Abstracts

Abstracts in PDF

Ēriks Ešenvalds

(composer)
Libraries do inspire!

Ē. Ešenvalds will speak about his Nordic Light multimedia symphony, which started with countless hours spent alone in the library, reading around 150 books about the Aurora Borealis and the folklore of the people who live in the many countries which see the Lights. After expeditions to collect film material the multimedia symphony and documentary were premiered to great ovations. A special emphasis will be given to the role of libraries in this vast undertaking that took 4 years of the composer’s life.


Ints Teterovskis

(artistic director of Youth choir BALSIS, conductor)
Song celebration phenomenon – history, road, future

The Dziesmu svētki (Song Celebration) tradition has become deeply rooted in Latvia!
Singing together in the German Liedertafel (choral society) style took on a new, intangible power – the most visible manifestation of national consciousness before Latvian statehood; territorial unity during Latvia’s first period of independence; non-violent resistance against enforced rule in Soviet times; national dignity and the might of communal spirit during the re-awakening …
Times change, songs remain and unite us. Will they always unite us? Oh yes!


Lolita Fūrmane

(Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, Riga)
Die Musikmanuskripte in den Repositorien Lettlands: Ein Bericht über Fonds, deren Zustand und Erforschungssituation

Der Bericht befasst sich mit dem Gesamtbild der Musiksammlungen in heutigen Lettland, zugleich versucht in die mit diesen Sammlungen verbundenen Speicher- und Forschungsprozesse zu gehen. Die Autorin des Beitrags hat langjährige wissenschaftliche Erfahrung mit den Primärquellen, die in den Repositorien Lettlands aufbewahrt werden. Diese Erfahrung wurde vor allem auf eine musikwissenschaftliche Untersuchung fokussiert, wobei die ästhetischen oder spezifisch theoretischen Fragen einen Schwerpunkt der Erforschung bilden. Trotzdem sind die Fragen von historischen Authentizität der Manuskripte – zum Beispiel, die Fragen des Papiers (Wasserzeichen), Orthographie u. a. – für eine wissenschaftliche Beurteilung aktuell gewesen. Die Autorin des Beitrags versucht in diesem Zusammenhang einige persönliche Beobachtungen darzulegen, die aus ihrer Teilnahme an den Projekten zu entsprechenden Themen herausgekommen sind.

Unter Betrachtung stehen sowohl einzelne Manuskripte (Autographe und Abschriften), als auch die Kollektionen. Es geht im Ganzen um 8 Repositorien Lettlands, insbesondere aber um drei wertvolle Sammlungen: 1) Die Notenbibliothek des Libauer Cantorats Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts an der evangelisch-lutherischen Bischofskirche der kurländischen Stadt Liepāja (deutsch: Libau). Diese Sammlung wurde im Rahmen eines von lettischen und deutschen Musikwissenschaftlern verwirklichten internationalen Projektes im Sommer 2011 erstmals inspektiert und katalogisiert. Die Ergebnisse des Projektes wurden später als Online-Katalog von RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) veröffentlicht; 2) Die Sammlung des ehemaligen Stadttheaters zu Riga (1782–1918) – handschriftliche Partituren, Stimmen, Librettos u. a.; 3) Eine Briefsammlung, betreffend die abendländischen Tonkünstler des 19. Jahrhunderts, im Repositorium der Rara-Abteilung der Akademischen Bibliothek an der Universität Lettlands.
Im Fokus des Berichtes stehen die Fragen des Umfangs und materieller Lage der Fonds, auch die aktuelle Erforschungssituation.


Patrizia Rebulla

(Archivio Storico Ricordi, Milan)
Confidentially yours. The confidential letters of Giulio Ricordi

The Archivio Storico Ricordi holds the historical records of Italy’s most important music publisher. For over a hundred years, since the foundation of the firm in 1808, the Ricordis were not only publishers, but also impresarios, agents, and cultural organisers. Their family played a central and unique mediating role within Italian musical life. This role is documented by an immense trove of letterbooks, a repository of some 600,000 letters that enables a reconstruction of the firm’s business correspondence. The letterbooks are already partially digitised, and the project in the long run is to digitise the whole collection. For the moment, all the confidential letters by Giulio Ricordi (1840-1912), from January 1888 until December 1909, have been digitised, transcribed, translated into English, marked-up and annotated.

They shed light not only on music, but also on the historical, social and economic context, as well as on aspects of artistic and everyday life, across such crucial years for Italy as the early years of the newly formed nation, the general economic social crises of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the harsh, bitter contrasts between Giulio and his son Tito II (1865-1933).

Their confidentiality allows a better understanding of relational problems with collaborators, family members and associated partners, lawyers, bankers, foreign agents, theatres, and most of all composers and authors linked to the house: the revered Verdi, the newly discovered Puccini, young and loyal Boito, ill-tempered Mascagni, and such established librettists as Giacosa and Illica. They try to encourage artists when they get stuck, and to reprimand family or staff members when they do not devote all due attention to expenses and disregard profits. All in all, they tell the story of how a cultural venture can stay afloat through thick and thin.

We will present the letters website, explain our working methods, illustrate our choices and their rationale, and elaborate on future developments of the whole project, which plans to link the letters with related records of the Ricordi Archives (ledgers, contracts, stage designs, scores, autographs, pictures…).


Frédéric Lemmers

(Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels)
Digitizing sound archives at Royal Library of Belgium : challenges and difficulties encountered within a huge digitization project

Since 2011 the Royal Library of Belgium has been engaged in an ambitious digitization programme of its collection, covering all kind of sources including music. In 2016, the library started a new project dedicated to its sound archives. Over the course of 25 months, about 3,000 hours of recorded music will be manipulated, catalogued, reconditionned in acid-free boxes, digitized and photographed, published online and stored in digital format for long-term preservation. This paper aims to focus on challenges and difficulties encountered within this huge and complex project and illuminate the great opportunities it gives to libraries for managing their sound archives.


Armin Brinzing

(Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, Salzburg)
The Mozarts and the Music Collection of the Holy Cross Monastery in Augsburg

For several centuries, the monastery and church of the Holy Cross (Heilig Kreuz) in Augsburg was not only an important pilgrimage site, but also one of the most important musical institutions in the imperial city (Reichsstadt) of Augsburg. The Mozart family had close relationships to the monastery. Leopold Mozart sang there as a child; later he provided the monastery with his own compositions. Wolfgang Amadé Mozart visited the monastery and played music there. He also allowed the musicians of the monastery to copy some of his own works and asked his father to send others from Salzburg to Augsburg. After their father’s death, Mozart’s sister Maria Anna von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg also sent the monastery several sets of parts of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s church music, which he left behind in Salzburg when moving to Vienna.

Only part of the huge music library of the monastery has survived until today. The whole surviving collection has been catalogued for RISM for the first time by the speaker. Doing so not only introduced new insights into the manuscripts of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart and his father, it also allowed us a first complete overview of the works by other composers. Among them are works by other Salzburgers like Michael Haydn and Luigi Gatti, works by Augsburg musicians like Johann Andreas Giulini, and works by musicians from other places (Joseph Haydn, Niccolò Jommelli and others). These interconnections allow us to reconstruct the relationship between the Augsburg monastery and the different musical institutions in Augsburg, Salzburg and other places.

Furthermore, historical inventories from the 19th and early 20th century are presented. They help us reconstruct the original contents of a monastery collection, of which only about 100 manuscripts and a few prints survive, yet originally comprised more than 750 works. Especially helpful are unpublished manuscript notes by the musicologist Theodor Kroyer, who made inventories of the music manuscripts in several Augsburg churches in 1903. In many cases, his descriptions are detailed enough to identify several now lost works by Wolfgang Amadé and Leopold Mozart, as well as those by other composers of the 18th and 19th centuries. A few of the missing music manuscripts can be located today in other private or public collections.


Marek Bebak

(Jagiellonian University, Kraków)
Music and Musicians in the Monastery of the Brothers Hospitallers of St John of God in Cracow from Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century in the Light of Sources

This paper presents my newest research on the collection of 17th, 18th and 19th-century manuscripts and prints from Cracow’s monastery of Hospitallers Brothers of St John of God. Despite the fact that the Order was not a congregation that attached great importance to culture and arts (their main preoccupation was helping the sick) my preliminary archival research has revealed that music was certainly performed in the non-extant church and hospital of the Brothers Hospitallers dedicated to St Ursula located on the corner of St John Street and St Mark Street in Cracow. Although the Cracow archive of the Fate Bene Fratelli Order holds no music-related documentation (except for liturgical books and a few musical prints), other historical sources (inventories, chronicles, books of account, books of patients etc.) prove that the Fate Bene Fratelli employed musicians and they had musical life in their monastery.

The main issue of my paper will be a presentation of different types of sources containing some information about music and musicians connected with the monastery of the Brothers Hospitallers of St John of God in Cracow. During my speech, based on sources analysis I will be trying to answer the question about musical life in Cracow’s monastery from 17th to 19th century.


Jana Vozková

(Department of Music History, Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
P. Barnabas Weiss, erudite priest and musician in multicultural Prague

P. Barnabass Weiss, erudite prior of the Prague Capuchin monastery, built up in the 2nd half of the 19th century an interesting private music collection. Its about 200 items reflect all aspects of his versatile personality: along with his duties as a priest and prior, he was also active as a cellist and as organiser of musical and social life. He copied by his own hand liturgical as well as secular music for the church as well as for private use. Appearing in music productions organised by him were some of the finest Prague opera singers of the time. P. Barnabas Weiss attended private music salons organized by noble patrons, and befriended the then director of the Prague conservatory. Although a German by birth, he maintained lively contacts with members of the local Czech and Jewish sections of society; indeed, his active support of the municipal community was also one of the reasons of his decades-long tenure as prior of an institution located in the very centre of the city of Prague. After Weiss´ death, his music collection, comprised of manuscripts as well as music prints, became an integral part of the newly established music department of the Prague University (today´s National Library). At the very beginning of the 21st century, it was re-catalogued and information about the collection was included in the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales. A book-form catalogue of the collection is currently being prepared for print, supplemented by a study on the collection and its originator. The book in progress will be presented as part of the paper.


Aušra Strazdaitė-Ziberkienė

(Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas)
The 19th century sheet music collection in the Mikas and Kipras Petrauskai Lithuanian Music History department of Kaunas City Museum

The collection of the Mikas and Kipras Petrauskai Lithuanian Music History department of Kaunas City Museum includes more than 6,000 items of the music: manuscripts, printed sheet music, and convoluts. The majority of the sheet music preserved in the collection is the work of Lithuanian composers from the 20th century.

Between 1971 and 1980 more than 2,800 exhibits were transmitted from Kaunas Polytechnic Institute (now – Kaunas University of Technology): manuscripts of Mikas Petrauskas and Juozas Naujalis, sheet music, as well as various manuscripts and publications going back to the 18th century. Part of the sheet music was placed in the museum collections, while the others were placed in a closed stack library. Manuscripts and publications from that library have not been studied until now. Recently it was decided to research the sheet music preserved in the library and to transfer them to the museum collections. These are the 19th century music sheet: publications and manuscripts of chamber music, hymnals, songbooks, and musical pedagogical literature. During this work several manuscripts and publications were discovered which are related to the musical heritage of the Dukes Oginskiai.

This paper presents the 19th century sheet music stored in the collection of the Mikas and Kipras Petrauskai Lithuanian Music History department of Kaunas City Museum.


Felix Purtov

(Deutsche Zentralbücherei für Blinde, Leipzig)
Dmitri Schostakowitsch im Spiegel der deutschen Musikpresse vor dem zweiten Weltkrieg

Dimitri Schostakowitsch – einer der bedeutendsten russischen Komponisten des letzten Jahrhunderts. Sein Leben widerspiegelte die wichtigsten Etappen der Musikevolution seiner Zeit, sein kompositorischen Stil wurde ein Musterbeispiel für mehreren Generationen der europäischen Musikschaffender.

Der Durchbruch von Schostakowitsch auf die weltliche musikalische Bühne begann 1927 mit der Uraufführung seiner ersten Symphonie unter der Leitung von Bruno Walter in Berlin und der Veröffentlichung der Partitur und Orchesterstimmen bei Universal Edition (Wien). „Slavische Sentiments, Eulenspiegeleien und phantastische Einwürfe in origineller chromatischer, durchsichtiger Struktur“ passte gut damaliger Epoche zwischen zwei Weltkriegen.

Die Forschungsarbeit hat folgende Aufgabe gezielt:
– Medienkreis damaliger Zeit (Presse, Rundfunksendungen, Schallplatten);
– Auswahl der Zeitschriften bzw. Zeitungen, wo die notwendige Information potentiell existiert;
– was war von Komponisten und russischer Musik damaliger Zeit überhaupt bekannt;
– wo und was für die Werke wurden aufgeführt (europa- bzw. weltweit);
– Schostakowitsch als Objekt der kritischen Rezensionen;
– Musiker, die seine Musik gespielt hatten.

Die Ergebnisse haben gezeigt, dass die allgemeine Interesse an die modernen russischen Musik sehr groß war. Diese Tendenz hat Heinrich Strobel im Jahre 1931 so erklärt: „Programmatik und romantischer Gefühlssubjektivismus sind in diesem politisch so radikalen Land noch unerschüttert, nur die Klangmittel haben sich modernisiert“. Die Werke von Prokofjew, Mosolow, Schostakowitsch und sowie die russischen Emigranten Stravinsky, Tscherepnin, Medtner wurden regelmäßig aufgeführt und veröffentlicht.


Anita Breckbill

(University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln NE)
What Were Mennonites Singing When They Traveled through the Red Gate into Latvia?

Mennonites from Prussia moved to Russia in the 1780s after an invitation from Catherine the Great, who promised freedom of religious practice, exemption from military service and grants of land. Around 9000 people in the original wave of migrations grew to around 100,000 by 1924. In the 1920s post-revolution unrest, persecution, and the threat of military service caused many to flee. Mennonites emigrating to Canada from Russia in the 1920s traveled by train through the Red Gate into Latvia in order to be processed in Riga. What were they singing as they reached the safety of Latvia, represented by the Red Gate on the rail line at the border?

This paper explores the singing styles, song choices, and hymnal publications of the Mennonites in Russia in the early part of the 20th century. Mennonites had a 250-year tradition of unaccompanied unison singing from their German/Swiss/Dutch Anabaptist ancestors. During the 19th century they moved to singing in four-part harmony, partly as a result of the rise of choral singing and the publication of hymnals and choral music using Ziffern, or cipher-notation, which used numerals to indicate pitches. Ziffern was a way to teach singing to those who did not read staff notation.

The Choralbuch (1860) by Heinrich Franz was a most important Russian Mennonite music publication. It included 112 melodies taken largely from late 18th and early 19th century sources, and showing influence of Moravians, German Baptists, and the Erweckungsbewegung. Russian Mennonite churches published several hymnals: the Geistreiches Gesangbuch, which went through ten editions in Germany beginning in 1767 and seven in Russia beginning in 1844, and was in use in Russia until 1892, and the Gesangbuch zum gottesdienstlichen und häuslichen Gebrauch in den Mennoniten Gemeinden Russlands, published in 1892 in Molochna, with a final 5th edition published in 1914. Many texts and tunes borrowed from the Lutheran and Reformed traditions were included in the hymnals.

Delegates will have the opportunity to sing the hymn “Nun danket alle Gott” in 4-part harmony using Ziffern notation.


Christopher Scobie

(British Library, London)
An entirely new method of writing music, in strict conformity with nature, and essentially free from all obscurity: William Lunn’s Sequential System and proposals for music notation reform in the nineteenth century

Taking William Lunn (under the pseudonym Arthur Wallbridge) and his ‘Sequential System’ of the 1840s as a starting point, this paper introduces some of the many proposals for systems of music notation reform developed and published in Europe and the USA in the nineteenth century. While a few, such as ‘Tonic sol-fa’, achieved a level of success, most are consigned to library shelves. These (sometimes literally colourful) experiments also perhaps reflect a wider range of concerns regarding music making of the time. As well as giving some impression of the diversity of systems and context from which they emerge, I will also seek to identify common features, highlighting aspects of conventional notation that were seen as problematic and the relationship these systems have with the rise in both amateur music making, and the commodification of music itself.


