by | September 4, 2026 · 6:00 am

From the EBSCOpost backlist. VIII: Why music reference still matters in the age of Wikipedia (2017)

RILM staff periodically contribute writings to EBSCOpost, a lively blog run by our partners that publishes pieces pertinent to librarianship, higher education, and beyond. Over time, some of these posts are removed, and even those that remain generally recede from view, following the ephemeral nature of much digital content. With 60 years of preserving the world’s writings on music and music-related topics behind us, we are now adding a small rescue project: bringing these blog posts back into circulation. However modest, they help document our history as an organization, and we hope they will continue to resonate with our international readership as well as with any music enthusiast who happens upon them.

In this installment, Executive Director Tina Frühauf ruminates on the place of music reference at a time when Wikipedia was changing how information was being generated, shared, and networked. Now 25 years after the platform’s release, the piece remains relevant, as the possibilities and potential dangers surrounding digital access points to knowledge, musical and otherwise, continue to surface in the context of generative AI and large language models (LLMs).

Why music reference still matters in the age of Wikipedia

The field of music reference has evolved continuously since the 1768 publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de musique. But the advent of Wikipedia in 2001 has had a dramatic impact on this hitherto gradual evolutionary process in terms of format, authorship, and editorial structures. Assessments of Wikipedia’s impact differ widely, from the view of Wikipedia as a means and medium of internationality to complaints about Wikipedia’s elimination of the individual and avoidance of editorial control mechanisms. Whether Wikipedia strikes you as a net benefit or loss, it has triggered important questions as to how future reference works and bibliographies can and should be made accessible, to whom, and with what features. Technology has changed how much can be accomplished and how far one can reach. But where does all this leave musicologists and music librarians? Printed reference works are organisms in themselves, reflective of their time and culture, region and subject matter. Technology has the ability to transform each organism into a universe of musical reference works and bibliographies, easily accessible in multiple languages and across cultural and other divides. More concretely, technology can create such a universe by facilitating cross-database searching, hyperlinking, and complex keyword searches, while maintaining the identity and specificity of reference works as individual organisms. Indeed, why, in the age of advanced information technology, should one reference work exist without the other? Such a communal approach was first put forth by Wikipedia, but neither thought through nor further developed beyond the issues of open access and open authorship. Ideally, digital archives should not aim toward completeness and a global perspective, but toward carefully curated content by means of 21st-century technology.

With technological advances, currency becomes an important matter as well. But as music researchers continue to rely on established and existing reference sources and bibliographies for research on individuals and subjects not included in modern encyclopedias, and for historiographical work which compares the representation of individuals and subjects over time, “old” encyclopedias have now received the ability to become new encyclopedias for the digital age.

In the longue durée, music reference works have always been reflective of their time and location, and also of their editors and users. The aforementioned Rousseau Dictionnaire is a case in point, as it has been deemed both radical and traditional at the same time—radical, as Rousseau advanced philosophy on opera and revealed his rejection of French musical tradition; traditional, as he held on to existing categories—music as art and music as science—and views on music theory accepted in the 18th century. This presence of two (or more) distinct strands or “voices” can be best understood as a reflection of the dialogue process in the formation of musical ideas.

RILM supports such dialogue by comprehensively and accurately representing music scholarship in all countries and languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries. If you think your faculty and students could benefit from the kind of resources RILM provides, I invite you visit our website to learn more.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Veuve Duchesne, 1775), one of the many historic reference works available in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Curiosities, From the archives, Music education, Musicology, Reference, Resources, RILM, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | August 28, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILMiniscences: Remembering RILM as a family

The second installment of the RILMiniscences series features Terence Ford, a former editor-in-chief, who remembers that the organization’s greatest strength was its people. Ford joined RILM in 1981 after beginning graduate studies in musicology at the City University of New York. Like many graduate students at the time, he was assigned to work on one of three major music documentation projects: RILM, the iconography project that would later become one of the four R projects, Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM), or the music collections project. Ford’s first assignment was in iconography, a role that took him to Germany before he returned to New York to join the RILM staff.

