Category Archives: Resources

Norient

 

Norient: Network for local and global sounds and media culture is an online resource that researches new music from around the globe and mediates it multi-modally via various platforms. The authors discuss current issues critically, from different perspectives, close to musicians and their networks.

Through the Norient online magazine, festivals, performances, books, documentary films, exhibitions, and radio programs, Norient hopes to orient and disorient readers, listeners, and spectators with information about strong, fragile, and challenging artistic positions in today’s fast moving, globalized, digitized and urbanized world. The core team is based in Bern, Berlin, and Milano, and the network of contributors is spread around 50 countries.

Below, the trailer for The African cypher, the subject of a recent article in the magazine.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources, World music

RILM takes over Index to Printed Music

In May 2017 James Adrian Music Company (JAMC), owner of Index to Printed Music: Collections and Series (IPM), signed an agreement transferring ownership of IPM to Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), effective 30 June 2018.

IPM combines index, bibliography, series, and names databases into a highly comprehensive resource for searching and identifying individual pieces of music printed in standard scholarly music editions. Currently the database includes 22,975 entries for individual volumes, an authority file with 25,889 personal names, 1133 entries for series and sets, and an index to 538,354 individual pieces of music. It provides superior access to this content for scholars, performers, teachers, and other researchers, including powerful searching capabilities for finding information on specific performing forces and repertoire. Many of the sets and series indexed in IPM are adding volumes continuously, and new editions appear on the market. Therefore, IPM grows every year to be as comprehensive and up-to-date as possible. IPM is curated by a team of experts and is available on EBSCOhost and via the EBSCO Discovery Service.

IPM is a natural addition to RILM’s suite of music resources. Since 2016 RILM has been expanding its resources for music researchers beyond its flagship publication, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, adding RILM Abstracts with Full Text; RILM Music Encyclopedias; and, in partnership with Bärenreiter and J. B. Metzler, MGG Online. With the addition of IPM, RILM is entering the world of printed music. RILM’s authority lists—including names, work titles, publishers, and terms—as well as RILM’s proven database capabilities and subject expertise will contribute to the further development and enhancement of IPM.

The founder of the Index to Printed Music, Dr. George R. Hill, states: “We are pleased that with RILM’s acquisition of IPM, its continuation, properly supported by an established leader in providing databases related to music, is assured. Over the years, IPM has largely depended on a dedicated group of musicologists and librarians devoted to its survival and growth. They include Joseph M. Boonin, Garrett Bowles, Lenore Coral, Mary Wallace Davidson, Elizabeth A. Davis, Vincent Duckles, Paul Emmons, Robert A. Falck, Virginia S. Gifford, Irving Godt, Ruth B. Hilton, Barton Hudson, Richard E. Jones, Sterling Murray, Barbara A. Renton, John H. Roberts, Gordon S. Rowley, Norris L. Stephens, Susan T. Sommer, and Eric Western.”

Dr. Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie, the Director of RILM, adds, “IPM is an indispensable resource for anyone looking for scholarly, reliable editions of individual musical works. RILM is delighted to be able to take ownership of this resource, and to bring our experience to bear to ensure IPM’s reputation for accuracy and comprehensiveness, and to bring new digital capabilities to enhance the database and its search and discovery potential.”

James Adrian Music Company, Bergenfield, NJ, a non-profit entity, supports and guides the creation, development, and distribution of the several databases collectively known as IPM. Components of IPM include digital files for name authorities, series, bibliography of editions indexed, and, most centrally, the index to music contained in the various editions. By adhering to established standards for bibliographic scholarship, JAMC is committed to providing a reliable and useful tool for musicians and researchers throughout the world. A hallmark of IPM has been the accuracy of index data, gathered directly by an examination of the printed music itself, not from secondary sources.

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), New York, facilitates and disseminates music research worldwide. It is committed to the comprehensive and accurate representation of music scholarship in all countries and languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries. RILM’s flagship publication, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, is a comprehensive international bibliography of writings on music covering publications from the early 19th century to the present. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text includes the bibliography as well as full text articles from over 200 journals linked from the bibliographic records. RILM Music Encyclopedias is a full-text repository of over 40 seminal music encyclopedias. In partnership with the publisher Bärenreiter and J.B. Metzler, RILM publishes MGG Online, which comprises the 2nd edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart along with new and substantially updated content. RILM is a joint project of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML); International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM); and the International Musicological Society (IMS). RILM is housed at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. For further information, please visit http://www.rilm.org.

 

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Filed under Resources, RILM, RILM news

Berliner Philharmoniker digital concert hall

Berliner Philharmoniker digital concert hall is an online resource that contains an archive covering five decades.

Each season it offers over 40 live streams of concerts that are later added to the archive. Also included are interviews and documentaries. The sound quality is similar to that of a CD, and the picture quality is similar to HD television.

Below, a brief documentary takes you behind the scenes.

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Svensk jazzbibliografi

 

Svensk jazzbibliografi is a new online resource that covers writings about Swedish jazz in Swedish and in other languages, in the areas of jazz history; biographies and memoirs; jazz-related literature, photographs, and art; anthologies, essays, and other literature; discographies; and periodicals.

Published by Svenskt Visarkiv, this open-access bibliography was compiled and annotated by the Swedish composer, arranger, and conductor Mats Holmquist.

