Since its founding in the mid-1960s, the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) has advanced a globalist perspective, fostering international networks that have connected scholars from around the world. During a period when Europe was politically split by the Iron Curtain and non-European entities aligned with either the Eastern or Western blocs, RILM’s founder, Barry S. Brook, worked to create opportunities for multilateral collaboration on a global scale. Brook envisioned RILM as an international initiative modeled after UNESCO’s administrative structure, where each participating country established its own national committee to contribute bibliographic records to the central database in New York.
This model established an intellectual framework for collaboration, promoting equality among all participating nations. In recent years, RILM has taken this approach even further by earning UNESCO accreditation as a non-governmental organization (NGO), enabling it to provide advisory services to the Committee of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The milestone marks a significant advancement in RILM’s ongoing mission to document, preserve, and share the world’s musical knowledge. As RILM’s director, Tina Frühauf, notes, the organization’s UNESCO accreditation underscores its dedication to safeguarding global musical heritage.
Watch an interview with Frühauf below, where she discusses UNESCO accreditation, the recent addition of DEUMM Online to its suite of resources, and the upcoming release of the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines, a new resource that further strengthens RILM’s role in the field of popular music research.
DEUMM Online digitizes, enhances, and extends the Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti (DEUMM), the most important modern music dictionary in the Italian language. Comprising a broad range of entries (persons, topics, dances, genres, geographical locations, institutions, instruments, and works), DEUMM Online uses advanced and intuitive search and translation functionalities. This venerable music encyclopedia, which has set the standards in modern Italian music lexicography, is, in its new online format, once again an indispensable node in a comprehensive, international, networked research experience.
For those unable to join the Rome event in person, the event will be live streamed on YouTube by Fondazione Roma Tre Teatro Palladium, accessible directly from the following QR code:
The program (below) will include Daniele Trucco’s DEUMM-inspired music, greetings from Luca Aversano (President, ADUIM), Marcoemilio Camera (President, IAML Italia), and Tina Frühauf (Executive Director, RILM), as well as presentations by Zdravko Blažeković (Executive Editor, RILM), Stefano Campagnolo (Director, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma), Alex Braga (composer), and DEUMM Online’s general editors Antonio Baldassarre and Daniela Castaldo. Pianist Giuseppe Magagnino will also perform works by Ellington, Beethoven, The Beatles, and more.
And mark your calendars: DEUMM Online will be featured again at the following events:
19 November 2024: Turin, hosted by Istituto per i Beni Musicali di Piemonte at the Teatro Regio
21 November 2024: Milan, hosted by the Archivio Storico Ricordi in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense
On 9 February 2024, RILM presents a panel titled “Towards Global Knowledge, Decolonization, and Preservation—Challenges and Opportunities Through Culture and Arts Education” as part of the UNESCO World Conference on Culture and Arts Education 2024. The four presentations in this side event are all rooted in the understanding that information literacy is a fundamental pillar in education—each presentation pivots on the notion of global knowledge as a foundation of culture and arts education. After RILM Director Tina Frühauf opens the panel with discussion of a broader theoretical framework, the second presentation by Executive Editor Zdravko Blažeković examines RILM as a model that underlines the importance of a global approach to information literacy. The following presentation by RILM Associate Editor Farah Zahra presents a local perspective, using the case of Iraqi literature and knowledge as an example. The final presentation by RILM Editor MU Qian highlights decolonization (understood here as an ongoing process) as an additional objective for the UNESCO Framework for Culture and Arts Education, taking the treatment of Uygur culture as a case in point.
For further information on RILM’s panel and information on joining the presentation, please visit https://www.rilm.org/wccae2024/
Also, be sure to check out RILM’s resources for learning including materials for teachers, students, performers, and music researchers interested in RILM’s rich music databases, research tools, and full-text publications. Learn more at https://www.rilm.org/classrooms/
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The manual addresses a multitude of special problems faced by writers on music—problems rarely solved by general writing guides. It applies an international perspective to matters often handled piecemeal and in ethnocentric fashion: work titles, manuscript sources, transliteration, non-Western theoretical systems, opus and catalogue numbers, and pitch and chord names, to name just a few. Detailed guidelines are provided for the bibliographic handling of standard print, audiovisual, and electronic sources, as well as specialized ones such as program notes, liner notes, and music videos. A chapter on indexing is also included. Throughout, abundant examples illustrate each point.
The first edition (2005) reflected many years of experience and thought, working with a wide variety of terms and concepts from around the world; the second edition (2006), roughly one-third larger than the first, included both revisions and new material. This third edition incorporates numerous updates, many of them reflecting developments in writing and publishing over the past 17 years—not least, those involving the online environment. Unlike the earlier printed editions, it is an electronic edition that will be continuously updated.