Marta Walkusz

(Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music, Gdańsk)
Musical literature published by Gebethner and Wolff collected in the Main Library of the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. Provenance and characteristics of the collection

The Main Library of the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk possesses many valuable acquisitions not only from the Pomeranian region, but also from publishers outside Gdańsk. Among them it can be found mainly textbooks for learning the music rules or harmony and history of music by outstanding Polish artists, such as Zygmunt Noskowski, Henryk Opieński, Mieczyslaw Surzyński, Stanisław Kazuro, published by the largest Polish publisher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: Gebethner and Wolff.

This article includes a bibliography of this collection and its characteristics, including the provenance of individual items. It is also description of the circumstances of writing those works and the value recognized in the musicological world and their reading purpose.


Tommi Harju

(University of Arts Helsinki Library, Helsinki)
Some Viewpoints to the Private Theoretical Library of Johann Gottfried Walther (1684–1748)

In my presentation I will present the theoretical private library of Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748), a German composer, theorist and organist and a contemporary and relative to Johann Sebastian Bach. Walther assembled a vast collection of books and sheet music, and I will focus in my presentation to the part of books. The library is now partly lost, but can be reconstructed via his correspondence primarily with Heinrich Bokemeyer, a cantor in Wolfenbüttel and a fellow collector. The reconstruction is based on the paradigms of microhistorical book history. In one of Walther’s letters can be found a list of his library, “Catalogus librorum theoretico-musicorum quos possiedo”, which forms the basis on my research. Also all the other survived Walther’s letters are consulted in research. Some of references to Walther’s collection can be found in the Archive of Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, whereto some parts of Walther’s theoretical library were later purchased from Ernst Ludwig Gerber.

J. G. Walther’s theoretical library consists mostly of subjects related to music, such as composition, theory and history, but there are also other areas of interests such as rhetoric, geography, religion and esotericism. In my presentation I will demonstrate these subject areas and draw some conclusions of the world views that can be found on the background of Walther’s library. J. G. Walther can be seen as an example of a composer who had almost a passion to collect books.


Callie Holmes and Matthew Vest

(UCLA Music Library, Los Angeles, CA)
A Post-Canon Music Library: Finding, Collecting and Promoting Divergent Collections at the UCLA Music Library

In the humanities, canons have served to elevate those works deemed essential to study of a discipline, representing the “best” based on concepts of genius, aesthetic beauty, complexity, universality and timelessness. In libraries, where there is neither the money nor space to purchase and store everything published, canons were deemed “essential” or “core” and drove collection development efforts. However, in recent decades many scholars and critics have pointed out that canons are formed not with objective criteria but by subjectively and culturally-driven decisions. These choices help to support the cultural hegemony by legitimizing and reinforcing the values of the dominant culture while silencing divergent voices. Consequently, music pedagogy and scholarship have been moving away from canons, as scholars increasingly seek to diversify both within the traditional domain of European Art Music (by looking at women, minorities, queer studies, music of the Americas, etc.) and without (by including jazz, popular music, and non-Western traditions). Furthermore, canons are becoming less relevant as pedagogy shifts from focusing on what students “need to know” to concentrate instead on methodological tools and critical thinking skills for students to use while approaching a broader array of topics and repertoire. The challenge then, for libraries, is how to support these changes in music pedagogy and scholarship given the fiscal and spatial constraints that libraries often face.

In this presentation, we will talk about various ways the UCLA Music Library is responding to these challenges and how we are actively moving our collections and services beyond the traditional canon. One such response has been to refocus collection development, picking particular areas and diving deep. For example, we have recently started collection initiatives focusing on locally created (Los Angeles and Southern California) punk and hip hop music. These two genres have strong roots in the local music scenes, and in addition to being areas of interest to the scholars at our institution, they tend to be areas that are less documented and represented in cultural institutions. Another strategy has been to uncover and highlight existing special or unique collections within our larger collection. Two such collections are the scores from the Federal Music Project which formed the start of our collection and library, and a sizable collection of Soviet published scores. In the presentation we will discuss the Soviet score collection in more detail, including a digitization project and other efforts to make this collection more discoverable and prominent.


Kai Kutman and Anneli Kivisiv

(Arvo Pärt Centre, Laulasmaa)
Archiving a living composer: building Arvo Pärt’s personal archive

The presentation provides an overview of the foundation of the Arvo Pärt Centre, its development, collections, classification system, archival activities and future plans. The special feature of the personal archive is that its content – its core – opens, grows and reaches its eventual form and scale in a process that is closely related to the current activities of Arvo Pärt, which also requires the Centre archivists to be creatively active and flexible in solving the tasks of the archive. The archive describes the activities and challenges related to the construction of an archive of a living composer.


Antoine Provansal

(Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris),
paper read by Clotidle Angleys (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris)
Les entrées de documents nés numériques au département de la Musique / Arrival of native digital documents in the Music Departement, BnF

L’environnement documentaire des bibliothèques musicales été bouleversé depuis 30 ans par deux phénomènes majeurs. Le premier est l’apparition des logiciels d’écriture musicale, propriétaire (Finale, Sibelius), dès la fin des années 1980, ou Open source, dans la décennie suivante. Ces nouveaux outils de production de musique notée ont amené deux changements marquants: la source principale de l’œuvre est devenue exclusivement numérique et immatérielle; les états préalables de l’œuvre (brouillons) ne peuvent plus être conservés. Le second bouleversement a été l’arrivée du World Wide Web, dans les années 1990, et la croissance exponentielle de contenus et de nouveaux services (partage, gratuité) qu’il offre à nos utilisateurs.

Face à ces deux phénomènes, la Bibliothèque nationale de France propose des solutions pour faire entrer dans ses collections les documents nés numériques. Parmi les défis qui doivent être relevés, le maintien de la continuité du dépôt légal est l’un des plus importants. En France, la tâche est facilitée par l’adoption, en 2006, de la loi « droits d’auteurs et droits voisins dans la société de l’information » (loi DADVSI) qui met en place le dépôt des messages et signaux diffusés sur les réseaux. Cette loi a été reprise, dès 2011, dans un décret instituant le dépôt légal des sites Web diffusés en France. Un autre décret devra préciser les modalités de dépôt des livres numériques (e-books) et des partitions numériques éditées. Fin octobre 2016, ce décret n’a pas encore été adopté.

Mais les arrivées de documents nés numériques dans nos collections posent d’autres questions. Les défis à relever sont de trois ordres: juridiques, documentaires – avec notamment la difficile question du signalement de ces nouveaux documents dans nos catalogues – mais surtout techniques. Les solutions adoptées par la Bibliothèque nationale de France reposent sur des briques déjà développés pour d’autres usages, comme le visualiseur Gallica pour consulter et interroger les fichiers, ou le système SPAR pour leur archivage mais également sur le développement d’une Chaîne d’entrée du document numérique qui complète le dispositif. Elle vient d’être testé et permet pour l’instant d’accueillir des fichiers images et des pdf, accompagnés de leurs métadonnées.


Erin Conor

(Reed College, Portland, OR)
Music information literacy in the digital age: resolving student challenges

What does it mean to teach music information literacy in the environment of information abundance that the digital age presents? What is the role of the librarian when so much of what music students need is seemingly readily available online through sites like YouTube, Google Scholar, and the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)?

In 2013, Reed College in Portland, Oregon received a substantial four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop undergraduate students’ information literacy skills within disciplinary contexts. The grant, “From Evidence to Scholarship: Transforming Undergraduate Student Research in the Digital Age,” seeks to better understand how undergraduate students find, access, and use digital information when conducting research, and in turn, how librarians, disciplinary faculty and information technology staff can better integrate information literacy instruction into the curriculum.

Grant funds from the Mellon Foundation were used to conduct a campus needs assessment, completed in consultation with Alison Head, Executive Director and Principal Investigator for Project Information Literacy (http://projectinfolit.org/). I will share the results of the needs assessment, which investigated Reed student and faculty perceptions, expectations, and challenges when it comes to student research. This needs assessment subsequently inspired a lengthy collaboration, also supported with Mellon Foundation funding, between myself and Reed College Associate Professor of Music Morgan Luker. Taking the needs assessment results as a starting point, we worked together to design and co-teach the research components of a required course for music majors.

Using my collaboration with Prof. Luker as a case study, I will highlight the ways in which close partnerships with disciplinary faculty can help us to effectively meet the many challenges music students face when conducting research in an online environment. I will discuss the next steps in my work with music faculty at Reed College, as well as the implications of our work for other institutions. Attendees will leave with new insights into the information literacy challenges music students at their own institutions may be facing, as well as ideas for ways in which they can use their expertise as music librarians to more effectively meet those challenges.


Janneka Guise and Katherine Penner

(University of Manitoba, Winnipeg)
Counterpoint: an 8-year mentoring relationship

This presentation describes an 8-year music library mentoring relationship at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada). Their collaboration has enabled the two librarians to accomplish more than they could on their own, and to see the profession through two sets of eyes. The mentor (Jan Guise) is the Head of the Eckhardt-Gramatté Music Library, and the mentee (Katherine Penner) is a music graduate from that University who went on to earn an MLIS degree and return to the University of Manitoba Libraries as the Undergraduate Services Librarian.

First, the presenters will discuss the benefits of mentoring from their unique points of view. Jan will describe how the mentoring relationship has extended her professional training: she has developed leadership skills, learned new technologies and teaching methods, and has increased confidence and energy around her professional practice. Katherine will describe how the mentoring relationship established her identity as a librarian. Jan helped her build professional connections through informal coffee gatherings, as well as in more formal committee service. These connections fostered discussion of LIS trends and current research and enabled Katherine to discover her own interests and strengths. Her subsequent research projects have allowed her to deeply explore challenges and issues in her daily professional practice.

Second, the presenters will discuss how the mentoring relationship has benefitted the University library system and the Desautels Faculty of Music. Regular job shadowing provides insight into the day to day processes of being a music librarian. Spending time in the music library enables Katherine to understand the music library environment as well as the needs of staff and patrons. Job shadowing and knowledge transfer are some of the building blocks of succession planning. If Jan were to leave her position, Katherine would be able to step in and fill the role temporarily until a permanent replacement was hired. Katherine is also gaining valuable experience that would make her a strong candidate for the permanent position if she were to apply for it.

Finally, the presenters will describe a collaborative project in the Desautels Faculty of Music that draws on their combined expertise. Katherine’s current research involves engaging first-year students using ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy. Jan has built a strong foundation of information literacy within the music faculty which supports building information literacy into the music history curriculum. The collaborative project is increasing both faculty and student engagement, as well as strengthening the mentoring relationship and the librarians’ individual careers.


Lynnsey Weissenberger

(Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida)
Music Information Objects Described by Music Practitioners: Implications for Organization and Access of Traditional Musics

This paper describes findings from the first known information behavior study involving practitioners of non-Western musics, with implications for context-based organization of, and access to, traditional music information. In this exploratory study, semi-structured Ethnographic interviews with 11 traditional music practitioners examined how they describe and conceptualize music information objects (MIOs), testing and expanding a new theoretical framework to classify such descriptors and characteristics. These music practitioners represented 10 traditions, including practitioners of Indian classical music, Lakota/Native American song and dance, Ugandan Baganda music, and Irish traditional music. The study’s purpose was to explore the role of the traditional music practitioner as an information resource for developing organization and retrieval approaches that accurately represent world music traditions.

Practitioners described how they communicated knowledge and information, as well as
how they are embodied; discussed how they create meaning in their tradition(s); articulated how truths about music information and music knowledge are conveyed and shared among people in the traditions; and, displayed a wide variety in the value placed upon various representations and manifestations of Music Information Objects. As practitioners described MIOs within their tradition, they also related them to wider concepts of information and knowledge within these same contexts. Five facets of Music Information Objects – value, secrecy, authority, ownership, and appropriateness – emerged, providing future conceptual and applied directions for music resource description, organization, and access. Practitioners used the term “appropriateness,” to underscore the importance of context in their musical traditions. Appropriate context for information is the way knowledge can be demonstrated, meaning future music information research must seek to better understand these varied contexts of information.

The Indian music practitioner, Lakota singer and dancer, Ugandan music practitioner, and the Clare-style Irish fiddler all viewed contextual placement of music information as the way to demonstrate true mastery of the tradition as a knowledgeable individual. Music practitioners’ ability to situate music information content in rich socio-cultural contexts–such as time, place, stylistic and geographic similarity (such as regional styles)–as well as their use of mobile technologies and social media in their musical practices, makes them valuable potential resources for ongoing work in information organization and context-based retrieval. Future efforts in the context-based indexing and retrieval of music information would benefit from collaboration between those with expertise in musical traditions, information and cultural heritage organizations, and others working to make these musics accessible within information systems and across the web.


Janne Suits

(Estonian Traditional Music Center, Viljandi)
The Estonian Traditional Music Library in Viljandi

The presentation will consist of three parts:
1. A PowerPoint presentation about Estonian Traditional Music Library and Traditional Music Center in Viljandi (http://folk.ee/en/estonian-traditional-music-center)
2. Question and answers about the present situation of Estonian traditional music movement.
3. Small musical performance with traditional music instruments HIIU KANNEL (bowed-Lyre) and REGILAUL (traditional singing style in Estonia).


Paweł Nodzak

(Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music, Gdańsk)
In the service for blind musicians – activities of Edwin Kowalik Music Society and Publishing House Toccata in Warsaw and their collections.

The aim of the paper is to present the activities of the Edwin Kowalik Music Society, which as one of the few in Poland is engaged in promoting and supporting music activity and education of the blind.

The presentation shows the patron’s work for the blind as well as activities of the Society formed by his cause. For 18 years the organization has been publishing magazines, organizing concerts and editing notes in Braille. Currently the Society has an extensive collection of notes and textbooks that are available to interested people and institutions.


Juan José Pastor

(University of Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real)
The Center for Music Research and Documentation, Associated Unit of Spanish National Research Council (CIDoM, Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC): Objectives and Digital Projects

The Centro de Investigación y Documentación Musical (CIDoM) (Center for Music Research and Documentation) is an Associated Unit of Spanish National Research Council (Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC). Founded in 2012 and formed by an interdisciplinary team of PhDs in Musicology, History, History of Art and Hispanic Philology coordinated by Professors Paulino Capdepón and Juan José Pastor, CIDoM has among its objectives to replace and restore the musical heritage in one of the most important regions of Spain, Castilla-La Mancha, a large area of 80.000 Km2, that hosts civil and religious centres of a great and historical musical activity. Centres as the music chapel of the Toledo and Cuenca Cathedrals attracted a large number of composers, among them, relevant composers such as Ginés Boluda or Alonso Suárez, chapel masters of the Cuenca Cathedral, or Andrés Torrente, Cristóbal de Morales and Pedro de Ardanaz, Bonet de Paredes, Miguel de Ambela and Francisco Juncá, chapel masters of the Toledo Cathedral. The musical legacy of these and other composers of 16th-18th centuries, has remained, unfortunately, mostly unknown. Today it is necessary to investigate and to publish analytical works and musical editions of all those sources saved both in religious centres (cathedrals, collegiate churches, monasteries, parochial churches, seminars, etc.) and in civil centres (such as the National Museum of Spanish Theatre at Almagro). In the last years CIDoM has developed several national I+D+i Research Projects (Research + Development + innovation) focused in the Musical Heritage of Castilla-La Mancha and its Critical Analysis, Reception and Digital Edition. Parallel, CIDoM has too a section with several digital databases focused on the music linked to the most important writer in Spanish language, Miguel de Cervantes.

