Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM)

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Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) documents and disseminates music research

For RILM's offering of online resources, full-text products, and digital tools, visit rilm.org.

10/16/2026

RILM is headed to Bologna. 🇮🇹

Early next week, RILM's Executive Editor Zdravko Blazekovic will join Daniela Castaldo (General Editor of DEUMM Online) and EBSCO's Giovanni Chiauzzi at the Conservatorio di Bologna Giovan Battista Martini. Across two days, held in the conservatory library, they will cover RILM's history and research resources; the content, functionalities, and development of DEUMM Online; and the role of EBSCO in streamlining the research process. Feel free to stop by and say hello if you'll be there as well!

For more on RILM and its music research products, head to: www.rilm.org.

And to learn more about DEUMM Online, head to: deumm.org.

10/15/2026

MGG Online at 10: A feature in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) 📰

Under the headline “Online, aber stabil: Was die MGG über die Lage des Wissens lehrt” (“Online, but stable: What MGG teaches us about the state of knowledge”), the renowned German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has published an article by columnist Thomas Thiel on the MGG Online symposium, held on 30 September 2026 as part of the annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung in Frankfurt am Main.

Reflecting on the standards of knowledge production that lie at the heart of MGG Online, Thiel observes: “Artificial intelligence—the focus of all the presentations—can indeed reproduce rhetorical patterns of persuasion, but it has a credibility problem. It possesses neither a moral compass nor a concern for truth. The rules by which it forms judgments remain opaque. [...] For the time being, the digital transformation does not do away with traditional standards of quality assurance.”

The music encyclopedia MGG Online is a co-production of Bärenreiter-Verlag (Kassel), J.B. Metzler, part of Springer Nature (Berlin), and RILM (New York).

Image: Title page of the birthday cantata “Siehe, wie fein und lieblich ists” by Georg Christoph Bach, autograph (Berlin, Singakademie), detail

10/15/2026

Musical traditions must be sustained, supported, and nurtured. Or one day, they may cease to exist.

This Saturday, 17 October, UNESCO celebrates its International Day of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Following the organization’s encouragement to “showcase the diversity and richness of living heritage and to raise awareness of the importance of its safeguarding”, Bibliolore dedicates its third annotated bibliography on performing arts inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity to the Karakalpak ķobyz and the Albanian lahutë.

These two fiddles, currently on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, transmit the memories, values, and ideals of the communities who rely on them. We hope that this annotated bibliography provides a valuable resource for organologists and ethnomusicologists studying these instruments, but also, more importantly, that it brings awareness of the need to safeguard instruments and traditions under threat of extinction. 🇺🇿 🇦🇱

👉 Head to Bibliolore to read the full article:
🔗 https://bibliolore.org/2026/10/15/two-fiddles-and-one-concern-the-karakalpak-kobyz-and-the-albanian-lahute-unesco-intangible-cultural-heritage-in-need-of-urgent-safeguarding/

10/09/2026

MGG Online at 10: A podcast feature on Deutschlandfunk Kultur 🎙

In the age of AI, the controlled, transparent, and authorized generation of knowledge is more important than ever. On Deutschlandfunk Kultur’s Tonart podcast, MGG Online’s editor-in-chief Laurenz Lütteken reflects on the momentum that MGG Online has developed over its first decade, exploring key questions surrounding editorial oversight, the dynamics of knowledge production, and global reach.

Building on the second print edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1994–2008), MGG Online (2016–), continuously updated and expanded, has transmuted into a leading music encyclopedia in its own right.

Listen to the podcast (in German) here: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/verlaesslichkeit-ist-wichtiger-denn-je-musik-enzyklopaedie-mgg-online-wird-100.html

10/01/2026

📣 RME is about to get even bigger.