Although Ford was simultaneously writing a dissertation, he eventually made the difficult decision to stop working on it. Instead, he forged a career at RILM, beginning as an assistant editor before becoming an editor and, eventually, editor-in-chief from 1989 to 1991. After leaving RILM, he worked for the Modern Language Association and later retrained as a psychoanalyst, a profession he practices today in Los Angeles. Looking back, however, what stands out most to Ford is not the career trajectory but the overall atmosphere of the RILM office itself.

During the 1980s, RILM occupied the third floor of a building on Manhattan’s 42nd Street, where its relatively small staff worked closely together each day. The close quarters fostered friendships that extended beyond professional titles and responsibilities. “RILM back then was like a family,” Ford recalls. As the organization expanded and moved to the tenth floor alongside other music department offices—including that of RILM founder Barry S. Brook–the sense of community endured. Even after Ford’s responsibilities shifted from editing to supervising editors and reviewing their work, the office retained its convivial atmosphere.

Dorothy Curzon, RILM’s managing editor from 1975 to 1991.

Central to creating this environment was Dorothy Curzon, a managing editor whom Ford affectionately describes as the “mother of the office”. Impeccably dressed, elegantly perfumed, and never without beautifully styled hair, Curzon embodied professionalism. She was also a gifted editor and teacher who trained many of RILM’s early influential editors, often emphasizing precision, consistency, and clarity. One of her rituals left a lasting impression on Ford: every payday, Curzon walked around the office personally handing each employee their paycheck and thanking them individually for their work. As Ford puts it, “Dorothy was so good at making everyone feel appreciated.”

Besides Curzon, the RILM office was filled with other memorable personalities. Rosalie McQuade, a full-time editor, was also a nun who commuted daily from a convent in New Jersey. McQuade carpooled with fellow sisters–some of whom worked at the United Nations–and became known in the office for her singing abilities, especially a song she wrote and often sang titled Buckle up, New Jersey! inspired by her observations that few motorists on the New Jersey highways wore seatbelts. Carl Skoggard was another significant figure in the RILM office. Skoggard handled many of the German-language abstracts and possessed remarkable linguistic abilities. Hidden behind rows of filing cabinets in a corner of the office, he would periodically emerge with an unexpected, humorous story that left everyone laughing.

Carl Skoggard, the RILM editor who established many of the organization’s editorial practices.

There was also Adam O’Connor, whose dry wit enlivened the RILM office. O’Connor, who would later become RILM’s editor-in-chief, had an uncanny ability to switch effortlessly between editing abstracts and reading The New Yorker, Harper’s, or The New York Review of Books, seemingly never missing anything despite dividing his attention. Of course, not every relationship was always harmonious. Ford remembers frequent disagreements in the RILM office based on differing views reflecting wider debates and philosophies within bibliography about how knowledge should be organized and what indexing systems should be used.

Adam J.P. O’Connor, RILM’s editor-in-chief from 1991 to 1996.

During his time at RILM, Ford noted that several publishers and information companies, such as EBSCO and H. W. Wilson Company, recognized RILM’s value and expressed interest in acquiring it, though no sale was ever finalized. What set RILM apart was not just its growing reputation but the dedicated individuals behind its success. More than three decades later, while technologies and editorial workflows have evolved into digital formats, Ford’s most cherished memories center on the people who made up the organization and the relationships that turned the editorial office into a vibrant community rather than just a workplace.

This post is based on an interview conducted with Terence Ford on 16 January 2026.

Leave a Comment

Filed under RILM

Tagged as , , , ,

by | August 20, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM’s 1.5 millionth record

RILM’s 1.5 millionth record is now online!

The record is titled “The Filipino national anthem” by Adrian De Leon (Journal of popular music studies 35/4 [2023] 4–13; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-16951).

