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With several thousands of reviews (both of books and musical scores), the Vereins-Cataloge des Cäcilien-Vereines für alle Länder deutscher Zunge are the largest collection of reviews concerning church music after 1870. New compositions as well as editions of older works are discussed in these catalogues. The reviewers’ positions are rooted deeply in the Cecilian movement. Their texts range from brief one-liners up to voluminous essays that encompass several pages and present in-depth studies of aesthetic or theoretical issues. Among the composers that come up are protagonists from the Cecilian movement (like Mettenleiter, Piel, Witt) as well as Orlando di Lasso, Liszt, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Reger, Wagner, and many more.
However, the catalogues are not easy to handle. Their organisation with several separate indices is cumbersome, and they are only accessible via a few selected libraries. As a result, this source is rather seldom quoted in modern musicological literature. Our project aims first at a digital edition of the catalogues and second at the creation of a searchable full-text database. In this way, the material will be readily accessible for further research.
