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Musical instruments are collected for many reasons — for use in performance, as objects of veneration or visual art, to furnish ethnological and historical evidence, to illustrate technological developments and serve as models for new construction, for financial investment and sale, and merely to satisfy curiosity. Amateur and professional musicians, wealthy aristocrats, religious and municipal bodies, schools and museums are among those who amass instruments for one reason or another. Criteria distinguishing successful modern collections include not merely size, but also quality and accessibility of holdings, condition and documentation of individual objects, and integrity or coherence of the whole. This article outlines the history of instrument collecting with attention to the motives and conditions that influence collectors, and deals with assemblages of musical instruments gathered intentionally and more or less permanently. Instruments awaiting dispersal (e.g. in a dealer’s or maker’s shop) or accumulated apparently by chance are considered only in passing....

(IAMIC)

A worldwide network of national organizations promoting new music. It was established in 1958, originally as a meeting of ‘National Music Centre Representatives’; IAMIC was then formed in 1962 as a constituent branch of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres [IAML]. This affiliation continued until 1991 when IAMIC became a fully independent association under the aegis of the International Music Council. In 1999 it had 40 members, most of which are autonomous organizations with national status, giving them access to funds from a range of sources including national, regional and local government, arts councils, major foundations and copyright organizations. Music information centres have as their chief purpose the documentation and promotion at home and abroad of their national music (with emphasis generally on contemporary art music), and collect scores, parts, recordings, books, articles, analyses of compositions, interviews and press cuttings; many also issue publications and recordings. The following is a list of such centres....

(Fr. Association Internationale d'Archives Sonores et Audiovisuelles; Ger. Internationale Vereinigung der Schall- und Audiovisuellen Archive)

Organization founded in Amsterdam in 1969 to function as a medium for international cooperation between Sound archives. It has over 350 members in more than 52 countries, including representatives of the archives themselves, as well as other individuals involved with the collection, preservation and dissemination of recorded material. In addition to an annual conference, the IASA publishes the biannual IASA Journal (formerly the Phonographic Bulletin) and a quarterly Information Bulletin; a membership directory is also available. Its specialist publications include Sound Archives: a Guide to their Establishment and Development, ed. D. Lance (Milton Keynes, 1983), and Selection in Sound Archives, ed. H. Wallace (Milton Keynes, 1984), a collection of papers given at the annual conferences. In 1999 The IASA Cataloguing Rules were published (Aarhus, 1999), and they are available, together with various technical guidelines and copies of the Information Bulletin (1997–) at the IASA website: ...

The present article provides a general account of musical periodicals and their history; it is supplemented by a comprehensive list of musical periodicals, arranged by continent and country, with an alphabetical index. Periodical editions of music are presented in a separate section.

In this article, dates given normally represent first and last volumes or, in certain special cases, issues; dates given with an oblique stroke (e.g. 1971/2) refer to a volume beginning in one year and ending in another. Fuller information on title changes and on breaks in a periodical’s run will be found in the list section below.

Periodicals are publications appearing at regular (or sometimes irregular) intervals and, normally, furnished with serial numbers indicating annual volumes. They primarily contain such material as essays, reports, critiques and news items. In addition to their periodical mode of publication they have in common with newspapers an intention of continuance, an approach determined by publisher or editor, an objective of variety of content and to some extent contemporary relevance. In music, the concept of the periodical also includes yearbooks, annual reports and the proceedings of institutions, almanacs on music and similarly orientated publications; works published in fascicles (part-works, serials etc.) are to be distinguished from periodicals proper....

[RidIM; International Repertory of Musical Iconography; Internationales Repertorium der Musikikonographie]

An international project, founded at a meeting of the International Association of Music Librarians (1971), on the initiative of Barry S. Brook, Geneviève Thibault and Harald Heckmann with the assistance of Howard Mayer Brown, Walter Salmen and Emanuel Winternitz.

Its aim is, on the one hand, to develop methods, means and research centres for the classification, cataloguing, reproduction and study of iconographical material relating to music, and, on the other hand, to function as a framework for the scholarly interpretation of visual sources with musical subject matter by organizing and facilitating conferences. It is designed to assist performers, historians, librarians, students, instrument makers, record manufacturers and book publishers to make the fullest use of visual materials for scholarly and practical purposes.

The cataloguing of musico-iconographic documents was until the early 1970s largely a private, uncoordinated affair, and was poorly equipped with methodology and research tools. Several systems of cataloguing visual materials have been proposed, but RIdIM appears to have become firmly established for two reasons: because it uses new technologies that facilitate the cataloguing and reproduction of vast numbers of sources; and because RIdIM could follow RISM (...

[RILM; International Repertory of Music Literature; Internationales Repertorium der Musikliteratur]

An international bibliography of scholarly writings on music. It covers both current and older literature, provides abstracts for each entry, and has been published in three formats: printed volumes (updated annually), CD-Rom (quarterly) and online (monthly). It is the second of four such bibliographical ventures in music, the first being Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), founded in 1952, the third Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM), founded in 1971, and the fourth being Répertoire International de Presse Musicale (RIPM), founded in 1987.

RILM was established in 1966 under the joint sponsorship of the International Musicological Society and the International Association of Music Libraries; Barry Brook, Harald Heckmann and François Lesur were co-founders. It was the pilot project of the interdisciplinary Bibliographic Center planned by the American Council of Learned Societies; similar methods are used in other disciplines, notably Répertoire International de la Littérature de l’art (RILA). RILM’s Commission Internationale Mixte is made up of distinguished scholars and librarians who represent the sponsoring organizations. The position of Editor-in-Chief has been held by Barry Brook (...

[RISM; International Inventory of Musical Sources; Internationales Quellenlexikon der Musik]

An international project to document the locations of musical sources worldwide. The inventory, generally known as RISM from its French title, is jointly sponsored by the International Musicological Society and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. RISM was founded in 1952 and was the first of such cooperative international music bibliography projects, joined later by Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (founded in 1966), Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (1971), and Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale (1980). The sources catalogued include manuscript and printed music, libretti, and writings about music, divided into two categories, Series A and B. Series C is a directory of music repositories, some of whose material is listed in Series A and B. RISM’s publications are in print and online and serve musicologists, librarians, students, performers, and music antiquarians.

The project had its beginnings in Robert Eitner’s fundamental publications for the location of musical source material: ...