Musical sources: 70 years of RISM

Abstract

Celebrating the 70th anniversary of Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), the international conference ‘Musical sources: past and future’ took place between 7 and 9 October 2022 in the Plenarsaal of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz, in cooperation with the local Johannes Gutenberg-Universität. The aim of the conference, according to the organizers, was to discuss past, present and future scholarship concerning musical sources, not just focusing on research linked to RISM’s scope but also reflecting on new methodologies, types of sources and geographical locations hitherto overlooked by RISM. The conference opened with messages from officials of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz, the International Association of Music Libraries, the International Musicological Society, the Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, and the International RISM Association, who welcomed the delegates and paid tribute to RISM’s 70th anniversary. This was followed by the third edition of the RISM Lecture, which functioned also as the keynote address of the conference. Inaugurated online during the winter of 2021, the RISM Lectures were launched as a forum to promote among musicologists and musicians some of the most interesting collections of sources around the world, during a time when travelling was generally impossible owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous lectures celebrated the Fondo Cappella Sistina of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the Bach collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. The third one, given at the RISM anniversary conference, moved the focus beyond Europe by being dedicated to the musical sources of Mexico. In their lecture, titled ‘From data, understanding the past, orienting the future’, the three speakers, Lucero Enríquez, Drew Edward Davies and Analía Cherñavsky, reflected on their experience of cataloguing the music archives of Mexico City Cathedral. They debunked the myth of a preponderance of Renaissance sources (stemming from Mexico City’s heritage as part of the early modern colony of New Spain), instead showing how the majority of sources date from the 19th century. The examination of some settings of the Mass Ordinary, in the form of bass lines used by organists, revealed that these were originally from German prints, and offered an extremely interesting starting point for discussing the completeness of these sources. Furthermore, focusing on a location previously considered peripheral by mainstream musicology provided remarkable insights on the ways that scholars treat these sources.