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.
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
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
Launched in 2015, The Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives preserves the orchestra’s rich history with documentation in the form of concert programs, press clippings, posters, photographs, letters, broadcast tapes, and recordings, as well as the BSO’s collection of historic instruments.
Committed to making the collection more readily available to researchers, the BSO is in the process of building up its digital holdings, which can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection.
A separate performance history site nicknamed HENRY (after the founder of the BSO, Henry Lee Higginson) contains all documented concerts of the orchestra beginning with 21 October 1881 through the current season. The search function provides access to the performance history of every work, and of all artists–conductors, ensembles, and soloists–who have performed with the orchestra.
Above, in a photograph from the Archives, Pierre Monteux rehearses Stravinsky’s Le scare du printemps; below, Seiji Ozawa conducts the BSO in the finale of Bartók’s Concerto for orchestra.
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RILM proudly introduces RILM Music Encyclopedias™, a full-text compilation of 41 seminal titles published from 1775 to the present, the majority of which are not available anywhere else online.
RILM Music Encyclopedias comprises nearly 80,000 pages with approximately 165,000 entries. It provides comprehensive encyclopedic coverage of the most important disciplines, fields of research, and subject areas, among them popular music, opera, musical instruments, blues, gospel, world music, recorded sound, and women composers. Its content spans multiple countries, cultures, and languages (including English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Greek). It is designed as an extensive global resource that meets the teaching, learning, and research needs of the international music community.
New titles will be added annually, ensuring that RILM Music Encyclopedias is musicology’s reference shelf of the future, comprising every aspect of lexicographical writings on music. RILM Music Encyclopedias is available via EBSCOhost®, which brings its expertise to bear on the design of the online database with a user-friendly and familiar platform. RILM Music Encyclopedias is fully equipped with the most advanced search and browse capabilities, allowing for cross searches in multiple languages. It is the only multilingual cross-searchable collection of music encyclopedias in the world.
For trials, sales, and subscription terms please contact your EBSCO Sales Representative or email information@ebsco.com.
Hymnary.org is an online hymn and worship music database for worship leaders, hymnologists, and amateur hymn lovers. The interface allows for browsing hymns by title, tune, meter, key, scripture reference, and more.
Incorporating the Dictionary of North American Hymnology in partnership with The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, it is the most complete database of North American hymnody on the planet.
Below, Jane Borthwick’s translation of Katharina von Schlegel’s Stille, mein Wille! Dein Jesus hilft siegen, sung to a melody by Jean Sibelius; the database’s entry for the work is here.
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The successor to Music and Dance Reference, MusRef is a free online resource that includes listings of over 8000 print and Internet resources, a blog, an introduction to reference tools, links to unpublished bibliographies, and a Facebook page.
The site is hosted by Brigham Young University.
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Per Nørgårds skrifter online is an archive of nearly 500 writings, arranged alphabetically by article title. Full text is available for nearly 400 items. A chronological work list, 1949–2012, is included, along with a full biography of the composer.
The site is sponsored by Det Kongelige Bibliotek and edited by Ivan Hansen.
Below, the finale of his 8th symphony (2011).
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources
American choral music, 1870–1922, a new open-access online resource, is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the Choral Directors Association (ACDA).
In 2007 the ACDA and the Library began a collaborative effort to create a website devoted to choral music that would present music in the public domain, available for users to download. The site serves to highlight the collections of sheet music in the Library of Congress and to advance and promote the performance of choral music.
The 76 works presented are limited to a period beginning shortly after the Civil War and ending in 1922. The music selected reflects the diversity of choral music in the collections written during the later 19th- and early 20th centuries and includes accompanied, a cappella, sacred, and secular works for mixed choirs, women’s and men’s ensembles, and children’s choruses.
Below, Amy Beach’s Through the house give glimmering light, one of the works included on the site.
Filed under Resources, Romantic era
Classical guitar music in printed collections is an online, continuously updateable index to classical guitar repertoire in published collections and anthologies.
This open-access resource is intended for use in libraries and by aficionados of the instrument, and takes as its model and inspiration various print indexes of repertoire in collections. Entries are indexed by composer, work, and publication, and each entry includes an incipit and a link to the source collection.
Above, a screenshot showing two listings for guitar transcriptions of John Dowland’s The most sacred Queen Elizabeth, her Galliard; below, a performance of the work.
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