Tag Archives: United Kingdom

by | December 2, 2025 · 6:17 pm

RILM acquires and relaunches the Hofmeister XIX database

01 December 2025

New York, NY / London, UK – RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale), a global organization dedicated to documenting and making accessible the world’s musical knowledge across all traditions, is proud to announce that it has acquired the Hofmeister XIX database from Royal Holloway, University of London, and King’s College London. This valuable resource is now hosted at hofmeister.rilm.org, continuing its mission under RILM’s stewardship to support musicological inquiry.

The Hofmeister XIX database provides comprehensive, searchable access to over 330,000 bibliographic records from the Hofmeister Monatsberichte, published between 1829 and 1900. These records represent a vital primary source for the study of music publishing, repertoire, and taste in the 19th century, and include bibliographic records for music scores, music-related books, periodicals, portraits, and other ephemera.

The database was created and developed at Royal Holloway and King’s College London (Department of Digital Humanities) by a team headed by Nicholas Cook (Director) and Liz Robinson (Project Manager), with support from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Since 2007 the project has served music librarians, scholars, and others worldwide through an open-access model. RILM now assumes ownership with a firm commitment to preserving open access to the database, its quality, and its scholarly integrity. RILM will continue to credit the founding institutions prominently on the site and maintain the platform according to the high standards long associated with Hofmeister XIX.

“RILM is honored to take over this invaluable resource,” said Dr. Tina Frühauf, Executive Director of RILM. “As a UNESCO-accredited NGO under the 2003 and 2005 Conventions, we are committed to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and promoting cultural diversity. Acquiring Hofmeister XIX aligns with this mission by preserving and disseminating a vital record of 19th-century musical life and publishing. We look forward to ensuring its continued accessibility for scholars and the public worldwide.”

Dr. Nicholas Cook, a former professor at Royal Holloway, commented: “At a time when digital resources in academia often struggle to keep up with the pace of technical innovation, RILM’s acquisition of Hofmeister XIX is the best possible guarantee of its long-term survival.”

Royal Holloway’s Director of Research and Innovation, Sue Starbuck, noted: “We are thrilled that Hofmeister XIX will thrive under RILM’s custodianship. Their infrastructure, global reach, and deep commitment to musicology ensure a strong future for this resource.”

Dr. Arianna Ciula, Director of the King’s Digital Lab, commented: “With the support of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities leadership at King’s College London, King’s Digital Lab has made every effort to sustain digital resources of value to the research community. The migration of this important resource to its new home is a great example of what trustworthy collaboration and a holistic archiving and sustainability programme can achieve.”

As of today, the original site can be accessed through the new URL https://hofmeister.rilm.org, marking a seamless transition for the academic community and general public.

For more information, please contact:

  • RILM
    Dr. Tina Frühauf
    Executive Director
    info@rilm.org
  • Royal Holloway, University of London
    Sue Starbuck
    Director of Research and Innovation
    Sue.Starbuck@rhul.ac.uk
  • King’s College London
    Dr. Arianna Ciula
    Director, King’s Digital Lab
    kdl-info@kcl.ac.uk

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by | February 20, 2024 · 6:00 am

Radio Caroline and U.K. pirate radio

Pirate radio stations on offshore ships were only significant for less than a decade but had an enormous impact on broadcasting. In the United Kingdom independent radio had been heard since the 1930s on Radio Normandy and Radio Luxembourg. These stations were founded by Captain L. F. Plugge and had offices in London. The U.K.’s General Post Office (GPO), the state postal system and telecommunications carrier at the time, refused them telephone facilities to transmit concerts live, so they recorded concerts by touring seaside resorts and recording bands on 16-inch 78 rpm gramophone records that were then shipped to Brussels and taken by train to Luxembourg to be relayed.

Radio Luxembourg had the most powerful transmitter in Europe at the time. British firms were soon paying a total of £400,000 a year for advertising on programs and sponsoring them. One of the most popular was the Ovaltine Show featuring the Ovaltineys and the Ovaltineys’ Orchestra. These first commercial stations were largely lost in World War II when most of the transmitters were destroyed—although the Germans took over Radio Luxembourg to transmit propaganda. It survived after the war and took the new format of the Top 20 series from U.S. radio.

On March 29, 1964, a new development hit the airwaves and captured the imagination and loyalty of the younger listeners. Radio Caroline first broadcast from a ship anchored off the Essex coast just outside British territorial waters. There had been other pirate offshore radio stations before that, broadcasting to Scandinavian and other northern European countries, but Radio Caroline was to become the most successful and long-lived. It was started by an Irish businessman called Ronan O’Rahilly, who had been trying to promote a young singer named Georgie Fame. He was turned down by the main record companies and decided to start his own company. He even took the records to Radio Luxembourg and was rejected by them as their airtime was mostly taken by the large record companies. In desperation, O’Rahilly decided to start his own radio station.

He bought an old passenger ferry and secretly refitted it in a southern Ireland port before mooring it off the coast of Harwich. The first disc played on Radio Caroline was The Beatles’ Can’t buy me love by DJ Simon Dee. Other pirate stations proliferated off the British coast in the coming years: Radio Atlanta, transmitted from the ship Mi Amigo, and later merged with Radio Caroline while the original Caroline ship went north to anchor off the Isle of Man to become Radio Caroline North.

Read the full entry on pirate radio in the Encyclopedia of music in the 20th century (2013). Find it in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Listen to the opening broadcast of Radio Caroline with Simon Dee on 29 March 1964.

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by | June 17, 2023 · 6:00 am

Trooping the Colour with Meyerbeer

Since 1748 the British Monarch’s official birthday has been celebrated by an event called Trooping the Colour. The main musical participants in the event are the bands of the Household Cavalry and the Foot Guards (the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards and the Scots, Irish, and Welsh Guards).

The music for the event depends both on the repertory of the regiment whose color is being trooped and on a range of traditional works. One of the most venerable among them, known simply as Les Huguenots, consists of a medley of three sections from Meyerbeer’s 1836 opera: The Lutheran chorale Ein feste Burg, the main theme from the Bénédiction des poignards, and an instrumental version of the stretta from the act 1 finale. The tradition of performing Les Huguenots goes back to 1871.

This according to “Guns and roses: Meyerbeer now and then” by Mark Everist, an essay included in Meyerbeer and grand opéra: From the July monarchy to the present (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016 ix–xxiii; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2016-29408).

Today marks King Charles III’s first Trooping of the Colour as Sovereign!

Above, Trooping the Colour in 1956; below, Trooping the Colour in 2022 (Les Huguenots begins around 1:55).

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