In this paper we’ll describe the main aims of our Center for Music Research and Documentation focused on the following aspects:
• The critical analysis and editing of the historical musical heritage of Castilla-La Mancha between the 16th and 17th centuries and the recovery of Castilla-La Mancha’s musical legacy during the Renaissance and Baroque period.
• The study of literary sources that support textual musical works of vocal character.
• Creation of a digital data base that gathers the inventory of the musical sources and that could be consulted by the scientific community by means of a page web (beta.cidom.es)
• Editing of a collection of books, scores and recordings that makes known the musical patrimony of Castilla-La Mancha (Alpuerto Editorial: http://beta.cidom.es/colecciones-editoriales/editorial-alpuerto-investigacion-y-patrimonio-musical)
• Collaboration with the principal musical festivals of the region, such as “Cuenca Religious Music Week”, in order to give premieres of unknown musical works.
• Organization of congress and seminars -see “Cervantes’ Musics: From Musical Heritage to Musical Reception (XVI-XXI Centuries)”, an International Conference promoted by the Economy and Competitiveness Ministry and the Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action, http://beta.cidom.es/el-centro/congreso-internacional-las-musicas-de-cervantes -to offer the results of the research project and to create a discussion forum about the musical sources in Castilla-La Mancha and Spain.


Christine-Ani Tokatlian

(DEREE-The American College of Greece, Athens)
Armenian Post-Independence Piano Music: Research in a dead-end (?). Limitations in Publications or Limited Musical Activity?

Armenian post-Soviet piano music is not widely included in bibliographic or discographic publications. Therefore, accessibility is limited to the specialized researcher who quiet often may reach a deadlock. Be it linguistic barriers, be it inaccessibility to primary and secondary sources, the restraints of the research are well-grounded. How far can one reach when very little is written and documented? “Though books and literature have a long and outstanding tradition in Armenia, the transition period with its radical changes since the early 1990s had had serious effects on publications”. Writings on Armenian traditional music, as well as music of Komitas have reached a wider reader. Moreover, there is an extended bibliography and discography on music in the Soviet era. What is surprising is the insufficiency of documentation on the output of composers after the independence of the country in 1991.
The substantial amount of guidance and the influence of state authorities in publishing and distribution belong to the past. Still, the country is not meeting the international standards regarding organizational structures and techniques; neither do these apply to the domestic needs. “With publishing lacking profound change the country has one of their major identifiers not at full disposal for cultural and educational aims”.

Efforts in presenting the work of established composers is coming about in Armenia, in the form of lectures and recitals, mainly organized by private institutions. Some intellectuals have provided texts on the subject but they are largely in Armenian and Russian. Therefore, a linguistic barrier is well ahead for the Western researcher. Even sheet music and discography is limited and difficult to trace. How, then is it expected for this ‘new’ music to be accessible to an audience, when sources are so scarce? There is a complex system of parameters that should be taken into account. On the other hand, it could be that actually there is little music activity in Armenia and that some music has actually reached a wider public. Another aspect that should be examined is the possible lack of means and the challenges of a poor economic climate.

Will this area remain just an expertise of Armenians and/or Russians? The documentation of this rarely performed repertoire has the capacity to be both, a demarcator of Armenian-ness after Independence and one of the key vehicles leading the promotion of new music output forward.


Kathrin Greger and Patricia Rosner

(Berliner Philharmoniker, Berlin)
The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall for Institutions: connecting with fellow musicians and music lovers in the 21st century

Musicians are facing new challenges – they can no longer rely on CDs and DVDs to connect them with their communities. At the same time, new technologies offer ways to directly interact with people all over the world. Since the 2008/2009 season, the orchestra’s Berlin concerts have been broadcast live in the Berliner Philharmoniker’s virtual concert venue, the Digital Concert Hall, and become available in a video archive within a few days. This resource can be accessed via the web, on tablets, smartphones and smartTVs. It contains more than 1,000 complete works as well as historic recordings, documentaries and interviews. The Digital Concert Hall has offered institutional access since February 2016.

The development from a platform which focuses on individual patrons to a digital resource for institutions was a big step and there is still a lot to learn in order to be able to best serve the community. This talk aims to give an overview of the project, its institutional background, its development and challenges whilst exploring the drastic changes in the overall landscape of music consumption.

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/institutions/


David Ryfman

(medici.tv, Paris)
medici.tv “The world’s leading classical music channel “. A unique selection of live or on-demand concerts, operas, ballets, documentaries, and master classes

medici.tv is the global leader in classical music video streaming. For nearly 10 years, its unique selection of live or on-demand concerts, operas, ballets, documentaries, and master classes has appealed to music lovers, professionals and institutions throughout the world. David Ryfman is vice president Product and Business Development at medici.tv.


Margus Kasemaa

(Conductor, Estonian Wind Band Tartu)
The importance of music libraries to conductors and orchestras. International relationships between music libraries and orchestras in the Baltic States and Nordic Countries

Margus Kasemaa, conductor of Wind Band Tartu (Estonia), will introduce us to the wind orchestra tradition in the Baltic states. He will illustrate the importance of music libraries to conductors and orchestras especially in their search for repertoire.


Kimmy Szeto

(Baruch College, City University of New York, New York)
From Music Cataloging to Global Linked Data Sharing: An Examination of Roles, Rules and Models

Recent years have seen a proliferation of linked data models and implementations for music. Among them are two major projects designed for music libraries: Doing Reusable Musical data (DOREMUS) in France and Linked Data for Production – Performed Music Ontology (LD4P-PMO) in the United States. While the heterogeneity of ontologies contributes richness and nuance, making the transition from the domain-specific, single-schema practice to the global, open linked data environment poses great challenges to the music cataloging. How do we connect the MARC data model with linked data models to broaden resource description and retrieval? How do we interconnect various linked data models to foster greater international and inter-domain data sharing?

One angle to address these questions is to examine our own cataloging practice. Currently, we share a large amount of bibliographic data through a process where we describe items for our local catalogs in the MARC format before exporting a subset of information to the international union catalog (WorldCat). Meanwhile, the premise of linked data begins with global data sharing. As a community of librarians, how should we adjust our cataloging practice to meet this new objective? Answering this question begins with asking some questions fundamental to our cataloging data: What are we trying to produce with the data? Where are the data going? Who are the consumers of these data? What are they trying to produce with these data? From this starting point, we can then address global data sharing through the way we design and harmonize data models and controlled vocabularies, develop cataloging rules, and, more generally, shape the role of the linked data cataloger.

The specialized needs of music library users provide excellent illustrations of the importance of this fundamental rethinking of cataloging. Starting with actual reference questions that touch on medium of performance, form, genre, score format, notation, language, and nationality, I will analyze common user tasks as these music library users interact with the MARC catalog, and contrast their experience with navigating a linked data environment that incorporates aspects of open data models such as DOREMUS and LD4P-PMO (which will be brand new as of March 2017). I will demonstrate some consequences of cataloging practice decisions made in the data models and in the cataloging rules, and, given available open data, I will explore the role of the linked data cataloger as a data curator who brings a broad spectrum of data together to enable a sensible service to library users.


Ann Dzidra Kunish

(Oslo Public Library, Oslo)
Metadata: the greatest barrier to digital services in the Music Library?

When considering potential digital music services in music libraries, copyright and the financial aspect of licensing are usually foremost in the discussion. Metadata is however one of the greatest challenges facing the development of digital service platforms for music in libraries, and is the subject of this paper.

Most music services outside the library lack quality-controlled metadata, which makes it problematic to incorporate those services in such a way that maintains the level of patron services library users have come to expect. Commercial actors such as Tidal and Spotify receive metadata directly from record companies, whose use of genre terminology varies greatly. YouTube and services such as the Norwegian “Urørt” are dependent on tagging done by users. There is no universally recognized authority control for composers, artists, bands or other performing groups. When a prototype for a new digital service was tested in Norway in 2015, it was discovered that not even that country’s music libraries had handled metadata in the same manner.

Recordings of music have a plethora of elements. In addition to genre, those who seek information on recordings search by means of title, composer, artist and performer, instrumentation, opus number, key, year and much more. Users acquainted with the works they seek use these search terms actively. With the current varying metadata, this type of search is not only impossible, but hit lists are often wild goose chases. Complicated, overarching search motors can of course be programmed to make allowance for each contributing source’s idiosyncrasies in use of terminology, but this is an expensive endeavor that would only serve to obscure the real problem.

In this paper we will outline the current metadata situation in Norway, describe the types of services we wish to offer our patrons, and explain the national work in progress in the field.


Eva Neumayr

(Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, Salzburg)
The Mozart-Nachlass in the Holdings of the Dommusikverein and Mozarteum and its provenance

Franz Xaver Mozart’s musical inheritance was bestowed on the Dommusikverein und Mozarteum Salzburg by his longtime companion, Josephine Baroni-Cavalcabo, in 1844. Some years later, Carl Mozart, his older brother, also bequeathed his library to the society. Both collections constituted the basis of the library of the Dommusikverein und Mozarteum, a society founded in Salzburg in 1841 with the aims of reorganizing sacred music in Salzburg, presenting concerts, keeping a music school and, last but not least, preserving, cultivating and researching Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music. Due to a split up in 1880, its holdings have been divided between the Bibliotheka Mozartiana of the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg and the Archiv der Erzdiözese Salzburg. Both institutions cooperating, they have been catalogued and digitized in a project of the Digital Mozart Edition (DME).

Although the collection comprises many of the letters of the Mozart family as well as autograph fragments and early copies of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music, it is not only interesting for Mozart scholarship: Many different provenances brought early sources of Johann Sebastian Bach’s, his sons’ and other composer’s music, as well as interesting Salzburg sources to the collection. Illuminating the different correlations between the people connected with this collection, this paper turns up a cultural network of the first half of the 19th century with many hitherto little known links between composers, musicians, patrons and collectors of the time.


Kristina Funk-Kunath

(Bach-Archiv Leipzig)
The manuscript collection “Manfred Gorke”: a report about the current digitizing project in cooperation with the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB)

Die bisher wenig beachtete Sammlung Manfred Gorke enthält neben wertvollen Autographen zahlreiche Musikalien des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts sowie Briefe, welche von einem Mitglied der weit verzweigten Bachfamilie zusammengetragen wurden.

Seit 1952 befindet sich die Handschriftensammlung im Bach-Archiv in Leipzig. 1935 wurde diese von dem schlesischen Musikliebhaber Manfred Gorke an die Stadt Leipzig verkauft.

Um die wertvollen Manuskripte einem größeren Nutzer- und Forscherkreis zur Verfügung zu stellen, wurde 2016 mit der kompletten Digitalisierung der rund 700 Musikhandschriften der Sammlung begonnen.
Der Vortrag soll über die Arbeit, Erfahrungen und Ergebnisse des Digitalisierungsprojekts berichten.
(Der Vortrag von meinem Kollegen Manuel Bärwald nimmt ebenso Bezug auf die Sammlung Manfred Gorke und sollte wenn möglich in der gleichen Session laufen)


Manuel Bärwald

(Bach-Archiv Leipzig)
Periphery or context? The collection “Manfred Gorke“: musical sources from Bach’s environment / Peripherie oder Kontext? Die Sammlung “Manfred Gorke”: musikalische Quellen aus Bachs Umfeld

Das Bach-Archiv Leipzig digitalisiert im Rahmen des Landesdigitalisierungsprogramms für Wissenschaft und Kultur des Freistaates Sachsen seit Oktober 2016 die rund 700 Musikhandschriften umfassenden Sammlung „Manfred Gorke“. Die bisher wenig beachtete Sammlung hatte die Stadt Leipzig 1935 von dem schlesischen Musikliebhaber Manfred Gorke (1897–1956) erworben und dem Bach-Archiv 1952 zur dauerhaften Aufbewahrung übergeben.

Zu ihren wertvollsten Stücken gehören vier Originalhandschriften Johann Sebastian Bachs. Ein Großteil der Musikalien überliefert hingegen noch kaum erforschtes mitteldeutsches Repertoire des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, das ein Mitglied der weitverzweigten Musikerfamilie Bach in seinem Amt als Organist auf einem thüringischen Dorf zusammengetragen hatte: Abschriften zahlreicher Werke kaum bekannter mitteldeutscher Komponisten, aber eben auch Manuskripte aus dem Umfeld der Leipziger Kirchen, darunter Originalhandschriften von Bach-Schülern und weiteren Thomaskantoren . In der Bach-Forschung hat das der Sammlung – nach einer zunächst maßlosen Überschätzung ihres Wertes bei ihrer Entdeckung Ende der 1920er Jahre – bald den Ruf einer „Gemischtwaren“-Sammlung eingebracht.

Das Referat stellt zunächst einzelne Handschriften der Sammlung vor, beleuchtet ihren Überlieferungszusammenhang und diskutiert anschließend die Frage der Bedeutung einer zusammenhängenden Digitalisierung des Bestandes aus musikwissenschaftlicher und bibliothekarischer Perspektive.


Akane Kuribayashi

(Tamagawa University Museum of Education, Tokyo)
Catalog of the Gaspar Cassadó & Hara Chieko Collection

In 1990, Hara Chieko and her family donated to the Tamagawa Academy documents and materials related to the musical activities of herself and her husband Gaspar Cassadó, and it was decided that the Museum of Education would be responsible for their conservation. This catalog focuses primarily on those donated items connected to the musical activities of Mr. Cassadó and Hara. A selection of the documents and materials donated in 1990 with reference numbers that were assigned upon receipt (= accession number), comprising Japanese and non-Japanese books and journals, music scores (printed scores and manuscripts), sound recordings, and programs. Additionally, the items covered in this catalog represent only those that have been investigated and added to the database through 31 March 2016.


Sean Luyk

(University of Alberta, Edmonton)
Supporting “Distant Listening” in Music Libraries

Franco Moretti’s book Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (2005) outlined his theory of “distant reading,” a paradigm-shifting method that advocated moving away from studying individual texts, to charting entire genres computationally. Moretti’s insights were controversial, but have helped to further promote the acceptance of digital humanities methodologies in literary studies. But for humanities scholars whose objects of study are sound, such as those in the music disciplines, what methods are available for studying it computationally on a large, “distant” scale? Is the idea of “distant listening” viable or feasible for these scholars? There is evidence that humanities scholars who work with sound are at a disadvantage in terms of the computational methods and tools available to them as compared to those available to scholars working with text. It is therefore important for the library and information science (LIS) and digital humanities (DH) communities to work towards closing this gap.

Research in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) has made significant progress in this regard, yet it can be argued that there is a lack of research grounded in user studies that examine the computational needs of scholars in the humanities who use sound. This poster will present the beginnings of a user study that investigates the digital library and music information systems needs of humanities scholars for researching with sound. The study will ask: what are the specific activities involving sound and listening that these scholars do to create new knowledge? and, how can these activities be better supported in digital library and music information systems environments? The first stage of the study is a state-of-the-art literature review that synthesizes current research on the knowledge-creation practices of humanists who work primarily with sound, with an emphasis on the practices of musicology researchers.

The purpose of the review is to identify broad trends in how sound is used in humanities research, and assess our current understanding of how it contributes to the creation of new knowledge. I will draw upon work from LIS, MIR, sound studies, DH, as well as conceptions of sound and listening from critical theory and cultural studies. I will also sketch my proposed program of research, present preliminary findings, and outline design considerations for music information systems and digital libraries that could allow for “distant listening” approaches grounded in humanistic inquiry.


