists and where it can be found.
Upcoming events
IAML Deutschland conference in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 17-20 September 2024. Details here
Search RISM’s abbreviations for libraries, archives and collections with historical music holdings
Librarians, see here what RISM has to offer you
All about Muscat, RISM’s specialized program for cataloging musical sources
Historical Ornamentation Sources Catalog: A New Resource for Researchers and Performers
We have received the following from Javier Lupiáñez (Director and General Editor, Historical Ornamentation Sources): The development of digital technologies has opened up a vast virtual world of knowledge. From a simple smartphone, anyone can access the RISM Database, locate musical sources, use numerous tools to learn more about them,...
Musical Anniversaries in 2025
Happy New Year! As in past years, we are using the beginning of the year to look at significant anniversaries of birth or death for people found in RISM. We are listing not only our RISM composers, but also librettists, performers, dedicatees, or other people who are connected to a...
Cherubini's Best Wishes for the New Year
Approaching the end of the year, we would again like to call your attention to an intriguing musical document originally conceived as a kind of new year’s wish. However, whereas the piece by Carl Eberwein we introduced to you a year ago had formulated a series of friendly greetings to...
Library sigla - A special RISM subproject from the beginning
The first RISM library sigla were created in the 1950s in preparation for the first volume of Series B (Recueils imprimés, XVIe-XVIIe siècles), eventually published in 1960 by Henle Verlag. The overview of sigla presented in the volume lists 920 music libraries located in 23 countries. Today, after 65 more...
RISM Catalog fully switched to new technical platform
A beta version of the RISM Catalog based on the open source discovery system VuFind was released in November 2023. At the same time, access to the existing online catalog was initially maintained. On 9 December 2024, the old TouchPoint-based system will be discontinued permanently. The RISM Catalog now appears...
Upcoming events
IAML Deutschland conference in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 17-20 September 2024. Details here
Search RISM’s abbreviations for libraries, archives and collections with historical music holdings
Librarians, see here what RISM has to offer you
All about Muscat, RISM’s specialized program for cataloging musical sources