Tag Archives: Encyclopedia

by | April 21, 2026 · 6:00 am

DEUMM Online: RILM as a content provider

DEUMM Online is a digitally enhanced music encyclopedia published by RILM, building on Alberto Basso’s Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti from the 1980s and 1990s. Developed as a collaborative effort among Italian and international scholars, it aims to create an Italian-language knowledge base with a distinctly global perspective on music and its circulation worldwide.

Expanding and updating the original print edition, DEUMM Online adds approximately 150 new entries each year. These contributions emphasize areas previously marginalized or overlooked–such as pop, film, jazz, folk, world, and ancient music–alongside emerging concepts and theoretical approaches in music studies, including feminism, gender and race studies, sound studies, and postcolonial perspectives. All entries are authored and reviewed by subject specialists, ensuring the reliability and scholarly quality of the content. Under the leadership of general editors Daniela Castaldo and Antonio Baldassarre, an international network of experts continually revises existing entries and produces new ones, keeping the encyclopedia aligned with ongoing developments in both Italian and global music scholarship.

New articles in DEUMM Online are designed to be comprehensive, offering a complete overview of each topic. They are divided into titled sections that help users navigate complex subjects with significant historical, cultural, or social dimensions. Different sections may be authored by different specialists, ensuring that each aspect is treated by an expert in that area. The content is enhanced with multimedia elements and can be explored through multiple access points, including section titles, article types (including biographies, instruments, genres, and works), occupations and nationalities of the individuals discussed, and sortable timelines. Users can also arrange works and biographies either chronologically or alphabetically, allowing them to tailor how they view and study the material.

Although DEUMM Online is published in Italian, it remains a valuable resource for the international music research community, offering insights into both Italian and global musical traditions. Modern technologies now make it possible to translate Italian into other languages almost instantly, greatly enhancing its accessibility. This allows scholars and enthusiasts to engage more deeply with its content while navigating the complexities of today’s interconnected music landscape. As a result, DEUMM Online stands out for its dynamic and flexible nature, continually adapting to the evolving needs and expectations of its users.

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by | April 14, 2026 · 6:00 am

MGG Online: RILM as a service provider

MGG Online is a leading digital encyclopedia for music scholarship, widely used by researchers worldwide. The platform provides advanced search functionality and research tools while delivering newly authored and substantially revised content, supported by continuous updates, revisions, and additions. Its scope encompasses a broad range of topics across all areas of music, as well as related disciplines including literature, philosophy, and the visual arts. Among its key features are a traceable browsing history that enables users to revisit previously consulted materials; sortable lists of works, bibliographies, discographies, and other reference data; and the ability to switch seamlessly between current and earlier versions of individual articles. MGG Online also offers a bilingual English/German interface, with integrated Google Translate enabling immediate translation from German into more than 100 languages. In addition, the platform supports individual user accounts that allow annotations to be created, saved, and shared, and it provides links to related resources, including RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and other scholarly databases.

Building on the second edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, a reference work that has supported music scholarship since 1949, MGG Online was developed by Bärenreiter and J.B. Metzler in partnership with RILM. Conceived in response to the conditions of the digital revolution and the emergence of a digital scholarly environment, MGG Online was envisioned as a new and revised edition of the second MGG. Unlike a traditional print edition produced at a single moment in time, the project has been developed incrementally, evolving continuously as new material is added and existing content is revised. As a digital lexicon, MGG Online constitutes a living scholarly resource that undergoes ongoing expansion, revision, and renewal.

The original encyclopedia sought to provide a synoptic presentation of knowledge that would, in turn, stimulate the generation of further knowledge. MGG Online remains committed to these principles, producing scholarship that adheres to the highest editorial standards and presents information in a transparent and accessible manner. In this respect, the project is best understood as a work in progress. RILM’s role in the partnership establishes a direct connection to rigorously structured research tools and bibliographic resources. Articles undergo review by multiple subject specialists and are subject to extensive editorial revision and repeated amendment, ensuring their scholarly reliability and quality.

In this context, MGG Online exists in a dynamic tension between continual modification and stable archival structures. Although the digital encyclopedia can respond quickly to developments in scholarship and the broader global cultural landscape, revisions are undertaken with careful deliberation rather than haste, thereby avoiding the ephemerality that characterized many early forms of Internet-based knowledge dissemination.