Growing up in Toronto’s Filipino Catholic community, the author witnessed firsthand the power of Lemonade–a 2003 SoundClick track by Jeremy Manongdo, better known as Passion, that became an anthem at Couples for Christ camps. Far from just a nostalgic hit, the song represents a unique slice of the Filipino diaspora that resists the flattening of Asian American identity. Passion’s journey from bedroom singer-songwriter to digital icon mirrors the birth of the modern internet. He built momentum first on SoundClick and MySpace before riding the first wave of YouTube stardom following its 2005 debut, showing how early music platforms grew largely on content of racialized creators. The resulting musical repertoire became a touchstone for generations of North American Filipinos, born at the intersection of 2000s youth culture and the dawn of the platform economy.

A performance of Lemonade by Jeremy Passion.

Fan videos of Lemonade.

The effectiveness of Passion’s Lemonade lies in its formal simplicity as a serenade, easily performed on a guitar or ukulele. As a serenade, it addresses an unnamed woman, rooted in Filipino musical traditions influenced by Spanish colonial practices like the harana and kundiman, which involved love songs sung by men outside women’s homes. While contemporaries such as Gabe Bondoc, David Choi, and A.J. Rafael also achieved online popularity with their serenades, none have reached the cult status of Lemonade, which has become emblematic of a vernacular Filipino American national anthem.

A painting depicting harana singers in the Philippines. Image courtesy of Max Adlao.

Lemonade also illustrates the complexities and frictions between Filipino American life and the dominant Northeast Asian American culture, while also showcasing the impact of viral Filipino American performers within the broader Asian American musical landscape. The song’s resonance among Asian American youth in the 2000s underscores its significance in shaping a diverse and multifaceted sonic identity.

Comments Off on RILM’s 1.5 millionth record

Filed under Asia, Migrations, North America, Performers, Popular music, Reception, RILM news

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | August 14, 2026 · 6:00 am

From the EBSCOpost backlist. VII: The power of abstracts in music research (2023)

RILM staff periodically contribute writings to EBSCOpost, a lively blog run by our partners that publishes pieces pertinent to librarianship, higher education, and beyond. Over time, some of these posts are removed, and even those that remain generally recede from view, following the ephemeral nature of much digital content. With 60 years of preserving the world’s writings on music and music-related topics behind us, we are now adding a small rescue project: bringing these blog posts back into circulation. However modest, they help document our history as an organization, and we hope they will continue to resonate with our international readership as well as with any music enthusiast who happens upon them.

Much has happened in the three years since this was published. Originally intended to explore why a well-crafted abstract remains essential to discovery, its advice has aged well: in an era when AI can generate a convincing academic abstract in seconds, precision, specificity, and accuracy matter more than ever, not only for human researchers, but also for the AI systems increasingly helping them find and understand scholarship.

The power of abstracts in music research

The sources available for musicological research accumulate at an accelerated pace. And as they do, the ability to quickly identify and select what is most pertinent for a research project becomes paramount. Fortunately, there is a simple and robust tool that is particularly adept at isolating what is useful to researchers within this modern environment crowded with digital noise, a tool that makes a seemingly daunting process more manageable. 

Enter the mighty abstract: the (often underappreciated) protagonist in music research that instantly, indefatigably, and incessantly shuttles musical ideas across vast regions to research communities worldwide. It is hard to overstate the value of a well-crafted abstract. Even the most compelling and well-publicized scholarship will likely fail to reach a broad audience without a concise conveyal of its most important ideas. Academic research is typically the result of a substantial investment in time, energy, and a multitude of resources. However, without reducing or sidelining in any way the importance of the project itself, be it a publication or a lecture, in reality, more people will read the abstract, as an initial point of entry, than experience the finished product. 

Abstracts do a great deal of heavy lifting, particularly in the initial stages of a research project. As most music scholars know all too well, a captivating abstract can inspire and pique readers’ interests, resulting in presentations being chosen for conferences, book proposals being accepted by publishers, articles being selected for inclusion in periodicals, and program notes getting offered space to elucidate a performance. Despite its brevity, rather in great measure because of it, a well-constructed abstract is perhaps more effective than any other form of writing to express and share its author’s most innovative ideas.