Below, Holmquist in action.

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Filed under Jazz and blues, Performers, Resources

The global jukebox

The global jukebox is the culmination of a lifetime of groundbreaking work by Alan Lomax, whose efforts to record and compile song and dance from around the world led to this collaborative project—an interactive portal for the world’s music, dance, and speaking traditions from almost every corner of the earth, recorded by hundreds of pioneering ethnographers.

This open-access resource is divided into three broad areas of inquiry: cantometrics, an analysis of the elements of song within and across cultures, and choreometrics and parlametrics, which similarly evaluate dancing and speaking.

Users can search by genre or culture and experience thousands of songs and videos that come from a myriad of traditions; seek their ancestry through song and dance; uncover the roots and connections of their favorite musical genres; take a guided tour through the vibrant musical culture of a single region or style; look at clusters of any tradition’s song styles; or search for their own answers with the site’s analytical tools.

Below, Lomax discusses the background of the project.

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Filed under Ethnomusicology, Resources, World music

Burns antiphoner

burns-antiphoner1

In September 2016 Boston College Libraries introduced Burns antiphoner, an interactive open access resource.

Using an early 14th-century Franciscan antiphoner from the collections of Boston College’s John J. Burns Library, this digital research platform presents and contextualizes a medieval liturgical manuscript for both scholarly and general audiences. Employing open source technologies to create structured data and encode over 1500 incipits and notation, the site enables users to query and view music notation, metadata, performances, and textual incipits through a searchable interface.

The website also includes scholarly essays about the manuscript written by Graeme Skinner and videos of performances from short sections of the antiphoner by Schola Antiqua.

Above, a page from the manuscript; below, one of the performances included on the website.

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Filed under Middle Ages, Resources

Sınırın ötesinden sesler / Sounds beyond the border

sounds-beyond-the-border

As Syrian refugees’ migration experience in Turkey sways between transience and permanence, the culture of coexistence can only occur with the refugees and the locals getting to know one another. Like any cultural/artistic production, music provides a fertile ground for this interaction.

Sınırın ötesinden sesler/Sounds beyond the border is an open-access resource presenting interviews that strive to understand Syrian musicians’ experience of migration through music. As a response to homogenizing and exclusionary perspectives, the series aims to draw attention to the refugees’ talents and practices, the diversity they bring to Turkish geography, and the possibilities of a common cultural world.

The interviews are conducted by Evrim Hikmet Öğüt; the project is sponsored by Friedrich Naumann Vakfı Türkiye Ofisi.

Below, Sadim Al Zafari, one of the musicians interviewed in the series.

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Filed under Asia, Resources

MGG Online

mggnotaghomepage

The encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart is now available as an online database.

 MGG Online, a digital encyclopedia containing the entire second edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart along with updated and new content, was launched on 1 November 2016 on a powerful platform with the most up-to-date search and browse functions, integrated translation, sortable works lists, and much more.

Further information is here.

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Filed under Resources, RILM, RILM news

Instrumentarium de Chartres

chartres-cathedral-rose-window

Built during the 12th and 13th centuries, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

Among the cathedral’s precious treasures dating from the 12th through the 16th centuries are the statues of the Portail Royal and its three stained glass windows, the largest collection of stained glass from the 13th century, and several hundred 16th-century bas-reliefs in the choir. These unique elements contain 312 catalogued depictions of 26 musical instruments representing a veritable history of French instrument making from the High Middle Ages through the Renaissance.

Preliminary research led to a 1966 proposal by Julien Skowron to reconstruct some of the instruments depicted in the cathedral’s visual arts; six instruments were built, and in 1977 the Instrumentarium de Chartres was born. Today the collection of some 40 string, wind, and percussion instruments comprises the most complete and most played instrumentarium in Europe; it also serves an important pedagogical function for the curious of all ages who enjoy hands-on experience with the collection. The success of the project attests to the fine medieval and Renaissance artistry that makes modern reconstruction of this rich historical collection possible.

Instrumentarium de Chartres is an open-access online presentation of this collection, presenting images of the original artworks and the newly reconstructed instruments, and many other resources for scholars, performers, and the general public.

Above, a rose window from the cathedral that includes several images of instruments (click to enlarge); below, a brief demonstration of some of the instruments.

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Filed under Iconography, Instruments, Renaissance, Resources

Komponisten der Gegenwart

Komponisten der Gegenwart

 

Today, 7 September 2016, RILM music encyclopedias has just completed its regular quarterly update. The ongoing encyclopedia of contemporary composers Komponisten der Gegenwart (KdG)—the only music encyclopedia that offers exhaustively complete chronological works lists—offers revisions of the articles on Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, Gilberto Mendes, Friedrich Schenker, and Brunhilde Sonntag, and new entries are added for Bill Dietz, Matthias Kaul, William Schuman, Ying Wang, and Peter Manfred Wolf.

KdG started as one of those rare loose-leaf encyclopedias whose format allowed them to revise and expand. Many of us recall the thick, unwieldy ring binders (above) that new pages were alphabetized into when they arrived in the mail. Users of RILM music encyclopedias no longer have to cope with these bulky volumes, and their updates appear online every three months!

Below, Lachenmann’s Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung).

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources