The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) - International Inventory of Musical Sources - is an international, non-profit organization that aims to comprehensively document extant musical sources worldwide: manuscripts, printed music editions, writings on music theory, and libretti that are found in libraries, archives, churches, schools, and private collections. RISM’s over 1.5 million records can be searched at no cost through the RISM Catalog and RISM Online. RISM was founded in Paris in 1952 and is the largest and only global organization that documents written musical sources. RISM records what exists and where it can be found.

Library Sigla

Search RISM’s abbreviations for libraries, archives and collections with historical music holdings

RISM for Libraries

Librarians, see here what RISM has to offer you

Muscat

All about Muscat, RISM’s specialized program for cataloging musical sources

News

Early sources of J.S. Bach's English Suites united in Leipzig

The following originally appeared on the Bach Archiv Leipzig, Germany. It is published here with kind permission. New collectibles from our treasury Early sources of J.S. Bach’s English Suites united in Leipzig The »English Suites« – one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most famous collections of works for keyboard instruments –...

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News from the Czech RISM Working Group

In the field of musicology and music documentation, the most important contributions of the Music Department of the National Library of the Czech Republic involve the cataloging of musical sources in the RISM database. Most of this work forms part of a project supported by the Ministry of Culture of...

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Annual Report 2023

Crowning the intensive development of several years, by late 2023 the RISM database hit a new benchmark of 1.5 million source records, freely searchable through both the classic RISM Catalog and the recently developed RISM Online interface. This impressive increase in part results from the ongoing cataloging activity of our...

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Paper and Copyists in Viennese Opera Scores, 1760–1775

The following guest post is by Martin Eybl (Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Interpretationsforschung, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, Austria): Hundreds of works by Haydn, Gluck, and other Viennese composers are only known from manuscript copies prepared by their contemporaries. As a rule, such manuscripts are undated, which makes...

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Musical Leap Year Babies

Famous Leap Year Day babies are rare, although among the composers Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) is very well known. But the RISM database has many more people who celebrate their birthdays on February 29. The English composer Humphrey Bralesford (1658-1733; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) has...

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All the news

Library Sigla

Search RISM’s abbreviations for libraries, archives and collections with historical music holdings

RISM for Libraries

Librarians, see here what RISM has to offer you

Muscat

All about Muscat, RISM’s specialized program for cataloging musical sources