On Sunday 29 August 1971 Barry S. Brook organized a meeting of some 30 music and art historians at Hotel Ekkehard in St. Gall; there they conceived Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale, the third music repertoire after RISM (founded in 1952) and RILM (1966). The discussions at the meeting are encapsulated in a single sheet of yellow legal paper (above) on which Brook scribbled his notes during the meeting.
The document lists proposals for the organization’s possible names: RICOM was rejected by a vote of 10:12; RIdIM (Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale) with its English/German equivalent IRMI (International Repertory of Musical Iconography/Internationales Repertorium der Musikikonographie) prevailed by 13:8.
The discussion concerned the composition of RIdIM’s Commission Mixte and national committees, the establishment of working groups on issues related to cataloguing and computerizing visual sources, and the organization of the Committee d’Honneur comprising museum directors, businesspeople, and amateur enthusiasts who could provide extra-musicological advice and assistance. The clearing house for cataloguing and the center for communication between the national committees cataloguing national resources and the scholars who need to study them was designated the Research Center for Music Iconography (founded in 1972 at the CUNY Graduate Center).
At the end of the meeting the project was established under the guidance of its three founding co-directors: Barry Brook, Harald Heckmann, and Geneviève Thibault de Chambure. This was a critically important moment for the field of music iconography, and Brook was certainly aware its significance. In the center of the sheet he wrote in red ink: “We may be participants in the establishment on a firm footing of a full-fledged sub-discipline”.
RIdIM celebrates its 50th anniversary today!
BONUS: A report on the discussion of this idea a few days earlier at the annual meeting of the International Association of Music Libraries is here.
