Research

Library Collection

The RCM Library contains a wealth of material: over 400,000 items, ranging from rare, early 16th-century printed music to standard musical repertoire plus a large catalogue of recordings.

It has existed since the College’s foundation in 1883, and its rich collections are built up from a variety of sources, by gift and purchase. Most importantly, the Library of the Sacred Harmonic Society was purchased for the College by public subscription in 1883. Soon after, Queen Victoria presented the library with the Concert of Ancient Music, in 1990 the library of the Musical Union was transferred from the Victoria & Albert Museum, then duplicates were received from the British Museum and material donated by the Library of Congress.

Since those early days, the library has benefited from continuing gifts of early printed music, manuscripts and more modern repertoire, literature and recordings and has developed collections of materials for research, loan and listening. Shortly after the second world war the College’s manuscripts, including important autograph works by Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, were loaned to the British Museum, while the C.S. Terry and Heron-Allen collections were loaned to the Faculty of Music in Oxford. All these collections returned to the College in 1961.

The library is open to the public for reference, and to researchers from around the world for study of our special collections.

For more information visit www.rcm.ac.uk/library