Tag Archives: RILM

by | December 15, 2009 · 3:12 pm

Dining with RILM

In 2004 the diversity among the staff at RILM’s International Center inspired the idea of compiling a cookbook, and the following year we quietly published Dining with RILM in a limited edition.

In her preface, Tina Frühauf,the book’s Editor-in-Chief, gives mouth-watering examples of RILM entries involving food—from David Tudor’s spice cabinet to Japanese rice planting ceremonies to the roles of eating and drinking in Verdi’s operas. Many of the recipes are music-related, if sometimes rather fancifully so (e.g., “A Faustian margarita”). Copies of this rare compendium are available from the International Center, though this information is not on our website—it’s a blog exclusive!

The cover photograph, reproduced above, was taken by our former Managing Editor, Murat Eyuboğlu. You are invited to post your own favorite music-related recipes below.

Comments Off on Dining with RILM

Filed under Food, From the archives, RILM

Tagged as , , , ,

by | November 10, 2009 · 2:37 pm

Submissions: The old days

Before RILM set up online forms for sending us citations and abstracts, all submissions were made by writing or typing on forms like the one pictured above. We had forms in all necessary languages, color-coded for sorting. As was the case with most manual typewriters, corrections and diacritics all had to be added by hand. After we received completed forms, everything had to be retyped into the database (and, for non-English titles and abstracts, translated into English) at the International Center.

Over the years, countless volunteers have made such contributions to RILM, including some very distinguished figures in musicology and ethnomusicology. The example above was submitted by the preeminent Spanish musicologist José López-Calo (b.1922) for the retrospective project undertaken by RILM’s founder Barry S. Brook in the 1970s—a project that finally reached fruition with the publication of Speaking of Music: Music conferences, 1835–1966 in 2004.

Comments Off on Submissions: The old days

Filed under From the archives, RILM

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | November 5, 2009 · 12:33 pm

Music's intellectual history

MIH_medium

RILM has just inaugurated its series RILM perspectives with Music’s intellectual history: 66 essays offering insights into the history of music scholarship from the Renaissance to the twentieth century and demonstrating the natural partnership of RILM and historiographic investigation. The contributions address an array of subjects and perspectives that indicate the directions music scholarship has taken in the past, reveal the precedents of current scholarly habits, and suggest future paths. A full table of contents is here.

Comments Off on Music's intellectual history

Filed under New series, RILM, RILM news

Tagged as , , , ,

by | October 8, 2009 · 8:21 pm

Walter Gerboth’s Nachlaß

When we commenced work on our Festschriften retrospective project (the first volume, Liber amicorum, was recently published) we began with what was then the gold-standard reference work, Walter Gerboth’s An index to musical Festschriften and similar publications.

The Head Librarian of the Brooklyn College music library that now bears his name, Gerboth amassed a large collection of music Festschriften during the compilation of his book, and he bequeathed this collection to the library; Marguerite Iskenderian, a Music Cataloguer there, kindly shared these books with us so we could write abstracts for the essays therein. She also shared with us his collected notes—his Nachlaß—which he had also left to the library.

Like any good librarian of his time, Gerboth kept obsolete catalogue cards for scratch paper; his notes are all on the back of such cards, some neatly typed, some hastily handwritten. Most of these notes were citations for music-related articles in Festschriften with nonmusical dedicatees, articles that he had discovered in bibliographies or other sources; many were noted after his book had gone to press, for inclusion in a second edition that never materialized.

Among these cards were notes from his friends and associates with further citations or suggestions. One of the latter, reproduced below, includes the question “Who he?”—a humorous catch-phrase from a bygone era, perhaps originating in an old radio comedy.

Gerboth scan

Comments Off on Walter Gerboth’s Nachlaß

Filed under From the archives, RILM

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | October 7, 2009 · 7:58 pm

RILM publishes Liber amicorum

Liber amicorum

In spite of their widely acknowledged importance, music Festschriften have been far from accessible to researchers. RILM has now addressed this need with an abstracted and indexed bibliography of 3881 essays on musical topics from 715 Festschriften dedicated to music scholars and others published before RILM’s regular bibliographic coverage began in 1967. Reflecting the currents of history from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century—the advent of ethnomusicology, the rise and fall of Nazism, and the heyday of serialism, to name just a few—this compilation provides vivid insights into the histories of cultures, disciplines, institutions, and prominent individuals.

Liber amicorum completes a dyad with RILM’s Speaking of music: Music conferences, 1835–1966, a similarly structured retrospective bibliography of conference proceedings. These two unique book genres—Festschriften and conference proceedings—comprise uncommonly important collections of scholarly essays in the histories of academic disciplines, presenting groundbreaking research directly to colleagues and mentors.

1 Comment

Filed under RILM, RILM news

Tagged as , , , , ,