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by | August 22, 2025 · 6:00 am

International Day for the remembrance of the slave trade and its abolition (23 August)

This Saturday, 23 August, is UNESCO’s International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, which seeks to “inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of all peoples”. The date coincides with the 1791 uprising in Saint Domingue, today the Republic of Haiti, that so heavily impacted the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. In regions like the Caribbean, northern South America, and Brazil, music and culture have been deeply shaped by the historical conditions of African slavery and fusion and syncretization that arose from European colonialism. Today, the Afro-Latin musical roots of genres such as salsa, Cuban son, Brazilian samba and bossa nova, Dominican merengue, and Panamanian and Puerto Rican reggaetón, among many others, continue to echo the enduring legacy of slavery in the Americas.

To observe the International Day, read the entry on slavery in Ilan Stavans’s Latin music: Musicians, genres, and themes, which traces the abhorrent practice globally, with a detailed section on the Haitian Revolution, the first and only successful slave rebellion to dismantle the plantation system and achieve political independence. The rebellion reverberated across the New World and sparked a wave of newfound consciousness and hope among Black populations throughout the Americas, while simultaneously triggering reactionary and often violent responses from European and criollo planters and other ruling elites.

Prise de la Ravine-à-Couleuvres (Capture of the Ravine-à-Couleuvres, 23 February 1802), by Karl Girardet, engraved by Jean-Jacques Outhwaite.

Latin music: Musicians, genres, and themes provides an in-depth exploration of the rich and diverse world of Latin American music, examining its history, cultural significance, and the wide range of genres it encompasses. Spanning five centuries and 25 countries, the encyclopedia, covers the evolution of Latin music from its roots in Indigenous, African, and European traditions to its contemporary global influence. It offers detailed profiles of influential musicians, including iconic figures such as Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Placido Domingo, and Carlos Santana, shedding light on their contributions to the development of Latin music and their lasting legacies. The two volumes delve into key genres like salsa, merengue, bachata, tango, and reggaetón, discussing their origins, stylistic characteristics, and cultural impact across different Latin American countries and communities. In addition to genre exploration, Latin music touches on broader themes of identity, migration, and the ways in which Latin music has become a vehicle for social and political expression. The encyclopedia’s 244 entries also include sociopolitical factors that have shaped Latin American music’s growth and dissemination. This is a key resource for music researchers looking to understand the musical traditions, key figures, and cultural contexts that have defined music in Latin America and its enduring global appeal.

Find the entry on slavery written by Ruthie Meadows in Latin music: Musicians, genres, and themes located in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

The first image is of Sexteto Habanero (circa 1925), an early Cuban son band from Havana, Cuba.

Related Bibliolore posts:

https://bibliolore.org/2021/10/04/cubas-tonadas-trinitarias/

https://bibliolore.org/2019/01/07/the-tigueras-of-merengue-tipico/

https://bibliolore.org/2022/10/14/breaking-barriers-in-latinx-musical-practices-an-annotated-bibliography/

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by | March 4, 2025 · 6:00 am

A resource for international women composers

International Women’s Day, celebrated worldwide on Saturday, 8 March, highlights the remarkable achievements of women and reinforces the ongoing pursuit of gender equality. To honor this day, Bibliolore features a reference text from RILM Music Encyclopedias, International Encyclopedia of Women Composers by Aaron I. Cohen, which celebrates the extraordinary contributions of women in music. Let its inspiring content guide you in embracing this year’s International Women’s Day theme, “accelerate action”, a rallying cry for equal rights, power, and opportunities for all. At the heart of this vision lies the empowerment of the next generation—particularly young women and adolescent girls—as driving forces for meaningful and lasting change. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a progressive document used as a blueprint for women’s and girls’ rights worldwide that transformed the women’s rights agenda in terms of legal protection, access to services, youth engagement, and change in social norms and stereotypes.

A retired town planner and self-proclaimed “research buff” from Johannesburg, South Africa, Aaron I. Cohen (b.1906) made history in 1981 by publishing the first encyclopedia dedicated to women composers. The second edition of this groundbreaking work, expanded into two volumes, includes 6,200 entries and 14 appendices. Cohen’s remarkable research journey began with a four-year expedition across Europe, during which he gathered materials on women composers. He also established a global network of antiquarians who provided him with essential references. Recognizing the linguistic diversity of the sources, he eventually put together a small team capable of translating texts from at least 15 different languages.

