The International Center of RIdIM

The International Center of RIdIM was established at the Institut nationale de l'histoire de l'art (INHA). The INHA was founded in 2001 as a federation open to 100 seminars in art history of the Paris area university, the Institut national du patrimoine, the Bibliography of Arts History, various CNRS centers, and scientific art periodicals. The INHA includes a library with huge art history collections, rare prints, autographs, photos, etc. INHA hosts a three person research staff mainly concerned with interdisciplinary research including the visual arts, music and theater. The RIdIM center is part of the research program of INHA and included in its administrative structure. The RIdIM center is strongly supported by the Institut de recherché sur le partrimoine musical en France (IRPMF) and the music department of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF). The main aims of the International RIdIM center is to provide the international research community easy access to the material already catalogued in existing databases (transfer of data) and to provide access to a free database developed using international standards for the cataloguing of items related to musical iconography.

Staff

The Commission mixte has elected Jean-Michel Nectoux (Conseiller scientifique à l'INHA) as non-voting member of the Commission mixte according to the Rules of Procedure.

For the immediate future, the three partners provide a 50% position on the INHA research staff as Administrator of the International RIdIM center. The position is financially on the budget of the INHA. He/she is working under the Chair of the RIdIM Commission mixte and responsible for establishing and maintaining contact with the already existing RIdIM centers, distributing reports and other documents (especially a newsletter) prepared and agreed to by the Commission mixte or the Chair respectively. He/she will work with the Chair on the program for conferences and function as the Administrator of the International RIdIM center at INHA under the direction of the Chair. On the nomination of INHA and after an interview by the Commission mixte, Tarek Berrada was elected Administrator for the term from 2004 to 2006. Tarek Berrada has a research position at INHA until November 30, 2006.

Facilities

The INHA provides office space free of charge and free use of phone, computer, fax and copying machine. It also covers postal mailing costs. Furthermore the Administrator has free access to the important collections of music and art stored by the libraries of BnF, IRPMF and INHA.

Website and Database

The International RIdIM Center will offer a website and a database for cataloguing music related images developed by the Commission mixte and Stephen Westman, UNC Charlottesville. The database access is password controlled, free of charge, platform-independent (runs on any computer with standard web browser) with full Unicode support, easy to use, and compact. It will allow for authority control, support multiple languages, controlled vocabulary, international metadata standards, and provide a powerful and flexible search interface. It will allow for the uploading of images to the server with copyright related authorization and provide the possibility to search within multiple database fields and with keyword search, boolean search, and truncation. Search results can be downloaded and sent by e-mail. The RIdIM database can hold migrated data as well, if this would be technically and financially possible and desirable. The RIdIM website will give access to the RIdIM database and - via links - to existing large databases which cannot or do not want to migrate. Public access to the database is planned for July 2005.

Sub-Committees

The Commission mixte established three sub-committees:

Antonio Baldassarre,
Chair RIdIM Commission mixte
Paris / Zurich, 5th and 12th December 2004

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All of us are frequently confronted with the problem of identifying musical instruments and their components correctly, whether in the process of defining a part that has been damaged or restored, or trying to transmit our knowledge to school children, students or our academic colleagues. Occasionally this task is a distinct challenge due to the lack of a standardized terminology in the field of organology.

Recognizing this fact, the Brasswind Terminology Working Group, which consists of four brass scholars at this point (Stewart Carter, Arnold Myers, Bradley Strauchen and myself), tries to develop a coherent terminology for brasswind instruments and their components in English. Our approach differs from hierarchical systems, such as the Hornbostel-Sachs classification - which is a "downward" system - in its "upward" orientation. We derive our terminology from the detailed inspection and delineation of an instrument in its musical, social, historical and technological contexts, rather than its classification according to general characteristics.

The primary goal of the Brasswind Terminology Working Group is the standardization of brasswind terminology to create a commonly accepted, precise language, which eventually can be used by anyone concerned with this instrument type (organologists, musicologists, museum curators, instrument makers and others who have need to refer to these instruments).