“Students, scholars, librarians, critics, and performers will find this third edition of the manual indispensable. It takes into account a bibliodiversity hardly found in similar such ventures and is reflective of RILM’s global mission,” writes RILM Executive Director Dr. Tina Frühauf.
How to Write About Music is available through EBSCO’s eBook Collection, on EBSCOhost. For questions and purchase, please contact information@ebsco.com or your EBSCO sales representative.
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New York. — January 17, 2023 — Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) has entered a three-year collaboration with the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (IMA, Arab World Institute) that aims to increase public engagement, advance global cultural understanding, and connect diverse communities by highlighting and sharing the Institute library’s holdings on music from the Arab world. RILM, which documents and disseminates music research worldwide, supports this initiative by drawing on its comprehensive digital resources to create blog posts about a selection of Arabic music literature. 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™, which contains 1.5 million bibliographic records from relevant writings on music published from the early 19th century to the present in over 170 countries and in more than 140 languages.
Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), New York: RILM is committed to the comprehensive and accurate representation of music scholarship in all countries and languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries. It publishes a suite of digital resources aimed at facilitating and disseminating music research. Its flagship publication is RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, the international bibliography of writings on music covering publications from the early 19th century to the present, now available in an enhanced version that includes the full text content of over 260 music journals. RILM Abstracts is available on the EBSCOhost platform along with RILM Music Encyclopedias, a full-text repository of a wide-ranging and growing list of music reference works, and the Index to Printed Music, a finding aid for searching specific musical works contained in printed collections, sets, and series. Distributed worldwide on RILM’s own platform are the continually updated music encyclopedia MGG Online, RILM Music Encyclopedias, and the Dizionario Enciclopedico Universale della Musica e dei Musicisti (coming in mid-2023). RILM is a joint project of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML); International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM); the International Musicological Society (IMS); and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). www.rilm.org
Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris: The Institut du Monde Arabe was founded to create strong and durable cultural ties while cultivating constructive dialogue between the Arab world, France, and Europe. This cross-discipline space is the central place for the development of cultural projects, in collaboration with institutions, creators and thinkers from the Arab world. The Institut du Monde Arabe is fully anchored in the present. It aims to reflect the Arab world’s current dynamics. It intends to make a distinctive contribution to the institutional cultural landscape. No other organization in the world offers such a wide range of events in connection with the Arab world. Debates, colloquia, seminars, conferences, dance shows, concerts, films, books, meetings, language and culture courses, and large exhibitions all contribute to raising awareness of this unique and vibrant world. https://www.imarabe.org
For more information, please contact:
Michael Lupo Marketing & Media Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 3108 • New York, NY 10016-4309 mlupo@rilm.org • Phone 1 212 817 1992 • www.rilm.org
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It’s now easier than ever to get the latest news from RILM’s blog, Bibliolore. Just enter your email and hit the subscribe button on the right so you won’t miss out on our continuously expanding content. From highlights in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature enhanced by Web-based media, to our “Instant Classics” series of reviews, to annotated bibliographies on international current events sourced directly from our products, you’ll hear all about it—without delay. The world of writings on music awaits you inside our pages—see you there!
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RILM has acquired the full rights to the Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti (DEUMM), published between 1983 and 2005 by the renowned Italian publisher of reference works UTET Grandi Opere under the editorship of Alberto Basso. With its three thematic sections (Le biografie; Il lessico; and I titoli e i personaggi) containing some 35,000 entries, DEUMM is the most important modern music dictionary in the Italian language.
The content of the original printed edition, along with some updated and new entries, will be the starting point for DEUMM Online, to be offered as one of RILM’s suite of reference works. RILM plans to launch DEUMM Online in winter 2023 on RILM’s platform Egret, which offers advanced search and browse capabilities. DEUMM Online will be an essential electronic resource for music scholarship world-wide.
The founding editor of DEUMM, Dr. Alberto Basso, said “I feel particularly honored and therefore happy to have been included among the initiatives that RILM is proposing to the world in the context of scholarship and musical history. The fact that DEUMM has been taken into consideration satisfies me in a particular way and certainly would have satisfied the management of the former UTET that is unfortunately no longer present on the market. I hope that the work I have done creating DEUMM some forty years ago will continue and that DEUMM will be updated.” (The original interview with Dr. Basso may be heard below.)
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.
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.
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!
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
Introduction: Dr. Philip Ewell, Associate Professor of Music at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, posted a series of daily tweets during Black History Month (February 2021) providing information on some under-researched Black … Continue reading →
For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
