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The International Inventory of
Musical Sources (RISM) is an international, non-profit joint
venture which aims to comprehensively document the world's musical
sources of manuscripts or printed music, works on music theory and
libretti stored in libraries, archives, monasteries, schools and
private collections. The organization, founded in Paris in 1952,
is the largest and the only global operation that registers
written musical sources. RISM documents what exists and where it
is stored.
Among the different series of RISM only series A/II: "Music
manuscripts after 1600" is available online.
RISM series A/II: "Music
manuscripts after 1600" is the most comprehensive annotated
index and guide to music manuscripts produced after 1600. Fifty
years of careful research and joint initiatives sponsored by RISM
brings together among others more than 585,559 records by over
20,500 composers into one database which can be easily searched.
The manuscripts are found in over 750 libraries and archives in 31
countries including: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Brazil,
Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Great
Britain, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Mexico, New Zealand,
Norway, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, Slovenia, Slovakia,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Uruguay and USA.
The Music manuscript database
is linked to three other databases providing additional
information to specific content: Composer, Library Sigla and
Bibliographic Citations. (occasionally, these databases include
information from other RISM series too.) The database can be
searched from hyperlinks in the Music manuscript database, or
directly from a database search menu.
The 4 RISM databases include
more than 585,559 records with at least 20,000 new records added
each year. The music manuscript database contains over 780,000
searchable music incipits which can be viewed as musical scores.
1.8 million music manuscripts are estimated to exist for which
RISM provides the most extensive cataloguing to-date.
Each manuscript is described in
detail with up to 100 fields of information available. The most
important of these fields are:
·
Name of the composer, arranger etc., with biographical dates
·
Title of work in standardized form
·
Music incipit (opening of musical text in musical notation)
·
Provenance/Institution
·
Source form (score, voice etc.)
· Location of manuscript and shelf mark
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