REPERTOIRE INTERNATIONAL DES SOURCES MUSICALES (RISM)

Zentralredaktion Frankfurt

Annual Report, 2011

Foundation: Internationales Quellenlexikon der Musik e.V. Kassel. Honorary President: Dr. Harald Heckmann, Ruppertshain; President: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christoph Wolff, Cambridge/Leipzig; Vice President: Catherine Massip, Paris; Secretary: Dr. Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, Munich; Treasurer: Dr. Andreas Klug, Kriftel, and since 4 September 2011 Prof. Dr. Klaus Pietschmann, Mainz; co-opted members of the board: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Konrad, Würzburg; Prof. Dr. John H. Roberts, Berkeley.

Commission Mixte (delegates from AIBM and SIM): Chris Banks (AIBM), Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi (AIMB), Dr. John B. Howard (AIBM), Prof. Dr. Ulrich Konrad (SIM), Catherine Massip (AIBM), Dr. habil. Christian Meyer (SIM), Prof. Dr. Pierluigi Petrobelli (SIM), Prof. Dr. John H. Roberts (AIBM), Prof. Dr. Jürg Stenzl (SIM), Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christoph Wolff (SIM).

Director of the Zentralredaktion: Klaus Keil, Frankfurt.

Address: Internationales Quellenlexikon der Musik (RISM), Zentralredaktion an der Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Sophienstr. 26, D-60487 Frankfurt am Main, Tel.: +49 69 706231, Fax: +49 69 706026, E-mail: contact@rism.info, Internet: www.rism.info.

Publishers: Series A/I, volume VIII, parts 1 and 2 of series B as well as series C: Bärenreiter Verlag, Kassel; series A/II, CD-ROM: K. G. Saur Verlag, Munich; Internet database: EBSCO Publishing, Inc., Birmingham, USA; series B (with the exception of volume VIII, parts 1 and 2): G. Henle Verlag, Munich.

Personnel: Susanne Büchner, Dr. Martina Falletta, Stephan Hirsch, Klaus Keil, Guido Kraus, Alexander Marxen, Jennifer Ward, Isabella Wiedemer-Höll.

The Internationales Quellenlexikon der Musik (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales – RISM), with the Zentralredaktion in Frankfurt, is under the patronage of the Association Internationale des Bibliothèques, Archives et Centres de Documentation Musicaux (AIBM) as well as the Société Internationale de Musicologie (SIM) and has the task to document printed and manuscript transmissions of music worldwide. Series A/I indexes individual prints published between 1600 and 1800, and series A/II music manuscripts after 1600, with extensive descriptions, including their locations. Both series originally were to be arranged alphabetically by composer name, as it is in the volumes of series A/I. Since series A/II is published electronically as a database, far more access points can be offered. Series B is designed to cover specific categories of repertory, e.g. collected prints from the 16th to 18th centuries, German hymns, source literature on music theory in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Persian, etc. Series A/I, A/II and B are supplemented by series C, the Directory of Music Research Libraries.
Series A/I: Issued in 9 main and 4 supplementary volumes and on CD. The CD-ROM of series A/I was released in December 2011. It contains all of the entries from volumes 1-9 and 11-14.
Series B: Thirty volumes in this series have so far been published. Recently published: RISM B/XV, Mehrstimmige Messen in Quellen aus Spanien, Portugal und Lateinamerika, ca. 1490-1630, edited by Cristina Urchueguía, Munich 2005. Three special volumes entitled Das Tenorlied were published between 1979 and 1986.
Series C: Five volumes have appeared to date, as well as a special volume issued by the RISM Zentralredaktion in 1999, RISM Bibliothekssigel-Gesamtverzeichnis (RISM Library Sigla, Complete Index). Since that time, the index of sigla has been made available through RISM’s website as a searchable database. The database has been significantly enhanced compared to the index: from the siglum entry, one can directly access the holdings of a library as indexed in the online catalog. The library sigla database is also updated regularly. In collaboration with the AIBM Publications Committee it has been possible to issue revised versions of volumes II and III/1. These replace the existing volumes II and III, with the exception of the section containing Italian sigla which is intended for volume III/2, still in preparation.
Series A/II: This series is a complete documentation of manuscripts containing polyphonic music written after 1600. Series A/II is the most comprehensive endeavour and the main focus of the whole of RISM’s work at present. Colleagues from more than 30 national groups around the world document music manuscripts on location in libraries and archives. The working groups enter their descriptions in computers and send them to the Zentralredaktion through the Internet. To this end, the cataloging program Kallisto is available from the Zentralredaktion free of charge. The transmission of digital information reduces the amount of required editorial work and speeds up completion of the project.

