Répertoire International des Sources Musicales

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The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (abbreviated as RISM) or International Inventory of Musical Sources was founded in Paris in 1952. This international non-profit joint venture aims to comprehensively document extant musical sources around the world. It is the largest and only global operation registering and documenting written musical sources.

The musical sources under its purview included manuscripts, printed music, works on music theory and libretti. These are stored in libraries, archives, monasteries, schools and private collections the world over.

The project is organized into three series along with other special publications. Series A is divided into two main groups: A/I covers single prints before 1800. A/II covers the many sources in manuscript form. It began as a microfiche publication but is now distributed on CD-Rom. Each subdivision of Series B covers a specific repertory of sources. For instance, B/III covers Medieval music theory sources in six volumes while B/XIV covers processional manuscripts. Some important series, such as B/IV (polyphonic music of the 11th-16th centuries), are incomplete. Series C is a directory of music libraries and other source holdings throughout the world.

As part of their larger projects, RISM publishes a series of sigla which give in abbreviated form the location and shelfmark of a source. For instance, I-Pu 1115 decodes to Italy, Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria, manuscript 1115. RISM sigla enjoy widespread usage in musicology, but they have been criticized for being obscure and hard to remember.^[1] Further, the sigla used are not always consistent from one RISM publication to another and sometimes fail to distinguish among several manuscripts with the same number in the same library (e.g., GB-Ob 229 could be any number of different manuscripts at Oxford's Bodleian library, including Can. Pat. Lat. 229, Can. Misc. 229, Ital. 229, etc.).