Category Archives: RILM

RILM Collaborates with The Smithsonian Institution

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) is excited to announce its collaboration with Smithsonian Music for its 2019 Year of Music. This initiative aims to increase public engagement, advance understanding, and connect communities by highlighting and sharing the Smithsonian’s vast musical holdings. RILM, which documents and disseminates music research worldwide, supports this by drawing on its comprehensive digital resources to create blog posts, right here on Bibliolore, on a selection of the Year of Music’s Objects of the Day. Each post is enhanced with an expertly curated bibliography. 

The bibliographic references stem from one of the richest and most exhaustive resources of global music research, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, which contains over a million bibliographic records from relevant writings on music published from the early 19th century to the present in 178 countries and in 143 languages.

Published posts include ones on Grand Wizzard Theodore’s turntables, the newly acquired Stinson banjoPatsy Cline’s performance outfit, the cover for the Voyager Golden Record, and Elaine Brown’s Seize the Time, with many more to come. 

To access all our posts in this Smithsonian collaboration series, search for “Smithsonian Object of the Day,” or click on the tag below.

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Filed under Musicology, Publication types, RILM, RILM news

RILM’s India connection

In May 2019 RILM entered into a collaboration with the Archives & Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) at the American Institute of Indian Studies in Gurgaon, India. Dr. Shuba Chaudhuri, ARCE’s Director, put us in touch with Sagnik Atarthi, who is now working there to send us bibliographic information for publications on Indian music and dance in ARCE’s extensive library. 

Dr. Atarthi has already added over 1000 new records into our database—records for publications that are otherwise unavailable to us. He is able to work fluently in his native Bengali, as well as in Hindi and English, and we look forward to our continuing association with him!

Above, Dr. Zdravko Blažeković, RILM’s Executive Editor, and Dr. Shubha Chaudhuri, Director of the Archives & Research Center for Ethnomusicology; below, a brief documentary about ARCE.

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Bibliolore turns 10!

by Jim Cowdery, Senior Editor, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature

Sometime in the summer of 2009, Zdravko Blažeković, RILM’s Executive Editor, casually said to me “You know, we should have a blog.” He was thinking about how simply by virtue of what we do, RILM editors have a unique perspective on music literature, and how others might enjoy our insights along with us.

I agreed, and started looking into how we might make that happen. We weren’t sure exactly how our blog would turn out, but we decided to start with some news about RILM. Our first blog post was published ten years ago this week!

Today Bibliolore includes subjects of practical interest to music researchers and librarians and writings on music that have piqued our curiosity or made us smile, along with original contributions from our team of musicologists. Most posts have direct relationships to content found in RILM’s resources, which include our flagship RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and its enhancement, RILM Abstracts with Full Text, as well as RILM Music Encyclopedias, MGG Online, and Index to Printed Music.

Below, we celebrate our first ten years with Ten Years After’s performance at Woodstock, 50 years ago!

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Filed under RILM, RILM news, Uncategorized

RILM’s Lockheed connection

BARRY-S.-BROOK

From the time of his earliest proposal for creating RILM, Barry S. Brook (above) had a vision that “scholars working on specific research projects will eventually be able to request a bibliographic search by the computer of its stored information and to receive an automatically printed-out reply.”

RILM was too small to implement this task alone, so in 1979—long before the Internet was commercialized in the 1990s—it made an agreement with Lockheed Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, a division of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, for the distribution of its data through the telephone lines.

LockheedIn August 1979, the first month when RILM was available on the Lockheed platform, the database was searched 176 times by 24 users, earning $84.94 (see inset; click to enlarge).

Today, on the 40th anniversary of its Lockheed connection, RILM’s databases are searched online 16.5 million times per month.

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Filed under Curiosities, From the archives, RILM

RILM in the news, 1967

 

On Sunday 5 November 1967 The New York times published “Who’s writing about music and where”, a review of the first quarterly volume of RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. The volume had been published in August of that year.

The reviewer, Raymond Ericson, noted that the volume “looks, hopefully, like the first permanent attempt to describe regularly what is being written about in the world’s significant literature on music” and that it “obviously fills a great need in musicological circles.” He also included summaries of six of the volume’s 497 entries.