Muneyoshi Yamamoto

(Aichi University of the Arts, Aichi)
Nanki Music Library: a multifaceted institution

This study reevaluates the activities of the Nanki Music Library in the early twentieth century. The Nanki Music Library (established 1918) is the first music library in Japan; it had a large and valuable collection of western music gathered by Yorisada Tokugawa, the 16th master of the Kishu Tokugawa family. The library played many roles: concert hall; music library; instrumental museum; music research center, etc. Currently, the western music collection is well-known, but various activities of the library aren’t recognized well.
The library was affiliated with Nanki Gakudo, which was one of the earliest Japanese concert halls to contain a pipe organ. In the early twentieth century, no Japanese concert hall contained a pipe organ, and attached to a music library. Furthermore, it was difficult to listen to western music free of charge and obtain western music resources in Japan. However, Nanki Gakudo held free concerts, and the library provided music resources to the general public. In addition, the library owned gramophones, which anyone was able to use. Therefore, Nanki Gakudo and the Nanki Music Library greatly contributed to the reception of western music in Japan.

Moreover, the Nanki Music Library also had one of the largest gagaku collections, inherited from the Kishu Tokugawa family. Therefore, the Library was also a Japanese traditional music research center. One of the goals of the library was the proliferation of Japanese traditional music overseas. According to this study’s results, Kiyosuke Kanetsune and Shoichi Tsuji, research workers at the library, published “Saibara” (belonging to the gagaku genre), which was written in Japanese and German. It is estimated that this publishing project led to foreigners’ understanding of the gagaku genre. However, such research activities of the library have not been adequately studied.

The study reevaluates the Nanki Music Library by considering it a multifaceted institution. It attempts to reconsider the Library’s role in promoting the reception of western music in Japan and propagating Japanese traditional music overseas.


Hanna Bias

(Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music Library, Katowice)
Musical ex libris book plates as a mirror of changes in art, documenting and commemorating important events and personalities. Presentation of Polish and Latvian works from the collection of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music Library in Katowice, Poland

Ex libris is an insignificant mark of ownership having already a tradition of many centuries. For the artist ex libris has come to be a popular form of artistic expression, and the titular owners have become enthusiastic lovers and collectors of ex libris book plates. The book plate itself has been transformed from a conventional label to a collector’s item and the object of exchange, and though it is no longer always affixed to a book it has not ceased to be an ex libris.

The book plate may be seen as a mirror of changes in artistic styles and as one of the elements of plastic creation it reflects the course of artistic and cultural life, serving to record and commemorate the most important events.

Of the many topics supplying the motive inspiration for the artist, music has been of especial importance. The musical motif in the design of book plates has been theme of many exhibitions organized in Poland, as for example that on the occasion of the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznań, Grzegorz Fitelberg International Conductors’ Competition in Katowice, 50th anniversary of the Poznań Opera, where ex libris designs devoted exclusively to operatic subjects were displayed.

In the collection of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music Library in Katowice are more than two hundred ex libris plates on musical themes. A majority of the book plates exhibited is of polish origin. Artists from Latvia are represented on a considerably more modest scale, though here too there is no lack of well known names such as Otto Mednis and Vitautas Jakstas. Among the owners there is a composer Lauma Reinholde, writer Vitas Žvirdauskas, and journalist Aivars Berkis, et al.


Jan Dewilde

(Centre for the Study of Flemish Music, Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, Antwerp)
‘All that jazz’: the jazz collections in the library of the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp

In the past couple of years, the library of the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp has gathered various large and important private jazz collections. Remarkably, these collections are not only very internationally oriented, they also document the history of Belgian jazz. In many ways Belgium has a particularly rich jazz history and it was a pioneer when it came to jazz magazines, jazz competitions and so called ‘hot clubs’. The private collections gathered at the Conservatoire document this pioneer’s period with very diverse and often ephemeral material, such as photos, programme booklets, posters, sheet music, letters, contracts, recordings, newspaper and magazine clippings, as well as gadgets. This lecture will show how these collections were inventorised and how they have been used ever since by students and teachers at the Conservatoire, but also by jazz researchers and documentary makers. These collections are studied by interdisciplinary teams, within a wider cultural and sociological frame.


Kathryn Adamson

(Royal Academy of Music, London)
Collection or accumulation? The origins of the Special Collections at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

The Royal Academy of Music has rich yet relatively little-known Special Collections of rare books, early printed music and manuscripts. There is no extended piece of writing about how the Special Collections came into being, so the approach to the Academy’s 200th anniversary would seem an appropriate time for an attempt. The Academy is using its collections more now than ever before, partly owing to the opening of its Museum and the physical space it allows for exhibitions and lecture recitals, but also because of the ease with which online and digital technology allows access to catalogue records and images of materials at a speed not hitherto imagined.

Many papers have been written on specific items or particular collections within the Rare Books section of the Library, and there have been 2 ‘biographies’ of the Academy itself and a pictorial history; only the last of these mentions the Special Collections to any extent.

My paper will outline the collecting ‘habits’ of the early years of the Royal Academy of Music, and discuss the people who were charged with looking after the library collection. I want to explore the means by which the collection was gathered, administered and made available to its readership, and from this, perhaps, draw some conclusions about the question surrounding at what point – in the assumed absence of any documented acquisitions policy – did the collecting by the Royal Academy of Music Library, particularly for what developed into its Special Collections, become determined or at least influenced by the curricular and research needs of the students and staff, or was it more governed by cementing relationships with influential donors?


Charles Peters

(William & Gayle Cook Music Library, Indiana University)
Acquiring new music from unconventional sources: PDF copies in the library

Music libraries are accustomed to doing business with traditional vendors to acquire printed scores from well-known publishers. But now they are receiving scores in PDF or other digital files more frequently than ever before. Much of this music is available in file format only, and is requested and supplied directly from the composer.

Non-print scores can represent a significant percentage of new music to be acquired; therefore, the format cannot be ignored by libraries. Producing and distributing scores in digital format has an impact on every aspect of the library process. Acquisitions, cataloging, archiving and patron use all are affected. In addition, composers who provide these scores have differing points of view about access. The approach to, and use of non-print scores can be very different from the way printed music is treated.

This paper will provide a literature review on the topic of library handling of non-print scores, and explore the process the Indiana University Music Library has developed to incorporate these scores into its general collection. A detailed analysis will include issues of formatting and archiving the files, along with the decision to print, bind and shelve copies of the music. Patron access and use of these scores through the online catalog will be examined.


Aleksandra Górka and Magdalena Borowiec

(University of Warsaw Library, Warsaw)
Forgotten Episodes from the Works of Great Composers: Film and Theater Music in the Archive of Polish Composers at the University of Warsaw Library

The Archive of Polish Composers at the University of Warsaw Library preserves in its collections several hundred musical manuscripts that were intended for use in films and theatrical productions. A portion of these materials were bequeathed to the Archive by the Union of Polish Composers, while in the 1980s Warsaw-based theaters decided to remove from their libraries musical scores and to distribute them between the National Library of Poland and the University of Warsaw Library. In this manner, items from three Warsaw theaters—including the Teatr Dramatyczny, Teatr Studio, and Teatr Polski—arrived at the Archive. This incidental music, often tied closely to the specific context of a film or play, rarely attracts the interest of researchers, and more rarely is it reused by theater producers or film directors. The collection, however, includes works by many well-known names, including some of the most outstanding twentieth-century Polish composers, thanks to whom Polish music is known abroad: Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Wojciech Kilar, and Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, among others. This presentation discusses some of the specific issues and problems raised by this rather untypical collection: is it necessary to group together materials that were used in a given film or production? Should one create a separate database that would describe the film productions made using these scores? How is it best to gather information about similar collections, spread across multiple archives, which are sometimes poorly cataloged? Does this music finally deserve to be returned to concert performances?


Mariia Shcherbakova

(Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg)
Autographs of Sergei Prokofiev at the library of the Mariinsky Theatre

The library of the Mariinsky Theatre contains significant music holdings related to the work of Sergei Prokofiev. In almost all periods of his work the composer turned to the Mariinsky Theatre in connection with performances of his works. The works include the opera “The gambler” (1916-1917), the ballet “Romeo and Juliet” (1940), and the opera “Betrothal in a monastery” (1946), etc. A comparison of autographs and a lifetime of musical material contained in the composer’s diary gives us a new opportunity to research it.


Roberta Milanaccio

(King’s College London, London)
Towards a Verdi critical edition: “Un ballo in maschera” to “Falstaff”

In July 1958, Denis Vaughan, an Australian conductor in his early thirties, published an article about Verdi’s “Messa da Requiem” and “Falstaff”, in which he claimed to have found thousands of discrepancies between manuscript and print in the two works. From that moment Vaughan launched a campaign to demonstrate the inadequacy of the scores in use in Italy and to make an appeal for a Verdi critical edition.

From correspondence and documents preserved at Ricordi we learn that the publisher had no intention of creating a critical edition. From their perspective at the time, there was no need for a critical edition at all. In fact, their editorial meeting reports of the 1960s reveal a prolonged uncertainty within the management about this new genre. As it turned out, Ricordi’s first ever critical edition was an opera by Rossini: “Il barbiere di Siviglia”, issued in 1969; while the launch of the Verdi critical edition (1977)—followed by the publication of “Rigoletto” (1983)—required a much longer period of gestation.

Within this context, this paper tries to throw light on two events in particular: the publication of the ‘revised and corrected’ edition of “Un ballo in maschera” (1959) and the announced but never released critical edition of “Falstaff” (1962).

The edition of “Un ballo in maschera” is a notable example of the antiquated editorial practice applied to Verdi. This revised and corrected edition, published by Ricordi to mark the hundredth anniversary of the opera, exposes all the arbitrariness of the editorial work conducted by the anonymous editor employed by the publisher.

The case of “Falstaff” and the consequent admission of the feasibility of a Verdi critical edition allows us to see a change of direction in Ricordi’s editorial policy. However, that case also displayed inadequate philological skills of the publisher, making announcements of sensational discoveries and becoming convinced that a critical edition could be prepared with relative ease. As we know today, the question of the sources is anything but simple in “Falstaff” and there are many decisions that the editor must take before starting work.


Tuomas Pelttari

(Turku City Library, Turku)
National Music Repository Library in Finland – The Past, The Present and The Future

Music has thrived in Finnish music libraries for decades. The first music departments in public libraries were founded in the 1950s and the collections stem back even further. Decades have passed and the collections have become bigger. Both depth and growth has been phenomenal especially since the arrival of the Compact Disc, never underestimating the ongoing and steady demand for sheet music and full scores.

As the collections grow and even outsize, we are in need of a fully operating Music Repository Library. How to establish such a repository nationwide? The project for Musiikkivarasto [that is Music Repository Library in Finnish] was seeking funding in October 2016.

In short, the project headlines start from nationwide guidelines of how to handle music volumes in need of storing and full availability, how to evaluate stored library collections and how to proceed with the cataloguing, searching and delivery. Also high on the list are the associated partners, publicity work and digitizing. As a conductor of energy, the project can be seen as a real possibility of breaking new ground in music library work and national cooperation.


Julie Bill

(MSLIS, Los Angeles, CA)
Music libraries: Give the People What They Want! From print and digital scores, practice space, and software, to streamed access to clinics and master classes.

The Musicians Institute Library conducted a survey of approximately two hundred faculty and students in an effort to assist us in our ability to target and decipher that which is most important to our users in an effort to, “give the people what they want.” We found the results of these surveys to be very surprising and quite varied by program with a few broad similarities across programs.

With the results of these surveys we plan to prioritize our efforts and resources into providing services that will further increase our library’s usage statistics. An example of what we’ve found is that in regard to digital books 38% note that access to digital books is very important, 27% feel it is important, %19 somewhat important, 12% not important, and 5% don’t know not applicable. In regard to print scores 52% of music performance and industry music students feel that print scores are very important, 22% important, 15% somewhat important, 7% not important, 4% don’t know not applicable.

53% of students feel that access to digital scores, musical charts and video streamed services are very important, 22% important, 14% somewhat important, 5% don’t know not applicable.

42% of students thought that streamed access to their student performances was very important, 23% important, 22% somewhat important, 9% not important.

Access to streamed clinics and master classes 49% of students thought very important, 23% important, 20% somewhat important, 3% don’t know not applicable.

60% of students whom completed the survey visit the library daily, 72% feel the study space is very important with 58% noting that collaborative space is very important and 24% important.

We plan on utilizing this information to aid us in how we deliver services; how we cater to each group of students by program and their varied information delivery preferences as well as equipment and instrument preferences. Student comments note a preference for greater access to the library as a facility offering twenty-four hours a day of operation rather than the current sixteen hours a day of operation. 70% of students feel the hours of operation from 5 pm until midnight are very important. 61% of students would like extended hours during midterms and finals with many of the comments requesting twenty-four hour access to the library.

We’re a music library located in Hollywood, CA serving approximately 1,000 undergraduate students and 250 faculty members. Our College Performance Programs include Certificate, Associate, and Bachelor Degree Programs in Film Composition Guitar, Bass, Drums, Vocals and Industry Certificate and Associate Programs in Audio Engineering, Music Business, Independent Artist, and DJ.


Jutta Lambrecht

(Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln, Köln)
1938 – 1941 Zwischenstation Riga: Leo Blech, Generalmusikdirektor der Königlichen Oper Berlin, wird Erster Gastdirigent der Nationaloper in seinem lettischen Exil – Eine Spurensuche

Der aus Aachen stammende Leo Blech (1871-1958) feierte schon früh Erfolge als Komponist und Kapellmeister. Nach Anstellungen in Aachen und Prag landete er in 1906 in Berlin an der Hofoper, wo er 1913 zum Generalmusikdirektor ernannt wurde. Dieses Amt konnte er trotz seiner jüdischen Herkunft bis 1937 ausüben. Dann emigrierte er, formal „aus Altersgründen“ entlassen, zunächst nach Lettland, wo er von 1938 bis 1941 in Riga als Erster Gastdirigent (Nacionālās operas viesdiriģents) an der Nationaloper höchst erfolgreich zahlreiche Opernaufführungen leitete. Nach der Besetzung Lettlands durch die Sowjetunion im Sommer 1940 wurde Blech zu Gastspielen nach Moskau und Leningrad eingeladen. Den ihm angebotenen Posten als Direktor dess Moskauer Konservatorium lehnte er ab und kehrte nach Riga zurück, das im Juni 1941 von deutschen Truppen erobert wurde. Die Deportation des Ehepaars Blech ins Ghetto Riga stand unmittelbar bevor. Auf Vermittlung des Berliner Generalintendanten Heinz Tietjes, mit Billigung Hermann Görings und Unterstützung der Schwedischen Gesandtschaft konnten er und seine Frau jedoch im September 1941 über Berlin und Saßnitz heimlich nach Schweden emigrieren.

Der Name des Dirigenten ist in Riga heute teilweise noch bekannter als in Deutschland. Das Referat stellt die Ergebnisse einer Spurensuche in Bibliotheken und Archiven der Stationen von Leo Blech Exil vor.


Roger Flury

(Caerphilly, Wales)
Not Quite Famous; the plight of the dedicated and talented Warwick Braithwaite in a world obsessed with fame.

For over half a century, the conductor Warwick Braithwaite played a seminal role in British musical life, helping to forge and sustain two national orchestras, three opera companies and one ballet company. In his day, he worked arguably harder than any conductor of his era but never achieved the iconic status of his contemporaries Beecham, Barbirolli and Boult to become the “Fourth B”. Today he is almost forgotten – a footnote in books on the organisations he helped develop, and occasionally, a small discographical entry in books on Flagstad, Schwarzkopf and Hammond.

In this paper I will examine how Braithwaite’s lack of belonging may have hindered his career and, when coupled with his inability to tolerate fools, politicians and managements, ensured his exclusion from the elite ranks of the knighted musical establishment.


Marina Demina

(The Music and Theatre Library of Sweden, Stockholm)
Baltic Music Festival in Malmö 1914: Russian day concerts with Vasily Safonov (on the historical documents rediscovered in Swedish archives)

The proposed paper presents a study undertaken in the framework of the publication in recent years of Vasily Safonov’s documents, implemented by Russian musicologists with Leonid Tumarinson (Moscow) being the leading figure. My assignment was to investigate the details of Safonov’s visits to Sweden in the beginning of the 20th century.