Additionally, the benefits of becoming fluent with the techniques and rules for writing an effective abstract extend well beyond individual interest, achievement, or professional development. This skill brings value to the sphere of social good, equity, inclusion, and equality. When crafted well, an abstract’s valuable ideas stand a much better chance of becoming widely circulated, benefitting an extensive, truly global community of music researchers. In a global context where access to writings on music varies considerably across geographic regions, abstracts transcend such restrictions, traveling lighter to make the free-flowing exchange of ideas more equitable. Abstracts open doors and break barriers, and as one of the most powerful means available to communicate key concepts succinctly, their role in the research and publication process is essential and wide-reaching. 

With this in mind, the following guidelines and examples, taken from Chapter 15 of the third edition of How to Write About Music: The RILM Manual of Style (2023), provides best practices, helpful approaches, clear examples, and missteps to avoid when writing an abstract, from the perspective of an organization that has consistently aimed to represent all the world’s music equally and equitably. From the staff working at the International Center in New York City to committee members located around the world, RILM’s collaborative, global network remains more committed than ever to the dissemination of music scholarship from every country. Since RILM’s focus is on music, the guidelines below are specifically suited for scholarship on this subject and related fields. However, it should be emphasized that, just as RILM has followed the discipline of musicology in becoming more and more interdisciplinary, many of the preferred conventions below will be appropriate (and even preferable) for other fields in the arts and humanities as well.  

For more information and purchase options for the e-book How to Write About Music: The RILM Manual of Style, Third Edition, as well as to learn about our forthcoming fourth edition, head to https://www.rilm.org/publications/publication-RilmManual/.

An abstract ought to convey every important aspect of the writing it describes. Nonessential matters should be omitted so as not to mislead the reader. 

Do not spend too much time describing the item’s intellectual background; it is more important to deal with its content. If you are presenting new findings, concentrate on them and do not rehearse the known facts. State clearly the main conclusion or conclusions given in the item being abstracted (although not all research yields specific conclusions). Providing concrete information such as personal names, places, and names of organizations is always a desideratum as long as the item gives substantial information about them. If you are referring to a manuscript, give its present location (institution and complete shelf number). If you are referring to specific musical or scholarly works, give their full titles. If you are referring to one or more elements of a work, indicate where they are found in the longer work. Indicate the time period under discussion as precisely as possible. If you use unusual terms, define them. If you are dealing with pedagogy, indicate the level of education concerned.

Style

Avoid colloquial or informal language and write in complete sentences. Do not include personal views on the value of the item being abstracted. Many effective abstracts resemble a single well-shaped paragraph, with topic sentence, development, and conclusion. Writing in the voice of the author (declaratively) yields a more vivid abstract than does describing the author’s work and lends itself to specificity.

Checklist for abstractors

All abstracts should supply the following: 

  • First names of all authors, translators, collaborators, and subjects, except for very well-known persons.
  • Complete titles of musical works in the original language, with index or opus numbers in their correct form. (Give original-language titles for works only when the work has a given title, however; see 10.2: Generic titles.)
  • Complete names of all associations, societies, performing groups, religious bodies, and academic and government institutions in the language of their country.
  • For manuscripts, location and shelf number, with RISM siglum for the library.
  • Definitions of terms not in standard music reference works.
  • Complete and correct place names in their appropriate historical form. Add current forms in parentheses when referring to an earlier time, e.g., Pressburg (now Bratislava).
  • Basic bibliographic information (place and date of publication) for publications referred to.