In January 2027, RILM Music Encyclopedias will welcome three new titles into its continuously expanding collection of historical and current reference texts:

📕 Roberto Leydi and Sandra Mantovani. Dizionario della musica popolare europea (Milano: Bompiani, 1970) 316 p. — In Italian.
📕 Emmett G. Price III, Tammy L. Kernodle, and Horace J. Maxile Jr., eds. Encyclopedia of African American music, 3 vols. (Oxford: Greenwood, 2010) xlix, 1069 p. — In English.
📕 Hugo Riemann, ed. Musik-Lexikon (5th edition; Leipzig: Max Hesse’s Verlag, 1900) xxiii, 1284 p. — In German.

These 2027 additions exemplify RILM's mission to document, preserve, and provide access to the world's musical knowledge in all its diversity. Spanning folk and traditional music, African American musical culture, and foundational European music scholarship, they expand the collection's multilingual and international scope and reinforce our commitment to comprehensive coverage of music as a global human endeavor.

Access RILM Music Encyclopedias via EBSCOhost or on Egret at rme.rilm.org.
For questions and more information, email [email protected].

09/29/2026

So much to celebrate this year! 🎉🍾🎂

From ten years of RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text and MGG Online, to the 60th and 75th anniversaries of RILM and IAML respectively, 2026 has been a year for celebrating milestones.

Many thanks to IAML 2026 for being with us every step of the way, to the other R-projects for their support and for expanding musical knowledge in countless ways, to co-chair of the RILM Hungarian Committee Julianna Gócza for all the time you've given us for over 25 years, and anyone we’re missing here. It was an amazing experience to be reunited for this workshop in Budapest.

09/28/2026

MGG Online is celebrating its 10th anniversary 🎇

Ten years ago, in November 2016, MGG Online was launched at the American Musicological Society conference in Vancouver.

To celebrate this 10th anniversary in style, a symposium titled “Alles im Fluss? Gesichertes Wissen in der digitalen Wirklichkeit” (Everything in Flux? Established Knowledge in the Digital Reality) will take place on 30 September 2026 at the conference of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung in Frankfurt am Main from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. (Campus Westend, Room IG 411).

A reception following the symposium will provide further opportunity for exchange.

Speakers include:
Laurenz Lütteken (Zurich), Editor-in-chief of MGG Online, Andreas Dorschel (Graz) on “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? (T.S. Eliot)”, Florian Mehltretter (Munich) on “Forms of Knowledge and Forms of Digital Access to Knowledge—Using the Divine Comedy as an Example”, Melanie Möller (Berlin) on “Rhetoric Between Fact and Fiction, or, The Sweet Dream of Authenticity”, and Tanja Michalsky (Rome) on “Historical Life in Virtual Space: Dealing with History on Digital Maps”.

09/24/2026

RILM celebrates 60 with a special workshop in Budapest.

09/23/2026

What's better than celebrating one incredible milestone? How about celebrating two. 🎉🍾

MGG Online Product Coordinator Georg Burgstaller is in Mannheim for IAML-Deutschland, ready to reflect on all that we have achieved with our partners in the ten years since the launch of MGG Online. Mark your calendars:

📌 24 September, 1:00pm local time, at the assembly hall (Aula) of the Universität Mannheim.

For all the details, head to our news page:
👉 https://www.rilm.org/news/2026/09/12761/

See you soon!

09/22/2026

📣 Music zine publishers and readers: RAPMM wants to hear from you!

The RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) is a digital collection of independently published popular music magazines and zines, bringing together over 135 titles in one place. Issues are scanned front to back from original sources and made fully viewable and searchable, giving researchers, scholars, and students access to publications spanning a wide range of eras, genres, scenes, and places.

We are continuously working to expand the collection, and we welcome your help. Have you published a music-related zine, past or present, that you would like to see preserved in RAPMM? Are you a reader with titles to recommend? RAPMM Coordinator Lindsey Eckenroth would be glad to hear from you at [email protected].

👉 To browse the archive and view the full list of available titles, visit rapmm.rilm.org

Pictured content from Rockocó. "Imágenes del pop-rock madrileño", no. 0, 1980.

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