We hope that this project will stimulate the development of similar working groups for other types of instruments, and in languages other than English. A long-term goal is to create a generally accepted terminology for the field of organology that applies to instruments and their parts in a clear and consistent manner.

Sabine K. Klaus
Brasswind Terminology Working Group Member

London, Royal College of Music Museum of Instruments

The Royal College of Music Museum of Instruments completed a showcase renovation project last spring and recent accessions (Fleming collection of bows; Walton and Steele-Perkins brass instruments) and portraits of musicians have been added to the display. At the same time the Museum received a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board for a cataloguing and conservation project.

The main objective is the preparation of Part III of the Museum's Catalogue, European Stringed Instruments and Bows, for subsequent publication; the volumes already published (European Wind Instruments and Keyboard Instruments) are also being edited for publication on the web-site. This one-year project is due for completion this spring.

Due to cuts in government funding to the College, a restructuring of the collections took place last year. In August 2004 the Museum of Instruments and the Department of Portraits and Performance History were merged to form a research centre. Dr Paul Banks was appointed Head of the Centre for Performance History; formerly Librarian at the Britten-Pears Library, Aldeburgh, and subsequently RCM Research Development Fellow, Dr Banks has published on the music of Mahler, Britten, Busoni and Berlioz. The Curator, Elizabeth Wells, will retire early, in July 2005.

Elizabeth Wells,
Royal College of Music Museum of Instruments

Tachikawa, Kunitachi College of Music

The Kunitachi College of Music in Tachikawa, Japan's largest private music conservatory, recently celebrated its eightieth anniversary with a well-attended program on "Preservation and use of musical instruments from the curator's, conservator's, and player's points of view." At the invitation of Kazue Nakamizo, CIMCIM members Hélène La Rue and Laurence Libin delivered the public lectures and Kobayashi Michio performed a recital on a Viennese grand piano by Johann Schantz, ca. 1820, from the school's important Collection for Organology. La Rue and Libin also lectured for music students, and met with retired professor Sumi Gunji, former President and Vice-President of CIMCIM. While in Japan, our colleagues visited Catherine Megumi Ochi at the Drum Museum in Tokyo and observed the fascinating process of traditional drum making. Also, they traveled to Hamamatsu to view the splendid exhibition of the municipal museum of musical instruments, which incorporates the former Robert Rosenbaum collection and 44 pianos acquired from Joerg Demus, among many other treasures.

Hélène La Rue,
Bate Collection and Musical Collections in the Pitt Rivers Museum

Basel, Musikmuseum

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to announce that the Musikmuseum Basel has a new homepage:

Martin Kirnbauer,
Historisches Museum Basel

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Musique Images Instruments, Revue française d'organologie et d'iconographie musicale, Volumes 8 and 9

Our next two volumes will be devoted to the History of Musical Instrument Collections from the Renaissance to twentieth century. They will deal with forgotten collections, or collections today that are part of a private collection, or those in institutions. These volumes will concentrate on "cabinet of curiosities", collections for studies, instrumentaria for musical practice, experimental laboratories, collections gathered by explorers, quartet players, instrument-makers or dealers, early pedagogical galleries, etc.

Proposals should take in account the aims, methodology, results and public perception of collections and focus on criteria such as: the history of taste, patronage, the history of institutions, cultural context, symbolic issues, development of organology, musicology, ethnomusicology, up to design and anthropology of collections.

The development of awareness of our cultural heritage, the appeal for certain types (i.e. ethnic instruments) or models of instruments and schools of instrument-making, the relationship with musical, scientific, ethnographic, art object collections, the emergence of a historiography of instrument-making will be emphasized.

Proposals (in English or French) should be submitted with title and abstract (150 words) together with a short biography of the author, before 15 March 2005 to Florence Gétreau, general director of Musique Images Instruments at: getreau.cnrs@bnf.fr

Florence Gétreau,
Institut de recherche sur le patrimoine musical en France

Call for Contributions to ITG Journal's "Historical Instrument Window"

The International Trumpet Guild Journal is the leading periodical to promote communications among trumpet players around the world. It is distributed to ca. 7,000 trumpeters, professional and amateur performers, teachers, students, manufacturers, publishers, and others interested in the trumpet in more than 60 countries.

