Setting the RISM Records Straight
Thursday, December 17, 2015
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” is perhaps misleading, of course, because the composers are only anonymous to us–their names have been lost over time. But the RISM online catalog contains over 200,000 anonymous sources, around 20% of the whole database, making Mr. or Ms. Anonymous the most prolific composer in RISM.
We are fortunate that people like you - our RISM colleagues and people who use the database - regularly let us know when they have spotted an error or identified an anonymous piece. The incipit search frequently helps here (see instructions here) but quite often our brilliant users simply recognize anonymous pieces on their own.
Here are just a few examples of composers with works we have been able to correct recently:
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Martino Bitti: Michael Talbot’s “A Thematic Catalogue of the Instrumental Music of Martino Bitti (1655/6-1743)” (Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 46 [2015]: 46-94; cited in RISM as TalB), in addition to enhancing the Bitti records, helped us to identify a handful of anonymous sources as well.
- André Campra: A late seventeenth-century collection at Harvard University (RISM ID no. 900020000) was identified in their online catalog as an all-Lully manuscript but Natasha Roule, who cataloged this manuscript and others for RISM, found three André Campra pieces in there. These have turned out to be pieces that frequently travel with Lully opera excerpts, often appearing in collections which are otherwise just Lully.
- Jacobus Gallus: The motet “Sepulto Domino” (PL-Wtm R 2333, RISM ID no. 300033815) Thanks to Marcin Konik
- Marin Marais: Suite in G minor, from his Troisiême Livre de Pieces de Viole (Paris, 1711), RISM IDno. 190001945 and 190001946 (S-L Saml. Wenster G31) Thanks to Michael O’Loghlin
- Giulio Taglietti: His Concerti a quattro, op. XI (A-LA 1877, RISM ID no. 603000499). Compare with the printed edition from 1713, digitized and online (RISM A/I: T 41) Thanks to Michael Talbot
- Antonio Vivaldi: Previously unidentified works at the SLUB Dresden were identified by Francisco Javier Lupiáñez Ruiz, who wrote about it for our website in October. Recently, he noticed that the bc part to a Vivaldi violin concerto (RV 205), also in Dresden, was written on the back of a different, anonymous violin sonata (RISM 212001984; see image).
- Multiple composers: In the course of RISM cataloging of items from the Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender in Hanover (D-HVfmg), Helmut Lauterwasser could identify the composers of many anonymous works. See the collections 450115681, 450116005, 450115923, 450116049.
With each identification, we “return” the sources to their composers and reduce the number of anonymous pieces in the database. Every identification helps!
Have you identified an anonymous work or noticed something that needs to be corrected? Please let us know and we’ll thank you in a later post! Be sure to include evidence to support your identification, such as other RISM records, catalogs of works, books, or articles. Simply send an e-mail to contact@rism.info or fill out this form.
Image credit: Bc part of the second movement from Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D major (RV 205), written on the back of the violin part to a different, anonymous sonata. SLUB Dresden,Mus.2-R-8,50 (RISM 212001984).
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