St. Louis is calling, and we’re ready to get the show on the road! Peruse our many sources for music and theater, take note of when to find us in the Exhibit Hall, and reserve your spot at our luncheon in honor of Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie’s 30 years of dedicated service to RILM. Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!

Music & Theater – RILM’s Global Coverage

Did you know that RILM’s family of resources offers comprehensive coverage of music & theater? If not, read on….

RILM Abstracts relies on nearly 40 theater-related headwords that index publications, from dramatic arts to incidental music, from intermezzo to musical revue, cabaret and musical theater, from opera and pantomime to traditional theater and xiqu. Our vast coverage of music &theater in RILM Abstracts is matched by our vast indexing, which makes theatrical forms findable through keywords such as commedia dell’arte, dance-drama, folk drama, intermedio, kabuki, medieval drama, music theater, mystery play, noh, p’ansori, plays, and puppet theater. RILM Abstracts also covers film and dance. 

RILM Abstracts’ full-text enhancement provides full-text PDFs for some of these publications. Never has research on music & theater been easier! And this is not where RILM research fun ends.

RILM Music Encyclopedias is a treasure trove for those seeking a virtual reference shelf, regardless of the research subject. It includes several titles that are specific to the subject of music & theater (a small selection is shown below).

a collage of encyclopedia covers shows examples of theater related titles

Music & theater is omnipresent in RILM Music Encyclopedias, where historical and national titles offer comprehensive coverage of the lives and works of performers, composers, and other individuals who have made a contribution to theater culture. 

screenshot of mgg online article viewer shows an image of an opulent opera house expanded above the viewer

And the preeminent reference work MGG Online, which offers continual updates and new articles, proudly presents the following sampling of its many theater-related articles:

  1. Opera House
  2. Chinese Music Theater
  3. Theater and Opera Troupes
  4. Music Theater
  5. Grand Opéra

Looking for a piece to perform on stage? RILM’s Index to Printed Music can guide you through the universe of musical pieces in theatrical genres ranging from musical comedy to incidental music, pantomime to ballet, and buried in collections, sets, and series. IPM also contains some theater-specific series, such as Jerome Kern’s collected songs and Nineteenth-century American Musical Theater.

Join Us In Person!

Exhibit Hall Hours

Look for the RILM booth in the Exhibit Hall.

1 March: 7pm CST
2-3 March: 9:00-5:00 pm CST
4 March: 9:00-12pm CST

Lunch Celebration/Presentation

3 March: 12:00-1:30 pm CST

RILM invites to a luncheon in honor of Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie’s 30 years of dedicated service to the organization. Jadranka Važanová will also update attendees about RILM’s recent developments on RILM Music Encyclopedias, the dynamic new features of the Index to Printed Music and MGG Online, new additions in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, and the upcoming release of DEUMM Online.

Please RSVP by 15 February 2023 to reserve your lunch and a seat by sending an email to conferences@rilm.org with your name, institution, and “MLA 2023” in the subject line. 

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Research With RILM

With today’s remote learning needs, we turn a spotlight on resources that offer essential and interdisciplinary content online and with remote access. Most of RILM’s resources offer full-text coverage: The full-text enhancement of RILM Abstracts comes with over 400,000 PDFs, RILM Music Encyclopedias offers over 330,00 entries, and MGG Online over 19,000 articles. IPM offers links to open-access editions of music.

MLA/TLA is Over – What Now?

Reward yourself

Not quite a graphic novel, but still, an e-book with amusing and serious writings by the RILM staff and with hand-drawn illustrations by Steve Tierney.

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Prepare yourself

  1. – Sign up for our YouTube channel for introductory videos about our resources as well as tutorials.
  2. – Download the teaching guide with recommended searches.
  3. – Attend our weekly office hour on Facebook in RILM’s group Bibliography Buffs.
  4. – Invite us to teach a class for you or to give a tutorial. Just email info@rilm.org.

As June sings to Peter in Good News (1947):

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