One of these visits occurred in June 1914, when he came to conduct two concerts during the Baltic Music Festival in the city of Malmö, situated in the southernmost part of Sweden. The research resulted in the rediscovery of a number of hitherto unknown original letters and other documents relating to the festival and to Safonov’s involvement in it, preserved primarily in Malmö City Archives.

The festival was a part of the cultural program of the Baltic Exhibition, a major world fair held on the brink of the First World War, when entrepreneurs and artists came to Malmö from all of the countries of the Baltic Sea region, i.e. Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Russian and Finland (then a Grand Duchy of Russia) – to an inspiring, festive revue of folk traditions, technological progress and modern art. The Baltic Music Festival was held from 23 to 26 June, in the midst of the Swedish Midsummer holiday. Each country had to give two concerts of their own national music (one matinee and one evening concert) on the stage of the Congress Hall.

As it appears from the documents, the festival organizers encountered considerable difficulties in trying to cover the program of the Russian Day. Lack of response from the Russian state on the invitation forced them to look for participants by themselves. A bundle of paper marked ’Russia Day’ in the collection of the Baltic exhibition proved to contain correspondence between the Swedish festival committee and two potential candidates. These were Guido von Samson Himmelstjerna (1871-1941), director of music classes of the Russian Musical Society Riga branch, and Vasily Safonov (1852-1918), the famous Russian conductor who was a world celebrity of that time.

The archive material from Malmö reveals how Safonov took over the Russian feast and managed to make it one of the most unforgettable events of the exhibition. Furthermore, the material shows some additional aspects, such as for example, how Finland’s complicated political situation in the current period had affected their choice of participants and of their music repertoire.


Catherine Ferris

(Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin)
Documenting the Historical Music Trade: A Case Study in Online and Open-Source Reference Resource Development

The Dublin Music Trade – www.dublinmusictrade.ie – is a free-to-access online reference resource documenting the who, what, where and when of the historic music trade in Dublin.

The project was initiated by the late Brian Boydell (1917–2000): composer, professor of music at Trinity College Dublin and author of the seminal texts A Dublin Musical Calendar, 1700–60 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1988) and Rotunda Music in Eighteenth-Century Dublin (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992). Over the course of his research, he compiled a card index of music publishers, printers, sellers and instrument makers operating in Dublin from 1750 to 1850. In the 1990s this research was expanded and developed upon by his son Barra Boydell, professor of music at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and co-editor of the equally seminal text The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013).

It is the result of this family’s decades of primary and secondary source research that forms that basis for the Dublin Music Trade database, which now details the Dublin music publishers, printer, sellers and instrument makers active from 1515 to 1850 with examples of their work. It is a key reference tool for research and is particularly useful in bibliographical work to establish unknown publication dates of scores by cross-referencing dates and addresses of publishers. Development of the Dublin Music Trade was funded by the Music Libraries Trust and the Society for Musicology in Ireland and was built utilising the open-source community-supported content management system Drupal.

This paper will detail the history of the Dublin Music Trade project from card index to online database and will contextualise it with the work Humphries & Smith, Whitehead & Nex, Devriès-Lesure, Munter, Pollard and the American Antiquarian Society. It will demonstrate the Drupal system supporting the resource and illustrate the database structure which enables complex research queries. Finally, it will discuss contributions and collaborations in terms of future development and the practicalities of maintaining an authoritative resource.


Werner J. Wolff

(Notengrafik Berlin, Berlin)
corpus monodicum – an online long-term research project on medieval chant and its digital tool “mono:di”

Corpus monodicum (CM), a long-term editorial project supported by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz and hosted at the Institut für Musikforschung, Universität Würzburg is editing medieval monophonic repertories—both sacred and secular—that form the historical foundation of European music, but have thus far been under-represented in musicological scholarship.

The project is scheduled to run for 16 years and to publish 25 printed volumes from hundreds of manuscript sources. From the very first beginning it was designed as a true digital edition, which features a technique where a unique and coherent data set serves for both the online as the printed representation. It is for the first time that this approach could have been realized and applied to a wider working research environment.

Since no available software could cope with the problems in an adequate and reasonable way a new server-based music notation software programme was developed and tailored to the specific needs of the scholars. The open source application “mono:di” is running in a web-browser using the quasi-standard MEI for music encoding. On the one hand mono:di serves as a notation tool to assist CM’s editors in transcribing neumes and editing medieval chant—while at the same time the application also allows for digital transmission of the editors’ work in order to produce the analogue print publications meeting the highest graphical standards.

This critical endeavour was made possible through close collaboration of the academic music department and the private corporation Notengrafik Berlin that is responsible for the ambitious graphic concept as for the technical development alike. The paper will enlighten briefly some of the underlying technique but mainly focus on the joined forces of public and private institutions. Musicological considerations about this very special field of research will be kept to a minimum.

https://monodi.corpus-monodicum.de
www.corpus-monodicum.de


Darwin Scott

(Princeton University, Princeton, NJ)
Taming the Beast? The Princeton University Library Guide to Digital Scores One Year Later

At IAML’s 2016 Rome meeting in early July 2016, I unveiled a fully mapped-out but sketchily detailed prototype for an online directory of digital score websites and catalogs (located at http://libguides.princeton.edu/digitalscores). Aimed at providing a substantive reference tool to impose some coherent organization with critical analysis on the current chaotic and expanding array of digital scores available in diverse pockets of the Internet to practicing musicians, performers, students, researchers, scholars, and librarians, this resource aimed to chart, upon completion, the entire gamut of digitized print and manuscript images of notated music—be they freely available, accessed by institutional subscription, or purchased via e-commerce. For the ease of description and format searching in digital resources, I proposed that the term “score“ (and its equivalents in others languages) extend beyond semantic precision to the broadest possible meaning to encompass all notated music—a practical usage that has already appeared in many online library catalogs as a format delimiter.

The positive response from a large audience of international librarians inspired me to forge ahead with further developing the organization and expanding the content of the guide. Its next iteration exactly four months later formed the basis for a successful survey of digital score resources presented by eight music librarians at two-hour evening session at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Vancouver, British Columbia in early November.

Further appreciation expressed for the project’s interim stage inspired me to produce before the start of summer 2017 a fully realized guide—and it is this resource for digital scores that I will present at the IAML conference in Riga, in as complete a manifestation as is possible for material that is inherently dynamic and exponentially increasing. Built on the Princeton iteration of the now institutionally ubiquitous LibGuide content management system, the underlying architecture of LibGuides’ continuously developing, Web-based technology provides a reliable foundation for the digital score guide, with ongoing adaptability for further growth and delivery. Content is freely available to all users, multiple editors could collaborate virtually on the site, other institutions can appropriate any of the content into their own LibGuides and subsequently edit it for local needs, and there is a guaranteed life for this resource beyond my own involvement. Meanwhile it is easily malleable for adding new content discovered by myself and, especially, contributed by others, plus ongoing emendation to keep it accurate and up-to-date.

In the research guide, ten subdivisions have proven pliant enough for logically organizing the websites and resources drawn primarily from two large directories, Harvard University’s Online Resources for Music Scholars and the Bavarian State Library’s Virtual Library of Musicology (ViFaMusik), my own experience, and a host of referrals from librarian colleagues, which have added a vital component of crowd sourcing to the undertaking. The guide also casts a wider net by including commercial sites, particularly those offering popular and contemporary music, performing editions, and music materials aimed at social or pedagogical music-making. As much as possible, the resource citations point directly to a site’s digital score content, often via sublinks drilling down multiple layers from the homepage or only retrievable by strategically designed searches in prefabricated URLs to capture most or all of the digital score content.

The availability of digitized score material is increasing too rapidly for long deliberation or analysis of how best to cope with accessing it. My approach has been to dive into the material and move ahead as fast as possible—while maintaining quality control and consistency of presentation–with a system of categorized management that is robust and flexible enough for easy growth, adjustments, and editing. It has already become a collective enterprise, and the results offer seekers of digitized scores a themed pathway for easing the process of their discovery.


Darius Kučinskas

(Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, Vilnius)
Collection of Lithuanian piano rolls at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

A collection of Lithuanian piano rolls was obtained by the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania in August 2015. It is the only collection of ethnic piano rolls in Lithuania. It contains 70 rolls for player piano (88 notes), all issued in US between 1920 and 1930. The collection was digitized and published online on the site of Lithuanian Heritage (www.epaveldas.lt). A complete catalogue of all known Lithuanian rolls (including collections in US) was prepared and published in the same year. Piano rolls are unique because they fixed the first sound recordings of Lithuanian instrumental music as well as many arrangements of folk music not found in other recordings. On the international level all ethnic piano rolls are important on technological, anthropological, cultural and historical levels. Though classical and internationally popular music recordings for player piano are already catalogued and well researched, ethnic piano rolls are still waiting for more serious attention by librarians and researchers. General problems of cataloguing ethnic rolls, digitization, and restoration will be discussed too.


Artemis Papadaki

(Bellerbys College, Brighton, UK)
National Radio-Television Archive of Contemporary Classical Music: material of the items and copyright

This paper will try a) to emerge the different ways that contemporary classical music composers (20th century) used to present their (sheet) music and to ensure copyright, as well as to reveal deviations from the requirements of the current law for intellectual property and b) to present the experience of the composers after the relevant law about copyright was published.

The items used were found in the Hellenic National Radio-Television Archive of Contemporary Classical Music. Digging in the treasures held in the National Radio-Television one could see that there is great variation of the ways Greek composers present and secure their work. There were many different options on the presentation of the sheet music as well as many different ways in recording copyright where this was mentioned.

For the purpose of this work, the whole archive has been catalogued and all details that were printed or handwritten on each copy were recorded and used. Additionally, a qualitative and quantitative research among the living composers was conducted, in order to enlighten aspects of the contemporary classical music culture, because the secondary resources on this matter are limited. Within this context, composers were asked to discuss their experience on many aspects of Contemporary Classical Music culture, copyright included.

Even if, in 1993, Greece incorporated the E.U. directive about copyright (law 2121/1993), composers were not happy with its application and with the practice of the collecting society AEPI. It is very interesting how state policies failed to protect such a sensitive domain, this of classical music, in a nation where education is very much valued and the cultural heritage is very much acknowledged. It is interesting to reveal the impact on cultural policies of the different stages the Greek state went through before and after WWII. In most cases, Greek classical music composers have been fighting alone, without being supported by state policies, to express and secure their art and creativity.

I hope that this paper will contribut to the discussion about the protection of composers’ rights, among composers and the libraries that support them.


Samantha Bennett

(The Australian National University, Canberra)
School of Music RePlayed: a case study in audio archiving preservation and pedagogy

This paper focuses on the preservation of a unique music archive, that belonging to The School of Music at the Australian National University (ANU). This performance archive is home to more than 1200 concert and recital recordings – most on 7” reel-to-reel analogue tape – dating back to 1968 and currently housed in the School’s basement. This paper focuses on a number of issues concerning the archive, with particular focus on School of Music RePlayed: a joint ANU School of Music and National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) project designed to address the School’s archival preservation needs and create a database of accessible digitised recordings.

The purpose of School of Music RePlayed is simultaneously pedagogical, in that it features an ongoing, educational outcome in the form of a tertiary-level, undergraduate and postgraduate course authored and convened by the author: MUSI3318 – Sound Archiving. This research-led course addresses a number of key pedagogical issues, including:

– the endangered skillsets of reel-to-reel analogue tape sound (re)production
– real and perceived technological obsolescence and format types
– assessing archive significance and preservation needs
– studying archives around the world
– documenting intangible cultural heritage, to include specialist archiving factors associated with Indigenous cultures
– (re)placing historical and cultural sound artefacts in the digital world

MUSI3318 is focused on the School’s own archive in the main part, but also situates its preservation in the wider historical, technical and cultural context. As such, the course is heavily informed by research in audio archiving including established global technical standards in archiving practice, historical recording practice and ethnographic studies dealing with the preservation of Indigenous Australian recordings.

In addressing the digitsation of the School’s performance archive, a number of preservation needs have been established and many challenges faced, to include the age and condition of the tapes, future storage of the School’s archive and copyright issues pertaining to recorded performances. This paper, therefore, addresses both the realities of preserving a small archive as well as audio archiving pedagogy.


Ann Kersting-Meuleman

(Universitatsbibliothek Frankfurt, Frankurt)
Rheingold v. Blue Danube: various methods, possibilities and solutions of cataloguing ephemera in the field of performing arts in German speaking countries

The aim of the lecture is to outline the range of possibilities for cataloguing playbills and theater programmes in the German-speaking world, and to discuss the possibilities of merging the data. An example of detailed description is the Theatersammlung Düsseldorf, http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/theaterzettel (13,000 copies according to works, authors and contributors, taking into account the standard data). They are individually described (as monographs) in the catalogue. An example of the mass processing of scanned media is the collection of the Austrian National Library. http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?apm=0&aid=wtz ÖNB: Years 1805-1944 (only images, no individual description). The University Library of Frankfurt has chosen a middle way for the development of theater programs: The “head” persons (author, director, musical director, stage designer, choreographer) are described with standard data, the other contributors are not individually recorded. With the fictitious addition to the title [program booklet], the programmes can be selected from the mass of the publications. Finally, the new portal of the specialised information service “Performing Arts” will be presented, which catalogues various theater collections in the German-speaking world. It also contains title records of ephemera from dance and theater archives that are not accessible in regular library catalogues. http://www.performing-arts.eu/


Claudio Bacciagaluppi

(RISM Switzerland)
Challenges and perspectives of access to musical ephemera: OnStage — a case study from Switzerland

Musical ephemera offer the ideal material to underline the advantages in applying methods of the Digital Humanities in musicological studies. In fact, their study is limited by obvious practical reasons: programme notes are never individually catalogued in libraries, they hardly have a responsible author other than the institution promoting the event, and while their number is immense, specific sets (e.g., from a concert series) are seldom complete. The use of digital tools permits us to circumvent to a significant degree these inherent obstacles. Nevertheless, the question of the balance between costs and gains in providing access to such sources has each time to be asked, in order to find new and better solutions.

The present paper focusses on a case study from Switzerland. The Swiss RISM Office has launched an online publication series of ephemera collections. «OnStage» at present contains three collections. The first groups the programme notes of concerts held at the Lausanne conservatoire, the promoter of the project, starting from the late 19th century. The second presents concerts held in the town of Geneva, starting from the 1820s. The third comes from the archive of the association «Freunde Alter Musik Basel», a concert society founded in 1942 by Paul Sacher in Basel. While full-text access to the contents of the digitized sources is provided by OCR processing, indexing was done by hand (date, place, performers, composers). The choice of the most appropriate approach depends on the size of the corpus. Still, some problems and open questions can be addressed on a general level. Among these are: the flexibility of the presentation software; the coordination and the exchange of data between individual projects; the standardisation of performers’ names (absent from most authority files); and the improvement of OCR output.

Défis et perspectives pour l’accès aux ephémères musicales: OnStage – un cas particulier en Suisse

Les documents musicaux dits éphémères illustrent particulièrement bien les avantages des méthodes des humanités digitales (DH) appliquées aux études musicologiques. En effet, leur étude souffre de contraintes pratiques évidentes : les programmes de concerts ne sont que très rarement catalogués individuellement dans les bibliothèques, ils n’ont généralement pas d’auteur responsable autre que l’institution qui organise l’exécution, et tandis que leur nombre est immense, les collections spécifiques (par exemple, provenant d’un cycle de concerts) sont rarement complètes. L’usage d’outils numériques permet de surmonter de façon considérable ces obstacles. Néanmoins, la question d’une balance entre les coûts pour donner accès à de telles sources et les résultats obtenus doit se poser à chaque fois dans le but de trouver de solutions nouvelles et meilleures.

