Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

International Musicological Society [IMS]

(Fr. Société Internationale de Musicologie, SIM; Ger. Internationale Gesellschaft für Musikwissenschaft, IGM).

Society founded in 1927 to replace the Internationale Musikgesellschaft (International Musical Society), which had been founded by Oskar Fleischer and Max Seiffert in 1899 with the aim of promoting international musical contacts, but which had ceased to exist with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Musicologists met internationally for the first time after the war in Basle in 1924, and when Henry Prunières, speaking in 1927 at the Beethoven centenary celebrations in Vienna, suggested that the International Musical Society be reconstituted, the idea was enthusiastically received. In September 1927 a committee, chaired by Guido Adler, met in Basle and the International Musicological Society was founded.

Basle was chosen as the headquarters of the IMS. In addition to the general assembly and council, a secretariat was established to promote the aims of the society; its functions included the arrangement of international contacts between musicologists and the establishment of a bibliographical centre. Members were informed of the society's activities through a quarterly bulletin. A year after its foundation the society already had 181 members from 23 countries. In its early years the society maintained close relations with musical performance and composition, and the first international congress (Liège, 1930) was held in collaboration with the International Society for Contemporary Music. During World War II international cooperation almost ceased; however, the society was not dissolved, and its journal, Acta musicologica (AcM), which had replaced the bulletin in 1931, was still published.

In 1949 the society held a further international musicological congress in Basle, on the initiative of Ernst Mohr, who later became General Secretary (1952–72). The IMS also joined the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, a new organization affiliated to UNESCO. Congresses were subsequently held every three years up to 1967 and every five years thereafter, bringing together individual members, institutes, libraries and associations. A report of each, with the exception of the sixth, has been published. The presidents of the IMS have been Peter Wagner, Dent, Jeppesen, Smijers, Lang, Blume, Grout, Fédorov, von Fischer, Reeser, Finscher, Mahling and Sadie.

The IMS journal Acta musicologica, published twice a year, contains reports and other contributions from all fields of musicological research. As the society expanded (it had 1200 members from 51 countries in 1994), the bibliographical duties originally assigned to the secretariat became unmanageable and were transferred to a group of long-term publications, produced in collaboration with the International Association of Music Libraries: Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), started in 1952 in order to catalogue the musical heritage that had survived the war; Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), a computerized index of musicological literature published since 1967; Répertoire international d'iconographie musicale (RIdIM), which was started in 1971 as an inventory of musical iconographical sources and also publishes the RIdIM newsletter and sponsors the yearbook Imago Musicae; and Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale (RIPM), which began its activities in 1983 and publishes inventories of music journals. The series Documenta musicologica publishes musical and music theory sources in facsimile. Catalogus musicus publishes catalogues of collections, musicians' libraries and publishers.

RUDOLF HÄUSLER/R

International Music Publications [IMP].

English firm of music publishers based in Woodford Green, Essex. It was formed in 1982 through a merger of the printed music operations of EMI Music Publishing and Chappell, and subsequently passed into the ownership of the Warner Music Group. In addition to being the largest publisher of popular and rock music in Britain, it also has an extensive educational catalogue, which includes materials in compact disc, video and multimedia formats. Besides its own publishing programme, it serves as the printed music channel for many major recording and publishing companies, and acts as the British distributor for several foreign catalogues, including Disney and Suzuki publications. The firm also maintains an archive service for some 250,000 out-of-print titles from the mid-19th century onwards, based primarily on the old Chappell catalogue.

PETER WARD JONES

International Repertory of Musical Iconography.

See Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale.

International Repertory of Music Literature.

See Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale.

International Society for Contemporary Music

[ISCM] (Fr. Société Internationale pour la Musique Contemporaine, SIMC; Ger. Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, IGNM).

Society founded on 11 August 1922 after the Internationale Kammermusikaufführungen Salzburg 1922, a festival of modern chamber music held as part of the Salzburg Festival and organized by Rudolf Réti with the assistance of Egon Wellesz, Paul Stefan and some young Viennese composers. Over 20 composers were present, including Webern, Hindemith, Bartók, Kodály, Honegger and Milhaud. The participants were determined that this, the first international music festival after World War I, should be the first of a regular series of events enabling contemporary composers to maintain the contacts made in Salzburg and meet annually to become acquainted with recent musical events and trends. On its foundation the ISCM outlined its purpose as being a means of breaking down national barriers and personal interests and publicizing and promoting contemporary music ‘regardless of aesthetic trends or the nationality, race, religion or political views of the composer’. These aims were to be pursued through annual music festivals in different countries. The first (1923) was restricted to chamber music; in 1924 and 1925 separate chamber and orchestral festivals were held, and from 1926 the festivals included various genres. The society's activities were also promoted by the autonomous national sections, numbering 46 in 1995. Each country is represented by one section (since 1992, also by additional associate memberships), although before World War II the USSR, Sweden, Spain and Czechoslovakia each had two sub-sections, for geographical or cultural reasons, and in 1983 Hong Kong was accepted as an independent sub-section of Britain.

