(Including composers, former owners, authors of texts, and copyists.)

I. The RISM Project -- An Overview

The RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) was begun in the mid-1950s, its goal to update the two major existing finding tools for musical sources: Robert Eitner's and his The project was conceived of in two corresponding series:

Series A, a listing of sources by individual composer, to be divided into two subseries: A/I for music imprints before 1800, and A/II for music manuscripts ca. 1600-1800.

Series B, catalogs of systematically arranged repertories of music and writings about music.

The largest part of the project, RISM Series A/II, has been underway for more than a decade. It is coordinated by the RISM central office in Frankfurt, Germany, which receives contributions from more than thirty participating countries. While the other series have been and continue to be published in book form, Series A/II was considered to be better suited to an electronic format and was conceived from the beginning as an online database. More than 200,000 bibliographic records are now accessible.

The project's boundaries have been established with reference to composers' dates of birth and death. It includes manuscripts containing music by composers who were born after 1580, and who died prior to 1770. Because composers meeting these guidelines could have remained active through the mid-nineteenth century, and because their work has often been transmitted with music of composers born in 1770 or later, however, many manuscripts inventoried include music of later composers as well.

In the United States, RISM Series A/II has been the major project of the U.S. RISM Office at Harvard University since 1985. More information is available on the RISM home page at http://www.rism.harvard.edu/rism/Welcome.html.

II. Searching RISM Online for Finney manuscripts

Each volume in the Finney collection is represented by a main cataloging record in the RISM Series A/II database, which is located at http://www.rism.harvard.edu/rism/DB.html. Clicking on the Series A/II link in the database directory will take you to the search form. Select “Call Number” and “Contents” from the drop-down menus of search indexes at the left.

Combining a Call Number search (e.g. Finney 1) with a Contents search (using the keyword “contains”) will retrieve each main record. Exceptions are Finney 6, 9, 14, and 33-36, which are single works and can be searched by call number alone. Finney 46 cannot be searched by call number, but it can be retrieved with an ID Number search on MAHR1000112585. Finney 26 is not in the RISM database.

The main records for collective volumes have a “Linking notes” field containing an arrow icon. Clicking on the icon will retrieve records for all the items contained in that volume, sorted (By contrast, a call number search alone for a particular collective volume will retrieve all the records for that volume, sorted

There are 53 main cataloging records and 2318 records for items within collective volumes. The online help documentation is thorough, and generally searching for materials in the database does not present a problem. However, it is not possible to quickly and easily call up a list of the 53 main entry records, so printouts have been made available along with the printed finding guide in the HRC Reading Room.

The Finney manuscripts housed at UCLA are represented by 207 records in the RISM database, which can be retrieved by combining the name Finney with the library sigla US LAum (for the Music Library) and US LAuc (for the Clark Library).