Since the start of the project a total of ca. 830,000 entries have been registered at the RISM Zentralredaktion at Frankfurt.

The following groups recorded titles using Kallisto in 2011: Austria: Innsbruck (1,047 titles), Salzburg (51), Vorarlberg (1), Vienna - Akademie der Wissenschaften (236); Czech Republic: Brno (327), Prague (2,897); Germany: Berlin – Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (942), Dresden (5,001), Munich (12,326); Italy: Rome (42); Poland: Wrocław (324), Danzig (516), Krakau (124), Warsaw (339); Slovenia (136).
Working groups participated for the first time from Austria: Schlägl (34 titles), Lithuania (5 titles), and Mexico (15 titles).
Catalog records on paper title cards were sent from Russia (7), in addition to 1,234 of such records entered into Kallisto by the Zentralredaktion from older holdings.

Some working groups use their own cataloging systems and sometimes send in data after a longer preliminary period. We wish to mention the following in particular:
England/United Kingdom: A database of music manuscripts was developed together with the RISM office in Ireland. The database is freely available online (www.rism.org.uk). In the first half of 2011, 55,000 of the records were converted and transferred to the RISM database. When the RISM UK project was founded, conditions of funding included using standards such as the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2) and the Library of Congress Subject Headings. These standards are at variance with RISM standards. For this reason, fields such as texts and titles, names, links to collections, etc. had to be reworked. The data were published in the RISM online catalog in December 2011.
Switzerland: The Swiss working group did not participate in the changeover to Kallisto but they use a program that employs the same data model of the British working group. A data transfer is planned for the future. It will take place after the British working group’s data have been successfully transferred, and the developments made for that transfer will also aid that of the Swiss data.
France: At the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, a database of music manuscripts held there was created, from which a book catalog (of composers letters A-B) had already been published in 1999. Alongside that, as part of the series Patrimoine musical régional, handwritten and printed materials in the provinces were processed and also published as a book catalog. In the meantime, records from RISM France can be found in the portal Catalogue collectif de France (https://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/jsp/public/index.jsp). There are records for 8,000 manuscripts before 1820 (composers A-H) and 15,600 prints before 1800 from the Département de la musique, and ca. 34,000 records from the Patrimoine. An exchange of data was agreed upon and sample titles were tested.
Italy: Under the coordination of the Ufficio Ricerca Fondi Musicali (URFM) in Milan, various regional groups are working on the documentation of manuscripts, prints and other sources. Records are entered into the SBN Musica database. RISM is very interested in obtaining this data as well, but no agreement has been reached so far. At the same time, the Roman working group Istituto di Bibliografia Musicale (IBIMUS) has been using the program PIKaDo and delivers their records directly to the Zentralredaktion in the course of their projects. Kallisto will be implemented beginning with the next projects.

Furthermore, there are collaborations with individual institutes:
Within the framework of a project sponsored by the German Research Foundation, the German Historical Institute in Rome is undertaking work on the collections of two Roman princely houses. The sources are being digitized and described using Kallisto in accordance with RISM standards.
In cooperation with the Universität Leipzig and the Bacharchiv Leipzig, 323 titles from the Holy Trinity Lutheran Cathedral in Liepāja, Latvia were cataloged as part of a project carried out with students.
During the year covered by this report, it was possible to expand the content of the RISM manuscript database by an additional 81,000 entries and it now contains a total of ca. 800,000 titles.

The CD-ROM of series A/II Music Manuscripts after 1600 was discontinued with the 16th edition (the 14th CD-ROM). It comprised a total of 614,000 titles, including a total of around 50,000 additional entries, as well as three special files – one with composers (31,000 entries), library sigla (6,870 entries) and an index of the literature consulted for describing sources (4,000 entries).
This is the material which EBSCO Publishing Inc. (successor to NISC) is still currently offering as an Internet database.

Since July 2010, RISM has made its online catalog freely available on the Internet. The development of the software for searching was possible through collaboration between RISM and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The initial inventory of ca. 700,000 records has since been expanded to ca. 800,000. In addition, a new feature was introduced that allows searching by music incipit.

The online catalog, which is available on the Internet free of charge, has motivated more and more people and institutions to contribute to the project. In particular, there is a growing interest among individual institutions to see their holdings indexed in the RISM online catalog. The Zentralredaktion also increasingly receives suggestions and corrections from users.

The new RISM website, developed with the cooperation of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur (Digitale Akademie) in Mainz, was expanded with the addition of communication functions. The new website is constantly updated by the Zentralredaktion and the working groups and now enjoys rising popularity with more than 4,000 visits per month.

A new edition of RISM: An Overview may be obtained from the Zentralredaktion.
Klaus Keil, January 2012