RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) is an international collaborative programme which aims to document all pre-1850 musical sources surviving in libraries and archives worldwide. These sources include printed and manuscript music, writings on music and libretti. RISM brings together the results of research and cataloguing in more than 30 countries through its online and printed publications. In the UK, this work is co-ordinated by the RISM (UK) Trust.
There are two online interfaces through which you can search for printed and manuscript music held in libraries across the world, including those in the UK. These are the international RISM Catalog of Musical Sources and the RISM Online platform. The data is the same in both, but the two platforms provide different search functionality.
If you are interested specifically in musical sources preserved in British libraries and archives, you can search RISM Online for just that subset of data.
Coverage of sources in British libraries
The online RISM catalogues include all catalogue records for pre-1850 manuscript music in British libraries that have been created up till now. Cataloguing of these collections is not yet complete, however. The catalogues also contain data on most pre-1800 single-composer printed editions identified to date in British libraries and archives. However, they do not generally include descriptions of individual works in printed anthologies. Please see History of RISM in the UK for information on anthologies catalogued for the Early Music Online project.