Comments Off on From the EBSCOpost backlist. VII: The power of abstracts in music research (2023)

Filed under Music education, Musicology, Reference, Resources, RILM, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , ,

by | August 11, 2026 · 6:00 am

Navigating RILM’s vast research resources

RILM’s YouTube channel is a valuable resource for music researchers, providing expert guidance on navigating its global bibliography, music encyclopedias, and research tools. The channel features tutorials, webinars, and step-by-step demonstrations covering core resources such as RILM Abstracts with Full Text, MGG Online, the RILM Archive of Printed Music Magazines (RAPMM), DEUMM Online, and RILM Music Encyclopedias, along with short videos highlighting key features, including effective search strategies and viewing tools. Besides research instruction, the channel also showcases videos on events, interviews, product launches, and institutional updates. Whether you’re exploring a particular musical genre, topic, or region or simply looking to strengthen your research skills, RILM’s YouTube channel offers practical support to help you get the most from its resources.

The playlists tab makes it easy to browse videos organized by resource, topic, or methodology, allowing you to quickly find content relevant to your interests. New videos are added regularly, so be sure to check back often for the latest updates.

Below are some of the RILM channel’s most popular videos:

RAPMM: An Introduction

RILM Abstracts with Full Text: An Introduction

An Introduction to RILM Abstracts

MGG Online: The Basics

DEUMM Online trailer in Italian

Comments Off on Navigating RILM’s vast research resources

Filed under Resources, RILM

Tagged as , , ,

by | August 6, 2026 · 6:00 am

Afrobeat, hip hop, and Nigerian activism

Nigerian music genres, particularly Afrobeat, have historically sparked social consciousness, with Fela Anikulapo Kuti as a prominent figure. His energetic performances aimed to confront oppressive regimes in Nigeria and beyond, addressing neocolonial influences from Western powers. Despite facing assaults and imprisonment, Fela remained dedicated to his enduring belief that an artist’s role extends beyond entertainment; it includes provoking public thought and raising awareness about social issues. His commitment to these ideals has left a lasting impact on the cultural and political landscape of Nigeria.

Fela remained a steadfast opponent of Nigerian military rulers until his death in 1997. While some musicians have attempted to carry the torch of his activist legacy, few have been able to mobilize a significant following or resonate with the public as he did. Other genres, like Nigerian hip hop, have often faced criticism for promoting misogyny, materialism, and hedonism. In contrast, Fela’s counterculture has evolved into a broader global movement, gaining traction alongside the rising international popularity of Nigerian hip hop, now widely recognized as “Afrobeats.”

Cover art for the 1976 album Zombie, which was a scathing critique of the Nigerian government and military. Listen to the title track Zombie here.

One musician who has taken up this challenge is Falz (Folarin Falana), a dynamic Nigerian artist who combines humor with bold social commentary in his music. Like Fela, he uses his art to spotlight societal issues and foster awareness aimed at inspiring positive change. The son of renowned human rights lawyer Femi Falana and his wife, Funmi Falana, a lawyer and advocate in her own right, Falz initially trained as a lawyer before pursuing music, reminiscent of Fela’s own journey. Gaining fame through humorous social media skits that critique everyday Nigerian life, Falz’s music has evolved to address pressing social problems, urging ordinary Nigerians to recognize their role in perpetuating state repression and to advocate for change.

The Nigerian rapper Falz.

Falz initially garnered attention as a humorist on social media, creating skits that satirize everyday Nigerian life. As his music career progressed, his performances became more impactful, drawing inspiration from Fela both musically and politically. In his songs, Falz tackles pressing social issues in Nigeria and encourages listeners to actively resist and advocate for change. Notably, Falz emphasizes the collective responsibility of ordinary Nigerians, highlighting how the broader populace contributes to the state repression faced by citizens.

This according to “Re-imagining Afrobeat(s): Juxtaposing Fela and Falz’s social commentary and lyrical activism”, by Paul Ayodele Onanuga (African identities 23/3 [2025] 584–603; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2025-1229).

Below are two Falz music videos.

Comments Off on Afrobeat, hip hop, and Nigerian activism

Filed under Africa, Performers, Politics, Popular music

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | July 31, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM celebrates 60 years of global music research with a new film

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), we proudly present a short documentary film. Narrated by Executive Director Tina Frühauf and Executive Editor Zdravko Blažeković, and featuring several current and former RILM staff members, it explores RILM’s history, mission, and evolving role in music scholarship and cultural preservation.

