Tag Archives: RILM Abstracts of Music Literature

by | July 22, 2026 · 6:00 am

From the EBSCOpost backlist. VI: The pointy end: Spoof articles (2013)

RILM staff periodically contribute writings to EBSCOpost, a lively blog run by our partners that publishes pieces pertinent to librarianship, higher education, and beyond. Over time, some of these posts are removed, and even those that remain generally recede from view, following the ephemeral nature of much digital content. With 60 years of preserving the world’s writings on music and music-related topics behind us, we are now adding a small rescue project: bringing these blog posts back into circulation. However modest, they help document our history as an organization, and we hope they will continue to resonate with our international readership as well as with any music enthusiast who happens upon them.

For this installment in the series, we return to a post that caused quite a stir amongst the Bibliolore faithful when published here in 2017. In it, former RILM editor Jim Cowdery highlights a few tongue-in-cheek moments when musicologists, lexicographers, and even our staff injected some levity into their work. See if you can find them all, and check out Bibliolore’s recent post, Unique records in RILM Abstracts, which serves as a great companion piece.

The pointy end: 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.

RILM is not above adding a spoof article or two to RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. 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 | March 10, 2026 · 6:00 am

Feature: RILM Abstracts of Music Literature

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature is a leading music bibliography that provides comprehensive citations, abstracts, and subject indexing, serving as a flagship publication in the field of music studies. It offers an expansive international scope, with content representing publications in approximately 150 languages and from countries around the globe. The titles of works are translated into English, and many records feature English abstracts, alongside abstracts in their original languages. This multilingual approach ensures accessibility while also maintaining the integrity of the original texts. The database includes both Roman and non-Roman scripts, making it truly global in its representation.

What sets RILM Abstracts apart is the network of international committees that contribute to its richness. These committees, based in various countries, are responsible for gathering and processing local records and abstracts, ensuring that scholarship from around the world is included. In addition to their role in curating and entering data into the database, these committees play a critical role in safeguarding and fostering music scholarship within their own regions.

RILM Japan has been one of the most active national committees, curating annual bibliographies of music literature published in Japan, known as Ongakubunken Mokuroku. This publication laid the foundation for Japan’s contributions to RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and is now available through Japan’s own digital database. The committee’s long-time dedication, particularly by Dr. Tatsuhiko Itō, who sadly passed away in September 2025, ensured its prominence and success. Dr. Itō played a crucial role in establishing RILM Japan as one of the first and most influential committees in Asia, contributing bibliographic records and abstracts to the RILM database consistently since the 1960s. Under Dr. Itō’s leadership, the Japanese committee was instrumental in advancing the categorization of Japanese music within the global framework of music studies. Their pioneering efforts in this area have had a lasting impact on how Japanese music is represented in scholarly literature. Notably, the current RILM classification system owes much to Dr. Itō and his committee’s advocacy for a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to cataloging Japanese music, ensuring its inclusion in the broader global music discourse.

Dr. Tatsuhiko Itō, the long-time leader of the RILM Japan committee. Photo courtesy of IAML.

Other important examples include Greece’s highly active committee, led for the past 25 years by Stephanie Merakos, the director of the Music Library of Greece, and the resourceful committee from Malta, chaired by Philip Ciantar, Associate Professor of Music at L-Università ta’ Malta. These, along with other national committees, play a vital role in ensuring that all significant writings on music published within their countries or regions are represented in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. The contributions of these committees are essential to the continued success and expansion of the database. Without this global network of dedicated committee members, spanning countries and regions, RILM Abstracts would not be the comprehensive and internationally respected resource that it is today.

Stephanie Merakos, the director of the Music Library of Greece and leader of RILM’s Greece committee.

Philip Ciantar, Associate Professor of Music at L-Università ta’ Malta and chair of RILM’s Malta committee.

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by | February 24, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM’s global network of committees and partnerships

The poster above was once displayed in RILM’s Berlin office of the German national committee, where it explained RILM’s mission as an international musicological bibliography. It highlighted early foundational partners, such as the International Musicological Society, the International Association of Music Libraries, and the American Council of Learned Societies. More importantly, the poster encouraged authors to submit abstracts for their publications. A prominent line on the poster sternly cautioned, “Authors who do not provide their own abstracts accept the risk of having no influence on the formal and substantive design of their abstracts.”

Beyond its nostalgic value as a piece of RILM’s history, the poster also underscores the global network of national, supranational, and regional committees that play a key role in ensuring that significant music-related writings from their respective regions are included in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text. These committees, made up of musicologists and librarians from major universities, national libraries, and research institutes, are responsible for gathering and processing abstracts. Given that the core principle of the RILM project was to encourage authors, journal editors, and publishers worldwide to submit abstracts, it was essential to have committees in major music literature-producing countries to collect and send these abstracts to the international center for inclusion.

Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), New Delhi. Image courtesy of AIIS Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology Facebook page.

Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris. Image credit: Thierry Rambaud

Today, RILM has committees in countries across the globe, including Japan, Latvia, France, Guatemala, New Zealand, Türkiye, South Africa, and Taiwan, along with regional committees in Hong Kong and supranational committees, such as the one in Africa. In addition, RILM maintains partnerships with a variety of institutions, including the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) in New Delhi, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the National College of Arts in Lahore, and The Journal of the Central Conservatory in Beijing. This extensive network of committees and partnerships plays a crucial role in supporting RILM’s mission to document all forms of music-related publications, from anywhere in the world and in any language.

Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing.

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