Cette présentation se concentre sur un cas particulier en Suisse. Le bureau suisse du RISM a commencé une série de publications en ligne de collections de programmes. « OnStage » à présent contient trois différentes collections. La première regroupe les programmes de concerts tenus au conservatoire de Lausanne, initiateur du projet, à partir de la fin du 19ème siècle. La seconde présente des concerts tenus dans la ville de Genève à partir des années 1820. La troisième provient des archives de l’association « Freunde Alter Musik Basel », une société de concerts fondée en 1942 par Paul Sacher à Bâle. Tandis qu’un accès plein-texte aux sources numérisées est garanti par un logiciel OCR, l’indexation a été réalisée à la main (date, lieu, interprètes, compositeurs). Le choix de l’approche la plus appropriée dépend aussi des dimensions du corpus. Toutefois, quelques problèmes et questions ouvertes peuvent se poser à un niveau plus générique, entre autres : la flexibilité du logiciel de présentation ; la coordination et l’échange de données entre différents projets individuels ; la standardisation des noms d’interprètes (la plupart desquels sont absents des fichiers d’autorité internationaux) ; et l’amélioration du résultat de l’OCR.

Herausforderungen und Chancen im Zugang zu musikalischen Ephemera: OnStage —eine Fallstudie aus der Schweiz

Musikalische Ephemera bieten ein ideales Material an, um die Vorteile der Anwendung von den Methoden der Digital Humanities in der Musikwissenschaft aufzuzeigen. In der Tat, ihre Untersuchung wird durch offensichtlichen praktischen Gründen erschwert. Programmhefte werden in Bibliotheken nie einzeln kategorisiert; sie haben kaum einen anderen verantwortlichen Autor als die Institution, welche das Konzert organisiert hat; und während ihre Anzahl immens ist, sind einzelne Sammlungen (z.B. aus einer besonderen Konzertreihe) selten vollständig. Die Anwendungen von digitalen Hilfsmittel erlaubt, solche eingeborene Hindernisse weitgehend zu überwinden. Die Frage nach dem Gleichgewicht von Kosten und Nutzen, wenn solche Quellen zugänlich gemacht werden, muss trotzdem immer wieder von Neuem gestellt werden, in der Hoffnung, neue und bessere Lösungen zu finden.

Dieser Vortrag stellt einen Fallbeispiel aus der Schweiz vor. RISM Schweiz hat eine online-Publikationenreihe von Ephemera-Sammlungen gestartet. «OnStage» beinhaltet zur Zeit drei Sammlungen. Die erste enthält die Programmhefte von Konzerten am Konservatorium in Lausanne, welches das Projekt initiierte, seit dem späten 19. Jahrhundert. Die zweite betrifft Konzerte, welche in der Stadt Genf seit den 1820er Jahren stattgefunden haben. Die dritte stammt aus dem Archiv des Vereins «Freunde Alter Musik Basel», eine Konzertgesellschaft, welche 1942 von Paul Sacher in Basel initiiert wurde. Während eine OCR-Verarbeitung einen Volltext-Zugang zum Inhalt der digitalisierten Quellen erlaubt, wurde die Indexierung von Hand vorgenommen (Datum, Ort, Interpreten, Komponisten). Die Wahl des passendsten Vorgehens hängt in erster Linie vom Ausmass des Korpus ab. Jedoch können einige Probleme und offene Fragen auf einer allgemeinen Ebene angegangen werden, darunter: die Flexibilität der Software für die Online-Veröffentlichung; die Koordination und der Datenaustausch unter verschiedenen einzelnen Projekten; die Standardisierung der Interpretennamen (welche in den meisten Autoritätsdateien fehlen); und die Verbesserung des OCR-Ergebnisses.


Elena Schilke and Irmlind Capelle

(Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar Detmold/Paderborn, Detmold)
Hoftheater Detmold – Bestandserschließung und -präsentation im 21. Jahrhundert

Das Detmolder Hoftheater-Projekt – “Entwicklung eines MEI- und TEI-basierten Modells kontextueller Tiefenerschließung von Musikalienbeständen am Beispiel des Detmolder Hoftheaters im 19. Jahrhundert (1825–1875)“ – erschließt einerseits die Aufführungsmaterialien des Theaters aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, andererseits auch die in ungewöhnlicher Breite erhaltenen Theaterakten und verknüpft diese Materialien mit weiteren Dokumenten wie Theaterzetteln, Theateranzeigen etc., die z. T. auch in anderen Institutionen als der Lippischen Landesbibliothek Detmold verwahrt werden.

Wichtigste Kriterien der Erschließung sind die Überprüfbarkeit (Angabe der Herkunft der Informationen wie Datierungen und Schreiber ggf. belegt mit Faksimiles der Quellen), die Anwendung von Normdaten, sowie die Erweiterbarkeit und die Nachnutzbarkeit. Aus diesem Grund werden die Materialien in den XML-Formaten TEI (Akten) und MEI (Musikalien) und nicht in einem proprietären Katalogisierungsformat erschlossen. Ein besonderes Augenmerk liegt hierbei auf der Verknüpfung der einzelnen Dokumente mit Hilfe von eindeutigen Identifiern.

Die Materialien werden in einem Portal präsentiert, das innerhalb dieses Projektes entwickelt wird und ein umfangreiches Bild des Theaterlebens vermitteln soll. Dieses „Theatre Tool“ wird so konzipiert, dass es auch für vergleichbare Projekte eingesetzt werden kann, denn die baukastenartige Zusammensetzung des Tools erlaubt es, die Navigations-Anzeige und die Darstellung der Inhalte projektspezifisch zu konfigurieren. Die Software basiert auf Javascript und einer eXist-Datenbank. Für die Faksimile-Anzeige wird die Bibliothek „Leaflet“, die für geografische Karten entwickelt wurde, verwendet. Für die Incipits-Darstellung ist das Tool „Verovio“ integriert. Um die vertakteten Faksimiles anzuzeigen, wird die in Detmold entwickelte Software „Edirom online“ eingesetzt. Bereits an anderer Stelle erschlossene Materialien (z. B. Theaterzettel, verschiedene Artikel über Theater) werden über Web-Links integriert.
Auch zusätzliche Informationen zu Personen und Werken werden über verfügbare Internet-Quellen eingebunden. Eine Suchfunktion und die Möglichkeit, verschiedene Inhalte nebeneinander zu stellen, runden die Funktionspalette des Tools ab. Ziel des Portals ist es, die Beziehungen zwischen den einzelnen Materialien, die auch in einem Datenrelationen-Diagramm zusammengefasst sind, aufzuzeigen und gleichzeitig eigenständige Forschungsfragen der Nutzer zu ermöglichen.

Das Referat möchte die Ergebnisse der ersten Projektphase bezüglich der Erschließung der Materialien und deren mögliche Präsentationsformen zur Diskussion stellen, um in einen Dialog über Erfassungsformen einzutreten, die bibliothekarische und wissenschaftliche Erschließung bzw. die Forschungsaspekte beider Bereiche miteinander verbinden. Hierzu werden nach einer kurzen Vorstellung der spezifischen Bestände vor allem die Aufbereitung und deren Bereitstellung im Portal dargestellt. Dabei sollen insbesondere die Voraussetzungen und die Möglichkeiten der individuellen Anpassung im „Theatre Tool“ deutlich werden.


Vera Kriezi

(Music Library of Greece of The Friends of Music Society, Athens)
Can libraries be competitive? The Music Library of Greece as an example of a changing organization in the age of crisis.

Libraries are considered as living organizations in which change and evolution are attributes that are vital for them. Additionally, libraries are being affected by social and economic conditions since their role has a direct relation to the communities they serve. In recent years, libraries in Greece are facing problems that have to do with financial issues as well as community diversities. Their changing role needs to focus on new skills developed by the librarians, which will lead their organization in prosperity and will have a major impact on the community. But, what are the steps that a library needs to follow in order to achieve leadership and competitive advantage among others? Do we, librarians and information professionals, need to obtain new skills that will strengthen our role and give insight to top management?

Music Library of Greece is a special library focusing on music and arts and is also the largest music library in the country and in the Balkans in general. Since its establishment in 1997 the library’s vision was to be the most adequate library in the area of music for the needs of research and music education. Traditional services like cataloging, classification and archiving as well as digitization and new metadata schemas for music where developed by the specialized staff through all those years. In 2015 the economic crisis forced the management to decrease the annual budget affecting all levels including staff, services etc. In this difficult situation, the staff proposed a new strategic model focusing on new services, from which the Library could make a profit, in order to anticipate the potential budget cuts. This strategic model leads to a completely different environment for the organization full of potentialities for both staff and the institution itself.

In my presentation, I will try to visualize the strategic model used by the Music Library of Greece and then I will focus on the outcomes and benefits of this change that lead the organization to gain competitive advantage in the age of crisis. Additionally, I will indicate the different skills that a librarian or information professional needs to have in order to be productive and totally in touch with modern challenges.


Alexandros Charkiolakis

(MIAM – Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul)
Managing a music library: difficulties and challenges

A recurring issue that many are challenged with is that of non-musically knowledgeable librarians that are asked to serve in a music library. Many might come across this issue during their professional life, especially in environments where music librarianship does not exist as a separate graduate study circle or where the policies are set according to general national doctrines, without taking into account the idiosyncrasies that a music library, academic or other, entails. Therefore, being recruited to manage a music library of that sort will seem quite challenging. However, one should not be discouraged. Working in an environment with colleagues that do not share the same mindset but having the same goal could prove to be beneficial. In fact, one should try and see this as an opportunity to enhance diversity rather than something which would be an unsurpassable.

In this paper, I will firstly try and set the framework within which these kind of situations might occur. This will be achieved through various examples deriving from my experience in Turkey. Then, I will focus on the various problems and difficulties that one could possibly come across. Finally, I will propose solutions based on my experience in order to bypass the obstacles that come one’s way.


Rafael Ribeiro

(University of Brasilia, Brasilia)
The State and music: financial resources allocated by the City Council of São Paulo to two musical institutions

The present paper is an excerpt of a research project whose objective is to map the relationship between the state and musical economy. Searching through legal norms issued by São Paulo’s City Council in the First Republic in Brazil (1889-1930), it was discovered that the Legislative and Executive funded part of the musical activities of that city, using public money to support composers, orchestras, a conservatoire, musical competitions and some impresarios. Of all those, two institutions alone received roughly 20% of that budget: The Drama and Music Conservatory of São Paulo and the Sociedade Anônima Ítalo-Brasileira (SATIB), an opera company. The profile of those two enterprises was investigated to ascertain whether their results were in accordance to what the City Council expected. Regarding the Drama and Music Conservatory of São Paulo, there were fewer enrolled students than what the legislation concerning the monetary benefit proposed, which may have caused the discontinuation of said benefit. SATIB, on the other hand, acquired more money than the pre-established without changing their contract. As a conclusion, it is explicit the importance of investigating legal norms as an essential documental source for musicology, since the state, in its many levels, is present in many of the relationships between musicians and the audience. Theories originated in the economics discipline may be used as an auxiliary tool for interpreting data, enriching the analysis. The Austrian School of Economics, for example, made great works to understand the consequences of actions performed by people or by the state itself. In this presented case, to be shown, the applied theories from the Austrian School of Economics explain why the incentives provided by São Paulo’s City Council may have backfired: instead of warming up the whole economy of music and expand musical activities, it only enriched few people’s business with public money.


Marie Després-Lonnet

(Geriico, Lille University, Lille)
The trouble with works

DOREMUS is a research project relying on the cataloguing expertise of three major cultural institutions: Radio France, BnF (French National Library), and Philharmonie de Paris, to develop tools and methods to describe, publish, connect and contextualize music catalogs on the web of data. While building Doremus Ontology, a common knowledge model based on FRBRoo and specific to the music domain, the data modeling Group had to deal with the problematic concept of « musical work ». The question first emerged as we wondered if the concept could be used for traditional music as well as for classical music. But we soon realized that its acceptation for classical musical was not so clear either. The “work” is not the only concept used in cataloguing musical documents whose definition is subject to discussion: genre, style or form, to name but a few, are also entities with uncertain boundaries. And yet the work was the most recurrent source of misunderstanding during our meetings.

To try and understand why, we questioned the specificities of the musical work, compared to literary work, which FRBRoo has already been implemented for by the BnF. Our first findings tend to show that its incarnations in performances, and its role in social practices could explain part of our difficulties.

We also investigated the role of the concept in modern cataloguing: how it was – implicitly or explicitly – used, and what were its links to documents. We found out it had evolved from a peripheral entity used as an access point to documents, to take a central role in the FRBR family models, and that this now central position could explain its conflictual state.

Eventually, we noted it had appeared because of the necessity to share a common implementation of the same conceptual model, and to apply it to existing datasets. As long as local meanings had not to be shared, each one had his own “work”. Only when trying to come to a common denominator between the needs and practices of three institutions had it to be explicitly defined. The work concept reveals how difficult it is to find a new approach aiming to come to a generic model without ruining the local habits and knowledge, and existing implementations.


Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi

(Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico, Rome)
Latest news! IFLA LRM’s impact on cataloguing

Forget FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD: in December 2016 the IFLA LRM, the brand new Library Reference Model, started circulating, and has begun the approval process within IFLA. As a high-level conceptual model, conceived for linked data and open to refinements in its application, it is having a deep influence on the develpment of all cataloguing standards and formats. Massimo will illustrate all the state-of-the-art news on how it is changing their structure and look.


Geoff Thomason

(Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester)
It takes a war (to bring libraries together) : cross-sectoral collaboration between music libraries – a case study

At least at a regional level, we can pride ourselves on the fact that informal communication between different music library sectors is often very good. Nevertheless, the nature of their specific user communities can lead to the services they provide or the projects they undertake being restricted to particular institutions, with little opportunity for deeper collaboration. The fact that project funding is often sector-specific exacerbates this.

At the beginning of 2016 the Royal Northern College of Music received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the project “Making music in Manchester during World War 1”. The project remit required us to engage not just our own students but the general public and to identify collaborative partners beyond our own institution. This allowed for the opportunity to drawn on resources at Manchester Public Libraries and the Hallé Concerts Society as well as our own library and archival material, and to bring in outside researchers working in relevant areas. The project outcomes were therefore able to include not only traditional conference presentations but also public talks and concerts in all three venues, exhibitions bringing together resources from the three partners and events in which the public were invited to being in their own WW1 stories and memorability or to engage “hands on” with archival material. We were also able to use our various collections to recreate performances from the war period. Tapping into the current WW1 centenary, it proved an exciting platform for making our various library resources known to a wider public as well as to our own students.


Marianna Zsoldos

(Bródy Sándor Public Library, Eger)
Free air guitar, please take one : unusual music sessions for children in a public library

The Bródy Sándor Public Library Music Collection (Eger, Hungary) provides unique music programs for school aged children. Music librarians have special music sessions for school groups of all ages. The purpose of these library hours is to bring children closer to music with unconventional tools: multimedia, videos, photos, interactive games, crafts and fun, fun, fun. The themes of the sessions are: Humor in Music, World Music, Music and Literature, Pop meets the Classics, Conductor Games, A Music Library Detective Game etc.

Why are these activities so popular? The children are pleased to leave the school building and they are getting acquainted with the library atmosphere. The teachers are pleased to add more colour and innovation to music lessons. The music librarian is very happy with the new generation of music lovers. What happens during these sessions? Marianna Zsoldos, the head of this collection shows you how she makes it in the library, please enjoy the highlights of Humor in Music.


Ruta Almane-Palmbaha

(National Library of Latvia, Riga)
The Alfrēds Kalniņš Music Reading Room (National Library of Latvia): structure, possibilities and collection.

The Alfrēds Kalniņš Music Reading Room collection of the National Library of Latvia is the largest specialized generally accessible sheet music and music literature collection (over 228,000 units) in Latvia…

We want to present our old/new (it depends on the changes of the residential space) reading room and its collection – in this case this presentation will be attractive with brief information with colorful photos about its structure, possibilities, librarians and collection. In this paper you will hear some meaningful thoughts:
1. Then and now. Something about history – our department in the past – old house and moving to the new house;
2. Little bit about structure – our librarians and their duties. Information about our ”new home” – the reading room and its possibilities – piano rooms, free access collection and its structure etc
3. Our collection: its structure; Digital collections and databases.