Below, something else that happened a couple of days later.

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Filed under From the archives, RILM

RILM Editor wins Outstanding Dissertation Award

Former RILM Editor Woo Shingkwan (胡成筠) has just won the International Musicological Society’s 2018 Outstanding Dissertation Award for The ceremonial music of Zhu Zaiyu.

Zhu Zaiyu (1536–1611) was a mathematician, physicist, music theorist, choreographer, and composer; he is particularly remembered today for creating the theory of 12-tone equal temperament.

Congratulations to our former colleague! Above, a page from the dissertation.

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Filed under Asia, RILM, RILM news, Theory

RILM’s one millionth record

RILM’s one millionth record is now online!

The record documents 音乐考古学与古代音乐遗迹研究 (Archaeomusicology and research on music relics) by 方建军 (Fang Jianjun) (Zhongguo yinyue/Chinese music 3:147 [2017] pp. 75–82, 106).

Fang’s article discusses the relationships between archaeological environments and musical functions, between ancient workshops and the building of instruments, and between soundscapes and music performance, with reference to archaeomusicological sites in Europe and Africa as well as China. China has many such sites, among them Xiaoshuangqiao of the early Shang dynasty (16th–11th century B.C.E.) in Henan province, Sanxingdui in Sichuan province, and the Neolithic tomb sites at Jiahu village, also in Henan province.

Above, flutes excavated at the Jiahu site; below, reproductions of bronze bells from a tomb dated around 433 B.C.E.

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Filed under Antiquity, Asia, Instruments, RILM, RILM news

RILM publishes its 200,000th full-text record!

 

In 2016 RILM announced the release of RILM abstracts of music literature with full text on EBSCO Information Services. Today we celebrate the publication of our 200,00th full-text record!

The milestone record is a review by Markus Lutz of Martin und Johann Christian Hoffmann: Geigen- und Lautenmacher des Barock—Umfeld, Leben, Werk (Leipzig: Hofmeister, 2015) published in Journal of the Lute Society of America (XLVI pp. 80–88). Above, a lute made by Johann Christian Hoffmann; below, a copy of a lute made by Martin Hoffmann.

Highlighting this review gives us an opportunity to remind you that reviews in RILM’s database are always linked to the item under review—so when you read a book review the record for the book itself is just one click away!

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Filed under Baroque era, Instruments, RILM, RILM news

RILM broadens indexing of Chinese dramatic genres

When RILM started out in the mid-1960s, our indexing naturally mirrored the publications that we were working with.

For example, relatively little was available in the West about non-Western dramatic genres, while far more publications discussed Western dramatic genres like opera. Accordingly, we developed several indexing headings for those Western genres—opera seria, oratorio, zarzuela, and so on—while only one headword, dramatic arts, served for all non-Western genres (as well as for publications about more than one or two Western genres).

In early 2000 RILM started to expand its collection to include a large amount of East Asian-language publications, especially those from China. Since then the need for more refined indexing terms for non-Western dramatic genres has grown.

In spring 2017 RILM editors approved 13 new headwords for theatrical genres. Three of these new headwords, xiqu—general, xiqu—by genre, and xiqu—by place, are for those genres commonly known in the West as Chinese opera. Another three new headwords, quyi—general, quyi—by genre, and quyi—by place, are for traditional Chinese dramatic genres that are less known in the West.

For both xiqu—by genre and quyi—by genre, lists of second-level terms specifying individual xiqu or quyi genres have also been developed, and are continuously growing. Many of the genres covered by these two new headwords are unknown to most Western scholars, but have been extensively discussed in the Chinese publications that we now index. Updated in early February 2018, our list of xiqu genres is here, and our list of quyi genres is here. By the time you read this, more terms will have been added!

Above, an example of ganju (Jiangxi opera); below, another example of ganju from Jiangxi province, followed by an example of sixianxi from Hebei province. These genres are indexed under the headword quyi—by genre.

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Filed under Asia, Dramatic arts, RILM, RILM news

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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