RISM Series A, pt. II: Music Manuscripts after 1600 (online catalog) (review)

For information regarding the scope of this column, consult the headnote in the September 2010 issue (p. 164 of this volume). The dates of access for each review of an online source indicate the dates during which the reviewer was evaluating the source.

History

Répertoire International des Sources Musicales A/II, or RISM AII, is a union catalog of music manuscripts from around the world. The majority of the manuscripts included in this database is from 1600 to 1800, but also included are some manuscripts through the end of the 19^th century. This is one of a series of projects to enable access to extant musical sources by RISM, a nonprofit organization founded in 1952 in Paris by the International Musicological Society (IMS) and the International Association of Music Libraries¹ (IAML). At the time, there were two major tools for finding musical sources: Robert Eitner's Biographisch-Bibliographisches Quellen-Lexicon der Musik und Musikgelehrten (Leipzig, 1898-1904; rpt., rev., Graz 1959-60) and his Bibliographie der Musik-Sammelwerke des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1877; rpt., Hildesheim, 1963).² However, these publications were significantly out-of-date, and RISM decided to publish an updated and improved version of these resources in two series. Series A is a listing of sources by individual composer, divided into two parts. The first part (A/I) includes music imprints before 1801 and has been issued in nine volumes with four supplements and an index volume. The updated version of this resource will be available on CD-ROM in early 2011.³ The second part (A/II) is the music manuscripts database that I will review in detail below. Series B contains catalogs of repertories of music and writings about music. Subsequently, a new series, C, was published, containing directories of music libraries. In 1999, a supplemental volume, RISM Bibliothekssigel, covering the RISM sigla, was also published. All of these projects are results of the contributions of the RISM branches from various countries. Each of the thirty-two participating countries operates independently from the Zentralredaktion (Central Office) and provides its own financial support. The Central Office acts as the conductor and nerve center for the projects.

Originally, the results of the projects were conceived as printed volumes. However, because there were an estimated 1.5 million existing music manuscripts, Series A/II would have required approximately two hundred printed volumes.⁴ In 1984, the first edition of this catalog was made available in microfiche instead, and a second microfiche edition was issued the following year. Although it had the standard indexes, more refined searches had to be sent to the Zentralredaktion to be executed on the database. As technology advanced, the database was issued in CD-ROM format by K. G. Saur in 1995. In 2002, as online sources became common, RISM contracted NISC to issue its first online database. Both Saur's CD-ROM and NISC's online database were preempted by advancing technology and ceased publication in 2008. NISC was bought out by EBSCO, which launched a new interface the same year. In June 2010, the new open-access RISM OPAC was unveiled, while EBSCO continues to offer the Series A/II database.

Because the RISM branches operate independently, several countries started issuing their own data via open-access Web sites. The first was in 1997, when the USRISM office (under the direction of John B. Howard) issued its data through a user-friendly interface with sponsorship from Harvard University. The initiative was universally lauded, but it ceased publication in 2002.⁵ In 2004, spearheaded by Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Stanford University's Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH) mounted the United States data on its "Themefinder" interface and made it available widely in January 2009;⁶ this resource is available today at http://rism.themefinder.org. Other countries...