Cohen’s encyclopedia is remarkable for its breadth, highlighting the earliest known woman composer, Hemre (2723 B.C.E.), an Egyptian leader of court music, and spans a vast geographical scope, featuring nearly 300 composers from Asia to Central America. To this day, the International encyclopedia of women composers remains the only comprehensive resource that covers virtually every known woman composer. It provides biographical details, lists of compositions and publications, as well as a bibliography. This edition also includes a discography and a list of recording companies, making it an invaluable reference for understanding the contributions of women in music.

To learn more, visit RILM Music Encyclopedias and browse through its encyclopedias devoted to a wide range of music and subjects.

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by | August 6, 2024 · 6:00 am

Lexikon Progressive Rock

Bernward Halbscheffel’s Lexikon Progressive Rock: Musiker, Bands, Instrumente, Begriffe provides more than 500 articles that feature not only classics of prog rock such as Procol Harum, The Nice, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis, and King Crimson, but also more recent groups like Dream Theater, Gazpacho, Glass Hammer, Porcupine Tree, Shining, Spock’s Beard, and Grand General. Representatives of progressive metal are also included, among them Opeth, Symphony X, and Epica. Although British and American prog mainstream is dominant, the lexicon also offers articles on obscure bands like Ozric Tentacles and The Legendary Pink Dots; progenitors of art rock like Roxy Music and 10cc; and the Canterbury scene with Delivery, Soft Machine, Henry Cow, and Caravan.

Entry on the band King Crimson in Lexikon Progressive Rock in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Learn some tips for accessing multilingual content in RILM Music Encyclopedias by watching this video on the RILM Resources YouTube channel.

Halbscheffel features currents of retroprog, neoprog, and new artrock. The 2013 edition replaces some earlier articles on foundational musical terms with new articles that are specifically relevant for progressive rock, such as the entry on polyrhythmics. New articles focus on current bands like Nosound, Knight Area, and Flying Colors. Halbscheffel aptly summarizes this all-encompassing approach in the article Progressive rock, where he focuses on the history of the genre less as a stylistic history than as a history of a functionally oriented inventory of rock techniques and processes.

Learn more about this encyclopedia and many others at RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Two bands featured in the encyclopedia, the Legendary Pink Dots and Procol Harum, perform in the videos below.

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by | May 14, 2024 · 6:00 am

A landmark resource in ethnomusicology

The Garland encyclopedia of world music was first issued between 1988 and 1994 by Garland Publishing as a ten-volume series of encyclopedias of world music, organized geographically by continent. An updated second edition appeared between 1998 and 2002. Widely regarded as an authoritative academic source for ethnomusicology, the series features contributions from top researchers in the field globally.

RILM Music Encyclopedias includes volumes from the series on Africa (edited by Ruth M. Stone), The United States and Canada (edited by Ellen Koskoff), Southeast Asia (edited by Terry E. Miller and Sean Williams), South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent (edited by Alison Arnold), The Middle East (edited by Virginia Danielson), East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea (edited by Robert Provine), and Australia and the Pacific Islands (edited by Adrienne L. Kaeppler). Each volume consists of three sections that cover the major topics of a region from broad general issues to specific music practices, introductions to each region, its culture, and its music as well as a survey of previous music scholarship and research; major issues and processes that link the regions musically, and detailed accounts of individual music cultures. The special tenth volume compiles reference tools, criteria for inclusion into the series, and information about the encyclopedia’s structure and organization.

The entries synthesize in-depth fieldwork conducted since the 1960s, as well as recordings, analysis, and documentation. The publication is generally considered a landmark achievement in ethnomusicology. While ethnomusicologists may appreciate The Garland for its critically designed components, non-ethnomusicologists can embrace the encyclopedia for its capacity to serve as a primer on world music.

Find the Garland encyclopedia of world music in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

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by | April 1, 2017 · 6:00 am

Spoof articles

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.

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by | November 7, 2016 · 6:00 am

MGG Online

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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.

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by | September 7, 2016 · 6:00 am

Komponisten der Gegenwart

Komponisten der Gegenwart

 

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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by | July 27, 2016 · 7:47 am

Fontes artis musicae and RILM

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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.

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