Katre Riisalu

(Fine Arts Information Centre, Tallinn)
Highlights in the private music archives in the National Library of Estonia

The NLE has collected music since 1959 when the music reading room was opened. The main focus has been on recordings, printed music and literature associated with Estonian music. In 1960s the first personal collections arrived, of composers Cyrillus Kreek and Mart Saar, followed in 1990s by Gustav Ernesaks, Eduard Tubins, and Veljo Tormis, as well as opera singers Hendrik Krumm and Tiit Kuusik and conductor Neeme Järvi. Analysing these collections, we can see that Cyrillus Kreek’s collection highlights Estonian music and books, with rarities such as J. A. Hagen’s Song-tune book, 1844 and 24 chorals and motets by baron Üxküll, 1854, and the whole set of song festival repertoire from the second half of the 19th century.

Mart Saar’s collection of 3,122 scores and books emphasize the St. Petersburg Conservatoire graduate’s deep inclination towards Russian composers with many examples of Glazunov’s, Tchaikovsky’s, Skryabin’s and Rimsky-Korsakow’s music as well of 108 works by F. Liszt. Out of 400 Estonian music scores 102 titles are of Saar’s own compositions. Veljo Tormis’ collection of recordings, books and music centres on folk music, offering books from northern shamanism to research into the Finnish epic Kalevala; recordings of Native American, Japanese, Hebrew or Indian music; studies of African rhythms; and many compilations and researches on subjects ranging from Estonian folk instruments to ancient iron molding.

Hendrik Krumm has preserved recordings, program notes and posters, newspaper cuttings, photos, performance diaries and 670 scores from folk songs to opera. The title pages of the music include dates with performance venues and soloist partners. I.e. on Verdi’s Troubadour title page we see that on January 9, 1981 H. Krumm sang in Tallinn with Irina Arkhipova.

Neeme Järvi’s archive takes us into the world of the conductor’s wide concert activities. Printed programs and critical reviews form the core of the archive, covering Järvi’s activities as principal conductor of Göteborg, Detroit, New Jersey and Den Haag orchestras as well as from cooperation with other orchestras in America, Europe, Japan and Australia. Järvi has recorded over 400 CDs. A personal collection is a great asset to library holdings, it illustrates its collector, being carefully formed by filtered preferences, reflecting the person who loved and knew his field of interest.


Beate Schiebl and Jürgen Warmbrunn

(Herder-Instituts für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung, Marburg)
Too beautiful for our ears and tremendously much music …: the music collection of the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe

The paper will pursue two goals: Firstly, it will endeavor to make the music collection of the Herder Institute in Marburg (Germany) better known to the international professional community. Because of the remarkable amount of musica theoretica and (partly not yet published) musica practica with a focus on the Baltic countries contained in the collection Riga seems to be a most appropriate place for this undertaking. Secondly, the paper will discuss the question of whether a medium-sized research library specializing in the history of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Kaliningrad area of Russia and indeed the Baltic countries is the right place for maintaining a music collection whose value for academic research has been confirmed by both German and foreign musicologists. In the last part the paper will discuss shortly the particular challenges the introduction of RDA for music meant for the Herder Institute’s research library and explain some of the additional initiatives the library plans to undertake.


Seija Lappalainen

(University of Helsinki, Helsinki)
A music historian’s work processes in archives, libraries, and museums

A music historian can research very different things: e.g. composers, compositions, performers, concert public, music institutions, and connections of music people (family, relatives, lovers, patrons, sponsors). What kind of archive material does a music historian need, and how can she/he find it? Qualified librarians and archivists can help a lot. Good archive catalogues are important: they inspire and get new ideas. Interesting are e.g. dedications, text writers, timing (dates, paper, watermarks, ink, publishing number catalogues). Indexing the contents of letters (in the internet!) helps a lot. In my paper I outline my practical research experiences in Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, and Russian archives.


Katharine Hogg

(Gerald Coke Handel Collection, The Foundling Museum, London)
Performance ephemera as a research resource – what can we learn from their content?

Performance ephemera have for years been overlooked by academic collections, but can offer a rich resource of research information in many areas. Not only do they provide a record of what was performed, where and when, but through study of a range of materials various aspects of musical history can be researched. The lives, travel and repertoire of individual performers; the transmittal of musical works; the musical history of a provincial town; the performance reception of works and performers; the social place of music and musical events, and the nature of the audiences; and the financial aspects of musical performances are all areas which can be researched through the pages of programmes, playbills, tickets, iconographical sources, newspaper advertisements and reviews. This paper will focus on what can be discovered about music performances in some British provincial towns and cities in the late eighteenth century, using the full range of resources outlined above, and how this might inform our perceptions of audience profile and reception, repertoire, performers’ engagements and the role of musical performances in the life of a provincial town. The paper will draw on the rich resources of the Gerald Coke Handel Collection as a starting point, but will include ephemera from a range of institutions and collections to explore the extent to which valuable information is documented in so-called ‘ephemeral’ items.


Tzu-Chia Tseng and Bin Han

(Digital Archive Center for Music, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei)
(Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Shanghai)
The Challenges to Construct Chinese Music Literature: Starting From the Working Group of RISM-Chinese Language Region

As one of IAML’s 4R-Projects, currently, RISM is the world’s most abundant online search catalog, including music manuscripts, music scores, writings on music theory etc., which provides the complete information about the “existence” and “the place” of the precious musical manuscripts. However, in the past 60 years, the rich world of Chinese music literature only sporadically appear in this international platform. Most people do not know when did the music creation start in China and Chinese Language Region, in what form, and where to locate them?

In order to promote the alignment of international mechanism, since 2010, Digital Archive Center for Music of National Taiwan Normal University and Shanghai Conservatory of Music Library launched the Collaborative Project on Chinese Music Resources. The purpose is to combine the collection agencies with precious Chinese music literature, leverage the professional experience and technology in document preservation, and gradually establish a collection of Chinese music literature.

Oct 2015, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the Central Conservatory of Music, Hong Kong Central Library, the Taiwan Music Institute of the National Center for Traditional Arts and the Digital Archive Center for Music of NTNU established the RISM-Chinese Language Region (RISM-CLR) and officially became a member of RISM. With the assistance of the RISM Zentralredaktion, in the past year RISM-CLR has completed the paging of its official website, the chinesization of brochures, and discussion of the standardization of literature description, as well as begun the first phase of the manuscript upload. However, during the implementation of the project, we also face various problems, i.e. the lack of a Chinese music literature cataloguing standard, translation inconsistency and how to retain and use Chinese etc.

This paper intends to discuss the duties and problems that RISM-CLR encountered after establishment, the challenges faced after joined RISM, and further explore and map out the feasible strategies. We hope to continuously promote the co-construction and utilizing of Chinese music literature, so that the whole world can search, study and share Chinese music manuscripts.


Marcin Konik

(The Fryderyk Chopin Institute Library, Warsaw)
Chopin portal – process of music library digitization

The biggest chopinological library in the world collects Polish and foreign publications related to Chopin and the period in which he lived and worked. In the collection of the library there are approximately 30,000 items. In the collection of the library NIFC there are books and journals from the 19th and 20th centuries; sheet music from the 19th and 20th centuries (including first editions of Chopin’s works and compositions published during his lifetime); documents of social life – invitations, concert programmes and posters, cuttings from the press (from concerts, festivals, and ceremonies devoted to Chopin and the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competitions in Warsaw). In the photo collection there are over 86,000 items – negatives, positives, diapositives, microfilms, and photocopies of items from the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw and from other museums, libraries and private collections in Poland and abroad. The phototeque also keeps photographic documentation of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competitions, Chopin festivals, artistic events and museum events organised by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. In the sound records library there are approximately 15,000 items, including archive recordings of exceptional value by famous pianists of the past, among others Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Aleksander Michałowski, Raul Koczalski, Serge Rachmaninoff and also sound documentation of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition.

Since a few years the library has started a process of digitizing its collections. It is a very complicated task not only due to diversity of the resources but also because of meta-data standard problems. One of the most interesting issues is a process of visualizing musical scores, showing differences between them. To realize this task NIFC library launched a cooperation with many institutions (e.g. Centre for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities at Stanford Univerity), developers of LilyPond sfotware et al. The main goal of the project is to prepare universal tools for musical data storage, analysis and rendering. The NIFC library is using the Humdrum format for data storage and version control, LilyPond and Verovio software for rendering scores, Humdrum Toolkit and Humdrum Extras for data analysis and visualization. These tools can be used by many musical libraries to present their resources.


Carolyn Doi

(University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon)
Visualizing catalogue data: mapping local music in a digital environment

Catalogue datasets are rich sources of detailed information that can be leveraged to improve access to music special collections. Datasets built from MARC metadata must be enhanced, but ultimately serve as a rich foundation on which to build digital tools such as geospatial visualizations. Presenting digital collections through a mapping environment allows users to experience a more interactive and engaging browsing experience, and can serve to highlight alternative narratives that may be missing from traditional catalogue searches.

This presentation discusses an exploratory project which aims to enhance browsing of a digital historical collection of band, orchestra, and choir sound recordings from Saskatchewan, Canada through a geospatial visualization tool. The catalogue data was extracted from MARC records of the Saskatchewan Music Collection, a local music collection physically located at the Education & Music Library, University of Saskatchewan and online as a digital collection. The collection is tied together through the geography of the province, while still representing a wide variety of media, genres and time periods. Creating a visualization tool facilitates serendipitous searching of the digital collection, allowing users to browse by interacting with the collection through geographic points, which then connect to both physical and digital collections.

We conducted beta testing using a broader dataset, and refined the collection after receiving feedback on a proof-of-concept map. This presentation will include a discussion of challenges and outcomes of working with library catalogue data to create geospatial visualizations, a presentation of the various tools used (OpenRefine, ArcGIS), and the process used to archive and publish the dataset online. A demonstration of the visualization will be conducted as will as a discussion of the broader application of visualizations for accessing and curating digital music collections from a discovery perspective.


Outi Elina Valo

(University of Tampere, Tampere)
The Finnish folk music collector Erkki Ala-Könni – digital collection catalogues as a research material

In my paper I will introduce how collection catalogues of a sound collection can be used as research material. Collection catalogues are in digital format in an archive database of Folklife Archives (University of Tampere, Finland). The textual metadata that collection catalogues include offers an excellent way to research the history of music. With the research methods I use partially the idea of digital humanities (DH) – I ”cut up” different kind of information, use visualisations and maps.

In my thesis I focus on the famous Finnish folk music collector Erkki Ala-Könni (1911-1996). He collected a unique archive which includes more than 8,000 hours of music. This collector developed his own way to classify folk music. Classification is also a construction of folk music. Even though the classification is quite old – from the 1960s – it may be a better way to research the content of the sound collection compared to machines. Classification and metadata that I am using is made by the collector or by the archivists when the tape is archived.

From the statistics we can see differences concerning, for example, performing styles and instrumentation. The material emphasizes geographical differences, age of the performer and gender. Especially in the 1940s and 1950s, Finnish folk music as a hobby was still geographically divided and different from each other in the western and in the eastern parts of the country. Also the age of the performer was important to the folk music collector and in the 1940s the Finnish national instrument kantele was usually the only instrument that was also played by women. With a critical perspective of the collector we can ask how the collector defined folk music? Who were good sources? What was worth being recorded?

I argue that the statistical analysis of the collection catalogues tell us about their own time and also the history of ideas. However there is information that catalogues don’t contain – certain things need to be considered in the archival process and catalogues can’t be the only resource when the focus of the research is one folk music collector.

The Revue musicale was a weekly musical review founded in 1827 by the Belgian musicologist, teacher and composer François-Joseph Fétis. It was the first French-language journal dedicated entirely to classical music. In November 1835 it connected with Maurice Schlesinger’s Gazette musicale de Paris (first published in 1834) to form the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris. It ceased publication in 1880. The name Revue musicale returned for six months in 1839 as the Revue musicale, journal des artistes, des amateurs et des théatres while the journal was a bi-weekly publication.

The Fryderyk Chopin Institute’s Library is the biggest chopinological library in the world. It collects Polish and foreign publications related to Chopin and the period in which he lived and worked. On this poster I would like to present the history of this magazine, which was part of the history of music and history of cultural life at that time. I would like to propose some topics from the numerous events that happened in fine arts salons, public places in Paris, London and also in the provinces. In our collection, we have a copy of this magazine covering the years 1827 to 1880; therefore, I would like to show some interesting articles, publicity from both titles.


Alla Semenyuk and Julia Stepanova

(Russian State Library, Moscow)
(Scientific musical library S. I. Taneyev of the Moscow state Conservatory named after P. I. Tchaikovsky, Moscow)
Literature about music in Russia, 2006 – 2016

Russian music scholarship has been particularly dynamic over the past ten years, focused primarily on interdisciplinary investigations of Russian cultural; the implementation of computer technologies in the creative process and in music education; works by contemporary Russian composers (Aleksandr Knaifel, Kirill Volkov, Nikolaj Korndorf); folk heritage; and the history of Russian music of the 1920s and 1930s, including the somewhat neglected Russian avant-garde. This presentation surveys recent Russian scholarly publications on music, such as monographs, articles in the music magazines Muzyka and Observatoriâ kul’tury, and studies published in edited volumes by the conservatories in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The geographic expansion of research activities to Kazan, Saratov, Petrozavodsk, Magnitogorsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, and Ufa is also outlined.


Guntars Prānis

(Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, Riga)
Missale Rigense – das früheste überlieferte Manuskript der Musikgeschichte Lettlands

Das älteste schriftlich fixierte Zeugnis der Musikgeschichte Lettlands stellen die gregorianischen Gesänge aus dem Missale Rigense des 15. Jahrhunderts dar. Das Manuskript befindet sich in der Akademischen Bibliothek der Universität Lettlands und war mal ein Bestandteil der Rigaer Stadtbibliothek. Es ermöglicht uns einen Einblick in das geistliche Musikleben der Stadt Riga im Mittelalter, das sich zugleich in der Tradition und der Vielfalt der lokalen musikalischen Entwicklung des Chorals im Europa des 14.–16. Jahrhunderts zu betrachten ist. Im Kodex ist der musikalische Stoff in zwei Formen zu vertreten: Es sind fünf traditionelle Gesänge aus dem Proprium und das bisher unbekannte und nicht erforschte musikalische Material – die 83 Marginalien. Diese Marginalien enthalten Fragmente der liturgischen Gesänge, die es uns ermöglichen, nicht nur viel Neues über das liturgische Leben in der Kathedralkirche von Riga zu erfahren, sondern auch das liturgische Repertoire und seine Rezeptionswege zu rekonstruieren und die Gewohnheiten des Gebrauchs von diesem Buch besser zu begreifen.

Das Manuskript ist ein vielschichtiges und äußerst reiches mittelalterliches Dokument, das uns die Tatsachen über die Rigaer Domherren öffnet, die es intensiv benutzt hatten. Das Dokument ist auch die Wiederspiegelung der institutionellen Rolle des Rigaer Domkapitels im Bereich der ununterbrochenen Reproduktion und der damit verbundenen sozialen Verhältnisse. Das Vorhandensein der Marginalien im Missale Rigense zeugt von dessen großer praktischer Bedeutung im Bereich der ritualen Bedürfnisse. Der Text des Codex entpuppt sich als ein sozusagen „lebendiger” Text, der sich ständig entwickelt und sich mit der Zeit verändern kann. Davon zeugen mehrere Versionen der Melodie desselben Gesangs.


