Bibliolore now has over 300 followers! Sure, plenty of music blogs have more, but we have staked out such a tiny niche that we are truly honored. Many thanks to all of our followers and friends!
Below, we celebrate by watching someone turn 300 napkins into something resembling wooden tiles.
Many reference works for music—and presumably other topics—contain articles about fictitious characters. Sometimes writers for these works slyly slip them by their editors (an article on “Verdi, Lasagne” was almost typeset for printing in The new Grove dictionary); others are incorporated with the collusion of all parties.
For an example, look up Otto Jägermeier in Komponisten der Gegenwart (available through RILM music encyclopedias) or in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (available through MGG Online). You will find that Jägermeier composed, among other intriguing works, an opera called Der Idiot with a libretto by Fëdor Dostoevskij, and a work for solo clarinet called Psychosen. The name Jägermeier is a play on Jägermeister, a popular German cordial (above).
RILM is not above adding a spoof article or two to its database. Of course we won’t tell you which ones they are, but we’ll give you a hint: One includes a reference to the very real and wonderful Malcolm Bilson, who favors us with a Mozart concerto below.
Comments Off on Spoof articles
Filed under Curiosities, Humor, RILM
Consistent with its mission to cover all types of publications about music, RILM is now abstracting and indexing podcasts.
Podcasts are serial digital media files that can be downloaded for use on local computers or portable media players. They are typically in audio or video formats, but they may involve other file formats as well.
RILM inaugurated its podcast coverage with Ethnomusicology today, which is published by the Society for Ethnomusicology; this open-access series features interviews with the authors of articles recently published in the society’s journal, Ethnomusicology.
Comments Off on Podcasts
Filed under Publication types, RILM, RILM news
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.
The cross-volume search capacity of our new database RILM Music Encyclopedias offers some quirky surprises—for example, this resource currently includes nine different music-related articles with references to helicopters. These include entries on Madonna, Mickey Rooney, and the following excerpt from the article “Highland region of Papua New Guinea” in The Garland encyclopedia of world music:
“The texts [of girls’ coming-of age songs] address topics broadly sorted in four sets: daily routine, recalling netted bags (made by all women), sores (irritated by flies), and pleasure over good food (grown or gathered); unusual events, like sighting a helicopter, European missionaries’ arrival, and death in a hospital; desires, including the romantic, with meanings often hidden in metaphor, but also the adventuresome, like wanting to ride in a vehicle; and the coming-of-age performance itself speaking of dancing together, laughing together, and becoming adults.”
Above, an organization that searches for new species in Papua New Guinea by helicopter—perhaps the subject of the sighting; below, a performance by the Girl Guides Association of Papua New Guinea.
Comments Off on Helicopters in music encyclopedias
Filed under Australia and Pacific islands, Curiosities, RILM
On 23 June 2015 a group of distinguished academics and editors gathered in New York City for a conference organized by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers (IAML) and the International Musicological Society (IMS). The panel “Referencing music in the twenty-first century: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future” was chaired by RILM’s own Tina Frühauf.
The fruits of the three-hour double panel, which focused on encyclopedias, historiography, and music research in the digital age, are now available in printed form: Fontes artis musicae invited Dr. Frühauf to serve as guest editor and write the introduction for the July-September 2016 issue, which presents the conference papers. The table of contents is here.
Below, an excerpt from the conference discussion.
Music researchers can now access one of the richest and most comprehensive full-text resources of global music research with the release of RILM abstracts of music literature with full text™ from EBSCO Information Services. Produced by Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, Inc. (RILM), RILM abstracts of music literature with full text enhances the unrivaled bibliography of writings on music provided by RILM abstracts of music literature™ with the addition of approximately one million pages of full-text content from more than 200 key periodicals published from the early 20th century to the present—many of which are unavailable elsewhere online.
The vast and unique global full-text content in RILM abstracts of music literature with full text (RAFT) spans 50 countries in 40 languages, providing broad coverage of music-related disciplines, fields, and subject areas, including musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, performance, and pedagogy. The cover-to-cover full text in RAFT includes articles and reviews, as well as obituaries, editorials, correspondence, advertisements, and news items. This extensive collection, paired with the comprehensive bibliography of writings on music, creates an unrivaled resource.
At launch the RAFT collection includes over 62,000 records. Upon completion, targeted for the end of 2016, the collection will contain over 175,000 records. Thereafter, RAFT will be updated with the full-text content of recent issues. Complete information regarding each journal in the collection and its current coverage status can be found here. RILM abstracts of music literature with full text is available via the EBSCOhost® platform and is updated monthly.
RILM’s Facebook page now has over 1000 followers! These people have instant access to all RILM news and each new post on Bibliolore, RILM’s blog. Do you prefer updates on Twitter? No problem—just follow our Twitter feed.
Below, 1000 musicians perform the Foo Fighters’ Learn to fly.
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.
Working with a top collector and specialist in the field, RILM has created a new document type abbreviated JZ, standing for Journal Zine—zine being the recognized short version of fanzine, which refers to the self-published fan magazines that proliferated in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s (when the Internet made them largely obsolete).
Much like the thriving music-journal culture that developed in 19th-century Europe, these low-circulation publications were produced and consumed by key players in the music cultures they took as their subject; today they serve as primary sources that provide valuable insights into the subcultures that shaped the sound of the late 20th century (in the case of punk rock, it was the New York-based zine Punk that provided the name for the nascent musical movement).
We are in the first stage of entering JZ records that give bibliographic information and detailed summaries of key zines in popular music history. A growing number of universities have begun acquiring collections of these important documents.
Above, Joey Ramone, drawn by John Holstrom for Punk #3 (April 1976; click to enlarge). Below, the Ramones at Max’s Kansas City the same year.
More posts about punk rock are here.
Comments Off on Announcing RILM’s Zine Initiative!
Filed under Popular music, Publication types, RILM, RILM news
featured – Bibliolore