As the film recounts RILM’s evolution from an ambitious vision to an international organization that occupies a unique place within the humanities, it explores ideas that have shaped RILM over six decades: a commitment to documenting the world’s musical and scholarly traditions in all their diversity, and an eagerness to embrace technological innovation, from the computer to generative artificial intelligence. Recent developments, including RILM’s recognition as a UNESCO-accredited NGO, also suggest directions for the organization’s future. 

RILM serves a global music research community through an expansive range of bibliographic resources. This film offers a glimpse of the people and ideas that lie behind this endeavor. We hope you enjoy it.

To learn more about RILM and its resources, please visit www.rilm.org.

Stay up to date with all of RILM’s products and activities by joining our mailing list.

Comments Off on RILM celebrates 60 years of global music research with a new film

Filed under Resources, RILM, RILM news

Tagged as , , , ,

by | July 27, 2026 · 6:00 am

The four R projects

The four R projects emerged from the efforts of scholars, archivists, librarians, and musicians to create research tools that provide access to key sources of musical heritage and culture. These sources include musical works preserved in manuscripts and printed editions, historical and contemporary writings on music, and visual representations of music and musical performance. Recognizing that a vast body of music-related literature and iconography remained largely unexplored, the International Musicological Society (IMS) and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML) jointly sponsored the development of the R-projects. The purpose was to create bibliographic research tools that identify, document, and facilitate access to this extensive collection of primary sources.

Below are short descriptions of the four R projects:

The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), or International Inventory of Musical Sources, is dedicated to identifying, documenting, and providing access to musical sources worldwide. Through a network of independent national working groups, RISM catalogs printed music published before 1800, music manuscripts dating from after 1600, as well as libretti, theoretical treatises, and other music-related documents. These records are consolidated and standardized by the RISM Zentralredaktion (Central Editorial Office) in Germany, before being prepared for publication.

http://www.rism.info/

The Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM), or International Inventory of Musical Iconography, based in Switzerland, is dedicated to documenting and studying visual materials related to music, dance, theatre, and opera. To support research in musical iconography, RIdIM publishes catalogues, scholarly studies, and a newsletter and sponsors the annual scholarly yearbook Imago musicae, published in collaboration with Libreria Musicale Italiana.

http://www.ridim.org/

The most recent of the four R-projects is the Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale (RIPM), or Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (1800–1950). Established in 1980, RIPM was created to provide comprehensive access to historical music periodicals and to promote research based on this rich but often overlooked body of documentary evidence. By indexing and making available music-related journals and newspapers, RIPM has become an essential resource for scholars investigating the musical, cultural, and intellectual history of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

https://ripm.org/

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) publishes a range of digital resources that support the global music research community. Its flagship publication, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, is a comprehensive bibliography of scholarly and professional writings on music. Other resources, such as the RILM Index to Scores and Collected Editions (RISE), provide digital tools for locating specific musical works within collected editions, anthologies, and series. RILM also offers specialized reference and archival resources. The RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) is an extensive and continually expanding digital collection of independently published popular music magazines and fanzines, spanning the late 1960s to the present. RILM Music Encyclopedias brings together a growing collection of full-text music reference works, while DEUMM Online provides access to the most comprehensive modern music dictionary in the Italian language. In addition, RILM hosts MGG Online on its platform, offering authoritative and up-to-date information on a wide range of music-related topics, including musicians, genres, historical periods, and scholarly concepts. RILM also now owns the Hofmeister XIX database.

http://www.rilm.org/

Comments Off on The four R projects

Filed under Musicology, Resources, RILM

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | July 22, 2026 · 6:00 am

From the EBSCOpost backlist. VI: The pointy end: Spoof articles (2013)

RILM staff periodically contribute writings to EBSCOpost, a lively blog run by our partners that publishes pieces pertinent to librarianship, higher education, and beyond. Over time, some of these posts are removed, and even those that remain generally recede from view, following the ephemeral nature of much digital content. With 60 years of preserving the world’s writings on music and music-related topics behind us, we are now adding a small rescue project: bringing these blog posts back into circulation. However modest, they help document our history as an organization, and we hope they will continue to resonate with our international readership as well as with any music enthusiast who happens upon them.