The society's original headquarters were in London, where the first constitution was worked out by a conference in January 1923, under the presidency of E.J. Dent (1922–38, 1945–7). From its inception the ISCM was plagued by internal disputes concerning its purpose and operation. There was conflict between those countries that felt that it should promote avant-garde music (principally Germany before 1933 and Austria and Czechoslovakia before 1938) and those that considered any contemporary music to be worthy of the society's interest (principally France, Great Britain and the USA). Despite the internal weaknesses of the society, the pre-war ISCM festivals were most significant as forums for leading contemporary composers, providing the occasions for important premières, including those of Webern's Five Pieces op.10 (1923), Berg's Violin Concerto (Barcelona, 1936) and Webern's Das Augenlicht op.26 (London, 1938), as well as performances of music by Hindemith, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and others.

A threat to the society's existence was posed by Nazi Germany, which regarded the ISCM as ‘culturally bolshevist’ and part of an international anti-German conspiracy. In 1934 it founded a counter-organization, the Permanent Council for the International Cooperation of Composers, of which Richard Strauss was the first president. The German section of the ISCM had been banned in 1933; bans were enforced, from between 1938 and 1941, on the sections in the occupied countries; those in Italy (1939) and Japan (1941) were also banned.

After World War II the society became active once more. One of the most important aspects of the ISCM was the contact it afforded between East and West during the cold war. From the mid-1980s more countries from Latin America and East Asia joined the society, and after the fall of communism more countries from East Europe. In 1988 the first East Asian festival was held in Hong Kong, and in 1993 the first Latin American festival took place in Mexico City. Among its most important postwar premières have been Boulez's Le marteau sans maître (Baden-Baden, 1955) and Stockhausen's Kontakte (1960). In 1949 a journal, Music Today, was published, although it did not continue beyond the first issue. Since 1991 a journal, the World New Music Magazine, has been published in Cologne. The work of the ISCM was reduced in significance by the development of new means of producing and reproducing music, and as a source of musical impetus the ISCM was superseded by the international summer courses in Darmstadt, by specialized new music ensembles, festivals and events and by the growth of broadcasting. Thus ‘the growth and spread of serial music and other modern trends in many countries had taken place outside, even in opposition to, the society’ (Dibelius, 1966, p.234).

In 1971 the society's statutes were revised in such a way as to enable it to resume some of its former importance, taking advantage of its independence from commercial or political factors, its internationalism, and the equality of its national groups – from which the smaller nations in particular may benefit (as may be seen in the stimulus the ISCM has provided to the development of new music in Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland and Norway). In 1975 the society's festival programme was broadened to embrace popular genres, in 1992 its statutes were again revised to enable countries to become associate members and in 1997 the rules were changed to enable the organisation of festivals without an international jury.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Weissmann: Die Entgötterung der Musik (Stuttgart, 1928, 2/1930; Eng. trans., 1930)

N. Slonimsky: Music since 1900 (New York, 1937, 5/1994)

E. Wellesz: ‘E.J. Dent and the International Society for Contemporary Music’, MR, vii (1946), 205–8

E.J. Dent: ‘Looking Backward’, Music Today, i (1949), 6–22

R. Réti: ‘Die Entstehung der IGNM’, ÖMz, xii (1957), 113–16

U. Dibelius: Moderne Musik 1945–1965 (Munich, 1966, 3/1984–8)

E. Wellesz: ‘Begegnungen in Wien’, Melos, xxxiii (1966), 6–12

H. Åstrand: ‘Sveriges stämma i ISCM – detta musikens FN’ [Sweden's voice in the ISCM, the United Nations of music], Svenska musikperspektiv, ed. G. Hilleström (Stockholm, 1971), 404–15

A. Haefeli: ‘Musikfest oder internationale Information: zur Geschichte der IGNM’, Neue Musik und Festival: Graz 1972, 19–35

U. Dibelius: ‘Verjüngungsprobleme einer Fünfzigjährigen: zur aktuellen Situation der IGNM’, Hi-Fi-Stereo-Phonie, xii (1973), 32–3

W. Brennecke: ‘50 Jahre IGNM – was nun?’, Neue Musik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, xv–xvi (1974), 24–6

A. Haefeli: ‘Die Rolle der deutschen Sektion innerhalb der IGNM’, ibid., 10–23

A. Haefeli: Die Zürcher Musikfeste der IGNM 1929 und 1957 (Zürich, 1977)

A. Haefeli: ‘Hanns Eisler und die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM)’, BMw, xxiii (1981), 104–13

A. Haefeli: Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM): ihre Geschichte von 1922 bis zur Gegenwart (Zürich, 1982)

World New Music Magazine (1991–)

A. Haefeli: ‘Die Emigration und ihr Einfluss auf die Profilierung und Politisierung der IGNM’, Musik in der Emigration: Essen 1992, 136–52

ANTON HAEFELI/REINHARD OEHLSCHLÄGEL