Carmela Bongiovanni

(Paganini Conservatory of Genoa, Genoa)
The reconstruction of an old anonymous music manuscript collection: the case of Genoa

For the modern bibliographer and cataloguer of old music, research about anonymous music manuscripts (often without titles) is certainly a challenge. These manuscripts are often neglected by scholars: in fact they are unknown and absent from catalogs. Collective OPACs of modern libraries and other WEB bibliographic resources do not seem to foster research of anonymous music manuscripts. The case of the music library of the Conservatory “Paganini” of Genoa is especially meaningful. In 1966 the late professor and music librarian Salvatore Pintacuda published a printed catalog of the old collections of the library, which helped to make known the old musical heritage of the library; thereafter it has been an important tool to access the old music collections for students and researchers.

The records published by Pintacuda, together with other library cards later carried out by some co-workers of the Genoese library, were transferred into the URFM catalog; so over the past decade, they have been available on the WEB. Of course, Pintacuda’s catalogue is not exhaustive: not only most 19th century manuscripts and printed editions were excluded, but also nearly all the anonymous music manuscripts corresponding to several hundred bibliographic units were left out. Today, with the resources available on the WEB, one can make correct attributions with a good margin of certainty; it is possible to identify anonymous manuscripts, recognize spurious and erroneous attributions, and so on. The bibliographic description, using SBN WEB software is still in progress.

The anonymous music manuscripts preserved in Genoa consist mainly of hundreds of orchestral parts of operas, secco recitatives and opera scenes in full or vocal score with the accompaniment of a continuo part, especially of the 18th century, and in a state of mess. Of course, for the recognition of authors and titles it is crucial not only the music incipit research, but even the connection between music incipit and digital musical documents, such as, for instance, that provided by the OPAC RISM. WEB resources such as CORAGO, which simplifies bibliographical access to libretto research and especially to their digital copies, are useful too. The research by music incipit is also available in an easy way through the music search mask of OPAC SBN.

This report will focus on reorganization strategies, description of bibliographic units, acknowledgment of anonymous music manuscripts and also on the issues raised by the cataloging of anonymous music sources in a union catalog such as the OPAC SBN.


Sonia Wronkowska

(The National Library of Poland, Warsaw)
The thematic catalogue of parodies and compilations: methodological principles and technical issues

The aim of this paper is to present the cataloging standard for selected kinds of music derivatives, developed during studies focused on parodies and compilations of early music. The case study which led to the idea is the repertory of Polish church ensembles in 18th and 19th centuries. For the purpose of answering the main research questions and making the metadata easier for modelling and analysis, a special metadata format was created, based on both MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) and RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) principles. It has been developed as complementary to the standards mentioned above, while those two provide rich description, they are poorly adjusted to the specific needs of parody and compilation studies. The standard, which will be used while creating a printed version of the catalogue as well as in an interactive online version, implements standarised title indexing, which allows readers and users to find all derivatives based on the same prototype. This feature, practically absent in MARC and nonfunctional in RISM, is very helpful in the described research area and simplifies the process of information retrieval. The methodological principles are founded on the philological and historical aspects of source criticism, which are strongly connected in the field of phenomenon of the music derivatives. The paper will also cover the technical issues and challenges of creating dedicated electronical tools.


Renata Suchowiejko

(Institute of Musicology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków)
The music library of Prince Michał Kleofas Ogiński in the collections of the Russian State Archive of ancient documents

In the collections of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents in Moscow, there are few musical sources, because the institution basically does not collect this type of material. Among the few exceptions is the music library of Prince Michał Kleofas Ogiński (1765–1833), which ended up at the RGADA together with other documents from his private and professional, diplomatic archives. Michał Kleofas Ogiński is an extraordinarily interesting and multidimensional personage. A politician, diplomat, state official, participant in the Kościuszko Uprising, activist in exile, senator and privy councilor of Tsar Aleksandr I – and on top of this a superb violinist and talented composer. Music was an important sphere of Ogiński’s life, though it was never his primary occupation. As a composer, he gained renown through his numerous polonaises; one of them, Farewell to the Fatherland, became a real ‘all-time hit’. In connection with his diplomatic duties, Ogiński traveled a lot, and while doing so, developed his musical passions. He had broad contacts in the artistic world; he was a connoisseur of opera, imported new publications and collected autograph manuscripts. His music library is the best example of his extensive artistic interests and activities. In it, we find manuscripts and printed publications of various composers (which he used in his performance practice), along with his own compositions. I am particularly interested in his manuscripts and in the first editions of his works, as well as in Maria Szymanowska’s manuscripts with dedications to Ogiński. This entire collection held by RGADA is an excellent source for research into Ogiński’s life and œuvre, and also reveals the important aesthetic and cultural contexts of his era.


Yun Fan and Glenn Henshaw

(Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM))
(LaGuardia Community College)
Visualizing the Knowledge Space of Music

Co-word analysis is a quantitative technique used to gain insight into the knowledge space of a given field by measuring and analyzing the strength of associations between terms (keywords, indexed terms, or words from a corpus). We applied co-word analysis to RILM indexing terms for journal articles and conference proceedings published between the years 2000 and 2015, covering all subfields of music and related disciplines. We used clustering analysis, social network analysis, and various visualization techniques to answer the following questions. What are the principal subfields in music studies? What are the emerging subfields? What subfields are isolated? How are these subfields connected? What are the disciplines that have more influence on music studies? As research in music has become increasingly diverse, answering such questions will help scholars and students gain a better understanding of the field and relationships between academic trends and subfields.


Alla Semenyuk

(Russian State Library, Moscow)
Polish music in the collections of the Russian State Library in Moscow

Russia and Poland have long-standing musical-cultural relations. It should be noted that an ensemble of Polish bagpipers already existed at the court of Peter the Great. At the end of the 18th century, the remarkable Polish composer Józef Kozlovsky settled in St. Petersburg. His songs and romances could be heard both on concert stages and at homes.

Those relations became particularly extensive in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many composers, instrumentalists, and singers were arriving at Moscow or St. Petersburg from Warsaw to get a thorough professional training, to compose, give concerts, or teach. Polish folk songs were sung in many musical and literary salons of Moscow and St. Petersburg of that time. The salons warmly welcomed Polish violinists and pianists as well, and young Polish composers used to present their works there. To realize that the national musical cultures obviously influenced each other, it is enough just to mention such prominent Polish musicians as Mieczysław Karłowicz, Henryk and Józef Wieniawski, Michał Kleofas Ogiński, Tekla Bądarzewska, Frédéric Chopin, Stanisław Moniuszko, and others who would feel the beauty of the Russian song, the depth of spiritual chants, and who would saturate their own musical language with Russian musical intonations. In their turn, Russian composers sensitively perceived and implemented in their works the best achievements of the world music culture, including the Polish one. They loved “Polish” genres (the waltz, mazurka, polonaise), preferred the lyrics by Adam Mickiewicz for their romances, etc. All this has enriched both musical cultures – Polish and Russian.

In the 19th – early 20th centuries, Polish compositions were published and republished quite often in the Russian musical publishing houses – Beggrov’s, Gutheil’s, Bernard’s, Dittmar’s, Jurgenson’s, etc. All the compositions are included in the musical collection of the Russian State Library.


Irina Torilova and Irina Meshcheryakova

(Taneyev Music Library of the Moscow State Conservatory P. I. Tchaikovsky, Moscow)
Polish sources 19th and early 20th centuries in the library of the Moscow Conservatory

Numbering a million and a half items, the rich collection of the Taneyev Music Library of the Moscow State Conservatory P. I. Tchaikovsky contains different types of documents related to Polish sources. They are music scores and book editions, copies with inscriptions, manuscripts (which were directly related to the work of Polish authors and their creative contacts) as well as concert programs and press cuttings (as a colourful reflection of musical life in both countries).

The Conservatory Library collection includes numerous works of Polish composers, published in various Russian publishing houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries such as M. Bernard, V. Bessel, A. Gutheil, P. Jurgenson, F. Stellovsky etc., which at one time formed an important part of the musical repertoire.
Some items from the collection of the library are marked with dedicatory inscriptions as evidence of friendly contacts between Russian and Polish musicians (e.g. J. Wieniawski – N. Rubinstein, H. Pachulski – A. Arensky, W. Landowska – S. Taneyev). A few handwritten copies of works by Polish composers are of particular interest (I. Paderewski, S. Moniuszko, F. Chopin (arrangement for other instruments)).

The least explored layer of documents stored in the Library of the Moscow State Conservatory is concert programs and press-cuttings. The historical value of the collection of concert programs is that it covers a period of more than 150 years, including documents from the beginning of the activities of the Russian Musical Society (since 1859) to the present day. They reflect a wide concert repertoire of Polish composers (F. Chopin, S. Moniuszko, J.Kozłowski, K. Lipinski, M. Moszkowski, etc.).

The greatest interest is the activities of numerous Polish musicians who performed at different Russian concert halls (from Wieniawski to Landowska). Information on their tour in Russia is a wealth of factual material that can complement the already well-known biographical information. A good addition to the concert programs serve as press-cutting, which are also important sources of information. Complex documents can be useful for a wide range of performers and musicologists.


Natalya Tartakovskaya

(Glinka National Museum Consortium of Musical Culture, Moscow)
Manuscripts, letters and archives of Polish artists in the collection of the Glinka National Museum Consortium of Musical Culture

The archive of the Glinka National Museum Consortium of Musical Culture includes musical manuscripts, documents, and periodicals, which show the artistic connections of Polish composers and musicians with Russian music culture. These materials serve as a reflection of the composing, teaching and concert activity of the Polish musicians who lived and worked in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the virtuoso artists that toured different cities of Russia, as well as mutual friendly and artistic connections between representatives of the musical culture of the two nations.

Music polonisms in the archive of the Museum Association include the following types of materials:
– The musical manuscripts of Polish composers, Anton Kontsky, Stanislaw Moniuszko, Theodore Leshetitsky, created during their long stays or short visits to Russia. The undoubted rarity is the Madonna cantata by S. Moniuszko with the lyrics by F. Petrarka for solo bass, choir and orchestra. In April 1873, the manuscript was presented to Nikolai Rubinstein after his two concerts in Warsaw in favour of the Moniuszko family.
– The letters of Polish musicians and composers Karol Tausig, Edward Frankenstein, brothers Henryk and Jozef Wieniawski, Victor Kazhinski, Ignacy Paderewski, Apollinaire de Kontski and others to the director of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society Nikolai Rubinstein and his closest aide Karl Albrecht, and critic Maurice Rappoport.
– The programs and posters of tour performances of Polish artists.
– The letters by Russian musicians, sent from Warsaw, Kraków and other Polish cities, related to their tours, participation in international competitions and other trips to Poland.
– The programs of Russian concerts including pieces by Polish composers.
– The programs of Russian musicians’ concerts in Poland (such as Sergey Rachmaninov’s concerts in Warsaw in 1910 involving the Polish conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg).
– The documents related to the performance and study of Russian publications of Chopin works. The great composer’s music was played in M. Vielgorsky’s salon in St. Petersburg, Wanda Landowska performed his compositions in Yaroslavl, Josef Hoffmann in Nizhny Novgorod, and Wanda, Maria and Kazimierz Wilkomirski in the hall of Moscow Synodal School. The archive also includes the programs and posters of concerts of the Soviet period pianists V. Sofronitsky, K. Igumnov, L. Oborin, S. Feynberg, G. Neuhaus, and S. Rostropovich, whose art had developed the Russian tradition of Chopin interpretation.

The identification of new documentary sources of music polonisms, their deciphering and description are extremely important and fruitful, as it may result in introducing new facts that confirm the permanent stable connection between the two musical cultures, Russian and Polish.


Alberts Rokpelnis

(Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, Riga)
Exploring Latvian popular music of the 1930s: the availability of historical sources on composer and performer Alfrēds Vinters in Riga’s libraries

The Latvian amateur composer and performer Alfrēds Vinters (1908-1976) occupies a notable part of the popular music and the music industry of 1930s Latvia. In reception he made a brand of “Latvian kind of the schlager” reaching the highest popularity during the Second World War. Eventually, in Soviet times his music became one of the symbols of the Latvian nation’s “lost good old times” – 1930s Latvia.

How to investigate the work of an amateur composer and performer? In this paper the investigation is going to be focused on accessible information about his biography and work in the context of plurality of popular genres and a multinational divided audience of the 1930s.

The aim of this research paper is to uncover the library’s impact on popular music by exploration of written sources, such as memoirs, press, printed music and sound records that are accessible in Riga’s major libraries. Mains tasks proposed:
– to describe the situation in studies of popular music in Latvia in general;
– to establish and characterize the base of suitable historical sources about Alfrēds Vinters;
– to analyze accessibility, assortment and condition of sources compared with other composers of equal value.


Stella Kourmpana

(Athens Conservatoire, Athens)
World famous musicians at the Athens Conservatoire Archives

The Athens Conservatoire has been the first and most important institution of musical education in the Greek capital, playing a key role in Greece’s musical education and cultural activity since its foundation in 1871. Yet despite the Conservatoire’s long and important history, the study of its Archive was launched only very recently, when in September 2013 the Laboratory of Hellenic Music of the Ionian University undertook the task to organize and digitize its valuable material. Being in charge of this work I have had the opportunity to come accross known and unknown chapters of the Conservatoire’s activity concerning, among others, world famous musicians (composers, teachers, conductors, interpreters).

In the Conseravatoire’s archives one can find registries, letters, photographs, concert programs, manuscript or printed scores and sound recordings of many musical personalities of great importance, dating from the last three decades of the 19th century until today. One could mention the names of Ambroise Thomas, Alphonse Danhauser, Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, August Gevaërt, Camille Saint-Saëns, Sergei Rachmaninov, Carl Nielsen, Armand Marsick, Ludwig Wassenhoven, Felix Petyrek, Filhelm Furtwängler, Felix Weingartner, Paul Wittgenstein, José Iturbi, Egon Petri, Arthur Schnabel, Alfred Cortot, Alfredo Casella, Gabriel Pierné, Elvira de Hidalgo, Woldemar Fremann, Leopold Godowsky, César Thomson, Arthur Rubinstein, Borislav Huberman, Wilhelm Kempff, Lotte Lehmann, Bruno Walter, Samuel Baud-Bovy, Herbert von Karajan, Richard Strauss; and, last but not least, the Greeks Spiro Samara, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Nikos Skalkottas, Maria Callas, Gina Bachauer and Mikis Theodorakis, who graced the Conservatoire’s desks, leaving important evidence of their presence there (when studing, and, in some cases, also teaching – as, e.g., Mitropoulos and Bachauer).

In this paper I will try to present some of the stories hidden behind the archives’ documents, highlighting those which, apart from being important, also project the Conservatoire’s unique contribution to the musical activity of Athens.


María Victoria Arjona González

(University of Grenade, Grenada)
The Scarlatti Project in the legacy of Rafael Puyana

In 1985, with the purpose of commemorating the tercentenary of the birth of Domenico Scarlatti (Naples, 26-X-1685 ̶ Madrid, 23-VII-1757), Georg Friedrich Händel [Halle, 23-II-1685 – London, 14-IV-1759] and Johann Sebastian Bach (Eisenach, 21-III-1685 ̶ Leipzig, 28-VII-1750), the BBC broadcast on April 20 that year a production called ‘Domenico Scarlatti’ which was writed and narrated by David Thompson, directed by Ann Turner. It was concerned with the interpretation of the sonatas, with the special help of the Colombian interpreter Rafael Puyana (Bogotá, 14-X-1931 ̶ París, 1-III-2013), who was considered a leading exponent of the harpsichordist of the 20th century. Taking as a reference this documentary, in this paper I will first consider the life and works of Scarlatti, who was Italian from birth certificate and Spanish residence, and how contemporary culture influenced his creativity and main elements in his works. In the second place, I shall reveal the musical participation in the aforementioned documentary, through the post with Ann Turner (director), in addition to studying the scores and other documents pertaining to the performance and musical analysis. Finally, I shall evaluate the dissemination and impact this production had at that moment in mass media and the press.