For this installment in the series, we return to a post that caused quite a stir amongst the Bibliolore faithful when published here in 2017. In it, former RILM editor Jim Cowdery highlights a few tongue-in-cheek moments when musicologists, lexicographers, and even our staff injected some levity into their work. See if you can find them all, and check out Bibliolore’s recent post, Unique records in RILM Abstracts, which serves as a great companion piece.

The pointy end: Spoof articles

Many reference works for music—and presumably other topics—contain articles about fictitious characters. Sometimes writers for these works slyly slip them by their editors (an article on “Verdi, Lasagne” was almost typeset for printing in The new Grove dictionary); others are incorporated with the collusion of all parties.

For an example, look up Otto Jägermeier in Komponisten der Gegenwart (available through RILM Music Encyclopedias) or in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (available through MGG Online). You will find that Jägermeier composed, among other intriguing works, an opera called Der Idiot with a libretto by Fëdor Dostoevskij, and a work for solo clarinet called Psychosen. The name Jägermeier is a play on Jägermeister, a popular German cordial.

RILM is not above adding a spoof article or two to RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. Of course, we won’t tell you which ones they are, but we’ll give you a hint: One includes a reference to the very real and wonderful Malcolm Bilson, who favors us with a Mozart concerto below.

Comments Off on From the EBSCOpost backlist. VI: The pointy end: Spoof articles (2013)

Filed under Curiosities, From the archives, Humor, Musicology, RILM, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | July 17, 2026 · 6:00 am

Unique records in RILM Abstracts

Since its launch in October 2009, Bibliolore has become a vibrant platform with over 1,870 posts exploring global music studies. The blog features a diverse range of topics, from Western music to global traditional and popular sounds, often inspired by significant dates, contemporary issues, and the celebration of both renowned and lesser-known musical figures. Interestingly, the blog has also showcased a number of unique outliers over the years highlighting the diversity of topics covered in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, including animals, insects, and even food. Below are a four examples.

Music for cats (14 November 2012)—Features the compositions of David Teie, who creates music specifically tailored to engage domestic cats. His unique style draws inspiration from feline vocalizations and environmental sounds that capture a cat’s interest, incorporating genres such as kitty ditties, feline airs, and cat ballads.


https://bibliolore.org/2022/08/08/music-for-cats-ii/

Bug music (9 June 2014)–Explores David Rothenburg’s book, which analyzes how the sounds made by insects—such as cicadas and other humming, clicking, or thrumming creatures—may have influenced human rhythm and dance. The post highlights the intriguing connection between these natural sounds and the development of musical rhythm and synchronization in human culture.

https://bibliolore.org/2014/06/09/bug-music/

The Elvis sandwich (19 October 2015)–Celebrates Elvis Presley‘s fondness for the pan-fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, a dish that became almost as iconic as his music. This post chronicles the sandwich’s history in “Southern po’ folks cuisine”, highlighting its cultural significance and connection to Elvis’s legacy.

https://bibliolore.org/2015/10/19/the-elvis-sandwich/

Corn chip music (4 August 2014)–Examines the innovative creation of a musical passage by George Eapen of Frisco, Texas that mirrors the tasting experience of corn chips’ flavor notes. This unique composition is designed to be played while tasting the snack, allowing for a combined sensory experience that enhances both the enjoyment of the music and the food.

https://bibliolore.org/2014/08/04/corn-chip-music/

Comments Off on Unique records in RILM Abstracts

Filed under Animals, Food, From the archives

Tagged as , , , , , , ,