An international project, founded at a meeting of the International Association of Music Librarians (1971), on the initiative of Barry S. Brook with the assistance of Geneviève Thibault and Harald Heckmann. Its aim is to develop methods, means and research centres for the classification, cataloguing, reproduction and study of iconographical material relating to music. It is designed to assist performers, historians, librarians, students, instrument makers, record manufacturers and book publishers to make the fullest use of visual materials for scholarly and practical purposes.
The cataloguing of musico-iconographic documents was until the early 1970s largely a private, uncoordinated affair, and was poorly equipped with methodology and research tools. Several systems of cataloguing visual materials have been proposed, but RIdIM appears to have become firmly established for two reasons: because it uses new technologies that facilitate the cataloguing and reproduction of vast numbers of sources; and because RIdIM could follow RISM (1952) and RILM (1966) as the third important international cooperative bibliographical venture in music. Like them, RIdIM is sponsored by the International Musicological Society and the IAML, as well as the International Council of Museums, and it is supported by an international advisory commission of art historians, museum directors, musicologists, iconologists and private collectors. It is governed by a Commission Internationale Mixte, appointed by the executive boards of its three sponsoring societies.
RIdIM seeks to establish musical iconography as a discipline in its own right; this requires an internationally agreed approach to cataloguing and classification, an organized body of source material, a tested and proven methodology, bibliographical controls, training schools and inexpensive methods for the reproduction and exchange of documents.
RIdIM functions through national committees and active individuals or working groups and works on two research project series: an inventory of Western art with musical subjects from 1300 to the present (with subseries on paintings, drawings, prints etc.), and specific topics (Greek vases, medieval wall paintings, the viol family, musical inscriptions, drums and drummers, Caravaggists, portraits, the meeting of Eastern and Western instrumentaria, 18th-century ensembles, and iconographical sources in the periodical L’illustration). Other specialized publications are sponsored by RIdIM.
The oldest and by far the largest national centre is the Centre d’Iconographie Musicale in Paris, founded in 1967 by the Countess of Chambure (Geneviève Thibault); since 1992 it has been located at the Musée National des Arts et Tradition Populaires. The Research Center for Musical Iconography, established in 1972 at the City University of New York, serves as both the American national centre and RIdIM international headquarters; it has a photographic archive and RIdIM Master Catalogue. The Swedish national committee was established in 1975 and is sponsored by the Svenskt Musikhistoriskt Arkiv in Stockholm. The German national centre, sponsored by RISM-Germany, was established at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, in 1976. The Italian centre, Catalogo Italiano di Iconografia Musicale, founded in 1987, is housed at the library of the Milan Conservatory. National centres have also been established in Canada, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands and Poland. Besides national centres, cataloguing of iconographic sources is done in a number of local research institutions and universities.
In addition to congresses on iconography, RIdIM organizes its regular meetings held during the IAML annual conferences. RIdIM has published the RIdIM/RCMI Newsletter, edited by Zdravko Blažeković, since 1975 and the Inventory of Music Iconography since 1986. The yearbook Imago musicae, edited by Tilman Seebass and Tilden Russell, has been published since 1984 under the auspices of RIdIM.
Annual reports repr. in FAM, xix–xxxvii (1972–90), xl (1993–)
B.S. Brook: ‘RIdIM: a New International Venture in Music Iconography’, Notes, xxviii (1971–2), 652–63
B.S. Brook and R. Leppert: ‘RCMI/CUNY: the Research Center for Musical Iconography of the City University of New York’, College Music Symposium, xiii (1973), 103–13, esp. 105
I. Barth-Magnus: ‘RIdIM-projektet Musiken i det medeltida svenska samhället’, Svenskt musikhistoriskt arkiv bulletin, xviii (1983), 16–23
S. Milliot: ‘Le Centre d'iconographie musicale de la Recherche Scientifique à Paris’, RdM, lxix (1983), 85–98
Thesaurus for Western Art, Containing Terms for a Standardized Means of Describing Artworks with Musical Depictions (New York, 1987)
T. Ford: List of Western Instruments Annotated from an Iconographical Point of View (New York, 1987)
M. Holl: ‘Die Katalogisierung von musikikonographischen Inhalten in der bildenden Kunst nach dem EDV-Programm MIDAS des Deutschen Dokumentationszentrums für Kunstgeschichte an der Universität Marburg’, RIdIM/RCMI Newsletter, xvi/2 (1991), 18–28
C. Tessari, E. Ferrari Barassi and others: Strutturazione dei dati delle schede: Beni archeologici e storico-artistici: disegni, stampe, manoscritti e pubblicazioni a stampa (Cremona, 1992)
T. Seebass: ‘Une brève histoire de l'iconographie musicale: contribution des chercheurs français’, Musique–Images–Instruments, i (1995), 9–20
BARRY S. BROOK/ZDRAVKO BLAŽEKOVIĆ