The RISM publications represent RISM’s activities that began in 1952 and continue to the present day. The focus of RISM’s current activities is its electronic database, which can be searched at no cost through two resources, the RISM Catalog and RISM Online. RISM’s library sigla can be searched through the Directory of RISM Library Sigla.
RISM’s database of over 1.5 million records can be searched through two different but complementary resources, the RISM Catalog and RISM Online. The musical sources that stand at the heart of the RISM project are music manuscripts, printed music, libretti, and treatises preserved in over 3,000 libraries, museums, archives, churches, schools, and private collections around the world. Our online tools incorporate records from earlier series (all of A/I, all of A/II, all of B/I, some of B/II and other B volumes; for details, see below), but also expand well beyond our early publications. The database grows monthly and reflects the work of our active RISM contributors worldwide.
The RISM Catalog can be accessed through the RISM homepage or from opac.rism.info. It is made possible through a partnership between the Bavarian State Library (Munich), the State Library of Berlin, and the RISM Editorial Center. The Bavarian State Library is responsible for the operation and technical implementation of the RISM Catalog.
RISM Online can be accessed through the RISM homepage or from rism.online. It is developed by the RISM Digital Center in Bern, Switzerland. Besides the core RISM pool of sources, RISM Online also enables users to search the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM).
All of Series A is available online through RISM’s electronic catalogs. Items within the scope of A/I and A/II are added directly to the RISM database. The alphanumeric A/I identification numbers (for example, T 444) are searchable online but are not being continued for new records in RISM.
Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1971-2011. 9 volumes, 4 supplements, index, CD-ROM; available online since 2015.
For a supplement to A/I volume 9, see Haberkamp and Rösing (1981) .
Series A/I was published in fourteen printed volumes between 1971 and 2003, and in one CD-ROM that incorporates all of the printed volumes in 2011. A/I is a bibliography of printed music published between 1500 and 1800 that contains works by a single composer. Its approximately 100,000 entries were added to the online RISM database in 2015.
The first edition (1984) contained ca. 19,000 entries and the sixteenth (2008) contained ca. 614,000 entries. In 2010, A/II was published as a freely available online catalog with over 700,000 entries. The nature of the A/II project has expanded over the years to include music manuscripts from before 1600 to the present day, and all music manuscripts are now part of the larger RISM database.
Publisher: Munich: G. Henle (unless otherwise noted)
RISM’s Series B covers specific categories of repertory. All of B/I and a portion of B/II are in the RISM electronic database, as are a few items from other B series (for details, see the specific B volumes below).
All of B/I and about 25% of B/II are included in the RISM electronic database. While items within the scope of these series are added directly to the RISM database, the numbering scheme used in the books is not being continued.
Taken together, B/I and B/II describe about 4,500 printed collections (anthologies) published between 1501 and 1799.
B/III is available as a searchable database through Lexicon musicum Latinum and in revised form through Musmed.fr.
The catalogs in the B/III series are focused on sources of medieval music theory. They offer a "description of all manuscripts in which are preserved Latin treatises—however small—dealing with the theory of music which was in use from the Carolingian era to 1400," which was extended to 1500 in volume 3. "Moreover, it relates the anonymous treatises in one or other manuscript to those other manuscripts in which the same–generally unpublished–treatise is found...The Index supplies a survey of the manuscripts in which this theoretical tradition is preserved, by providing a list of the authors’ names and the incipits of the anonymous treatises."
Search B/IV in DIAMM (Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music) and RISM Online.
B/VI: Printed writings about music
A very small number of sources from B/VI are in the RISM electronic database. B/VI attempts to bring together all literature concerning music 1474-1800, whether theoretical, historical, aesthetic, or technical. Countries included: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, USSR, Yugoslavia. More than 2,000 publications from the Library of Congress (US-Wc) reported in these volumes are digitized and available online through the collection Books About Music Before 1800. For a supplement to B/VI, see Lesure (1979). A descriptive catalog of all manuscripts handed down in lute and guitar tablature. Countries included: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, East Germany, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, USSR, West Germany, Yugoslavia. For a supplement to B/VII, see Boetticher (1979) and Fabris (1982). A very small number of sources from B/VIII are in the RISM electronic database. B/VIII/1: Konrad Ameln, Markus Jenny, and Walter Lipphardt, Das deutsche Kirchenlied. Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Melodien. Band 1, Teil 1: Verzeichnis der Drucke von den Anfängen bis 1800. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1975. B/VIII/2: Markus Jenny, Das deutsche Kirchenlied. Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Melodien. Band 1, Teil 2: Verzeichnis der Drucke. Register. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1980. B/VIII is a catalog of traceable printed sources of German hymns, of all denominations, from the end of the 15th century until 1800 that contain at least one melody in musical notation. Also contains those editions of which no copy is known but whose former existence has been determined by previous bibliographies or research. Part 2 is an index arranged by title, names, places, publishers, and sigla. Countries included: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, East Germany, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, USSR, West Germany, Yugoslavia. Over 500 sources of Arabic music theory from its beginnings to the end of the 19th century. Descriptions for nearly 300 codices, extending from the 11th through the 17th centuries. Countries included: Austria, Denmark, East Germany, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, West Germany. Over 200 Persian musical manuscripts, encompassing virtually the total corpus thereof. Countries included: Afghanistan, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Denmark, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, India, Iran, Ireland, Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Tajikistan, Turkey, United States, Uzbekistan. Publications of hymn sources in the Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Sorbian languages containing musical notation, from the 16th to 18th centuries. Countries included: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States. Descriptions of over 1,100 notated processionals and over 150 manuscripts with processional chant. Printed music and manuscripts that form "a general inventory of polyphonic masses, mass sections and Requiem masses transmitted in sources from Spain, Portugal and Latin America between circa 1490 and 1630." Countries included (manuscripts): Colombia, France, Guatemala, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, United States. Palm-leaf manuscripts (lontars) from Bali. Music lontars are described in this catalog from collections in Indonesia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. Palm-leaf manuscripts (lontars) from Bali. Music lontars are described in this catalog from collections in Indonesia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. Printed editions of trio sonatas, for two upper voices and basso continuo, by composers born before 1760. Manuscript sources for sequences and notated proses found in French libraries. Manuscript sources for medieval hymn melodies found in French libraries. Publisher: Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag This series was based on Rita Benton, ed., Directory of Music Research Libraries (Iowa City: The University of Iowa, 1967-1975): Part I: Canada and the United States; Part II: Thirteen European Countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, East Germany, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, West Germany); Part III: Spain, France, Italy, Portugal. C/IV: Cecil Hill, Katya Manor, James Siddons, Dorothy Freed, Directory of music research libraries. Volume 4: Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, 1979.
B/VII: Manuscripts of lute and guitar tablatures
B/VIII: German hymns (DKL)
B/IX: Hebrew sources
B/X: The theory of music in Arabic writings, c. 900 - 1900
B/XI: Ancient Greek music theory
B/XII: Persian music theory
B/XIII: Hymnologica Slavica (Slavic hymns)
B/XIV: Manuscripts of the processional
B/XV: Polyphonic music in Ibero-American sources
B/XVI: Palm-leaf manuscripts
B/XVII: Trio Sonatas
B/XVIII: Manuscripts of notated sequences and proses
B/XIX: Manuscripts of medieval hymn melodies
Series C: Directory of Music Research Libraries
Canada and the United States
Sixteen European Countries
Israel, Japan, and Oceania
Eastern Europe
Special volumes
A searchable edition is available through the Directory of RISM Library Sigla on this website.