February 2020

JSCM Instrumenta

The Society for Seventeenth-Century Music maintains an active website useful for both musicologists and music librarians (https://sscm-sscm.org/). In addition to current information about the organization and its membership, the site offers links to the society’s free online journal (https://sscm-jscm.org/) and an interesting series of bibliographic publications collectively titled JSCM Instrumenta. The series currently consists of five noteworthy publications, resources that might not be well-known among music librarians.

Volume 1 : Chambonnières: A Thematic Catalogue, compiled by Bruce Gustafson
Volume 2 : A Catalogue of Motets, Mass, Office, and Holy Week Music Printed in Italy, 1516–1770, compiled by Jeffrey Kurtzman and Anne Schnoebelen
Volume 3 : Thematic Catalogue of Chamber Cantatas by Marc’Antonio Pasqualini, compiled by Margaret Murata
Volume 4 : A Thematic Locator for the Works of Jean-Baptiste Lully, compiled by Bruce Gustafson with Matthew Leshinskie
Volume 5 : Worship Culture in a Lutheran Court Chapel: Sacred Music, Chorales, and Liturgical Practices at the Dresden Court, ca. 1650–1680, compiled by Mary E. Frandsen

The left sidebar displays the contents of each source with links to separate sections displayed online in a PDF format chapter by chapter. Individual resources are described separately and also presented as links to PDF pages. These resources are mostly recent publications and volumes 1 and 2 were updated in late 2019 and January 2020. All are indexed and accessible through MusRef here

Les musiques du cinéma français

Lacombe, Alain, and Francois Porcile. Les musiques du cinéma Français. Paris: Bordas, 1995.

An important history of French cinematic music from 1895 to 1990. The first portion consists mostly of brief biographical sketches for key composers placed in their historical context and written by Lecombe. This biographical history is followed by a sixty-page listing of films by the same composers (alphabetical by last name, then chronologically by film). The listing is international and not strictly limited to French productions. A third section consists of a collection of essays on various topics related to French film music subtitled “Une esthétique des contraires et des contraintes” (An aesthetics of opposites and constraints) written by François Porcile. The book includes numerous photographs in black and white. It includes two indexes, one for composers and performers, and a second for film titles.

For a review see Diapason: Le magazine de la musique classique, no. 421 (November 1995): 24.

For related reference sources in MusRef click here.