In October 2000 Edward H. Tarr established a one-page column in this journal called "Historical Instrument Window.". Its purpose is to acquaint the modern trumpeter with the multifaceted history of his or her instrument. This column consists of one professional photograph of a high brass instrument and a short description.

Examples can be viewed under

http://www.trumpetguild.org/pdf/2002journal/0210historic.pdf

Editorship of this column will be passed on from Edward Tarr to myself starting with the October 2005 issue. The "Historical Instrument Window" is intended as incentive to go to the nearest musical instrument collection and see the real objects. It is important to ensure widespread coverage of locations and have as many musical instrument museums and collections as possible participate in this project. Therefore I would like to invite CIMCIM members to contribute to this column.

Deadlines for contributions are as follows:

For further information and contributions please contact me:

sabine.klaus@worldnet.att.net or historicinstruments@trumpetguild.org

Sabine K. Klaus,
Historical Instrument Window Editor, ITG Journal

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I would like to announce that following the recent temporary exhibition - "Alessandro Kraus: musicologist and antropologist" - the Musical Instrument Museum of the Galleria dell'Accademia of Florence has opened a new permanent exhibition on this subject. The new room includes about 40 instruments both European and extra-European collected by Alessandro Kraus in the late 19th century and gifted to the Museum but his descendant, Mirella Gatti-Kraus in the year 1996.

The following guide has been printed on this occasion:

Alessandro Kraus: musicologo e antropologo, ed. by Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni, Livorno, Sillabe, 2004. 48 pages with color photos of all the instruments on display and three essays on the role of Kraus as a collector, the cultural context of his activity and his connections with the anthropological activity in Florence.

The Museum will be happy to send the guide free of charge to Museums and Institutions in exchange for publications for the library.

Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni,
Galleria dell'Accademia e Museo degli Strumenti Musicali

Nürnberg, Germanisches NationalMuseum

Frank P. Bär, Verzeichnis der Europäischen Musikinstrumente im Germanischen Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, vol. 5. Klarinetten normaler und höherer Stimmlage mit 10 und mehr Klappen, Beschreibender Katalog, Wilhelmshaven, Florian Noetzel Verlag, 2004.

282 pp., 267 b/w photographs, 101 drawings. 30x23.5 cm. ISBN 3-7959-0822-1. Subscription price until 30.6.2005: EURO 98,-, later EURO 108.-

The second part of the catalogue of clarinets in the Germanisches Nationalmuseums contains 36 instruments from the tuning of A upwards with 10 or more keys. Each entry contains a detailed description, photographs of the whole instrument and of details as the mouthpiece and keys, many measurements and a commentary. The catalogue part is preceded by a biography of the Nuremberg instrument makers' workshop of Georg and Fritz Graessel (1909-1984).

The volume can be ordered via:

Germanisches Nationalmuseum
Poststelle
Kartäusergasse 1
D-90402 Nürnberg
Germany

or via bookshops.

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The Museum for Musical Instruments in Berlin SIM PK is searching for a restorer with the special field: woodwind/ brass - instruments.

Further information can be found at: http://www.restauratoren.de/stellen2.html

Some informations about the museum can be found at: http://www.sim.spk-berlin.de

Heidi von Rüden,
Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIM PK

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Please send your contributions by 30 May 2005, preferably by e-mail, to the editor:

Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni
Galleria dell'Accademia,
via Ricasoli, 60,
I - 50122 Firenze, Italy
Fax: +39 055 2388609
E-mail: secretary@cimcim.icom.museum

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Link to CIMCIM welcome page

Communications about the content of these pages to Arnold Myers, Co-ordinator, CIMCIM Communications Working Group: E-mail Arnold.Myers@ed.ac.uk.

Text © CIMCIM, 2005.

This page updated: 18.2.05