Overview of Iconographic and Paper-Based Collections

Primary collection of original portraits

112 canvases; 137 drawings and watercolours; 104 works of sculpture. Listed alphabetically by sitter.

Portrait prints

c. 4,000 items.  Card index filed alphabetically by sitter.

Portrait photographs

c. 6,000 items. Card index filed alphabetically by sitter.

Instrument Design

Prints, photographs and advertising material on keyboard, string and wind instruments; organ specifications

The Organ Club Collection

c. 11,000 photographs of organ cases.

Concert Halls, Opera Houses and Monuments

c.500 prints and photographs. The list is not comprehensive.

Opera

Posters, designs (including original designs), mises-en-scène, prints and photographs of opera production from c.1750

Card index

Handlist of Vocal Scores

Illustrated and Decorated Title-pages

c.3,000 items in 19 boxes. Filed by subject or category (portraits, operas, national music, social history, decoration, etc.)

Cecilia Record

Certificates

A small collection of 19th and 20th-century designs.

Cecilia Record

Concert, Opera and Ballet Programmes

c.600,000 programmes, covering the whole world, but with a strong emphasis on Great Britain. Online, venue-level records of the collection have been created as part of the AHRC Concert Programmes Project.

Cuttings Collection

Reviews, programme notes, periodical articles, newspaper cuttings, albums and scrapbooks dating from 1870 to the present day.  Arranged and indexed by subject.

Ibbs and Tillett Collection

Ledgers, programmes, photographs, contracts and correspondence, c.1920-1970.

Cecilia Record

Artists’ Brochures

Both individuals, and agents’ brochures – approximately 2000 items, arranged by size and then alphabetically. No comprehensive finding aid, but lists of contents for agents’ brochures.

Obituaries

Newspaper obituaries – about 2000 items, arranged alphabetically by subject. No comprehensive list.

Obituaries in Cuttings

Obituaries in Periodicals

Ticket Design

A small collection of engraved tickets and original designs.

Batons, medals and other memorabilia

c.100 items.

Collections: personal papers, correspondence, etc.

Various collections, containing a wide range of different types of materials. Only a few finding aids prepared.

Reference Library

c.2,000 volumes, comprising dictionaries, year-books, catalogues, iconographical reference works, studies of sitters and artists represented in the primary collection, performance history literature, organology, museology. The collection is being gradually catalogued into the RCM Library Catalogue.

Periodicals

Runs (mostly incomplete) of The Illustrated London News, Musica, The Musical Times and other periodicals.  Collected for their illustrative content.

Handlist of Periodicals

Card Index to illustrative Content

Music Publishers’ Catalogues

c.2,000 late 19th and early 20th-century catalogues, for the most part presented by the late Major Cecil Hopkinson.  Supplementary collection of publishing ephemera.

Cecilia Record

Documentation

(i)   dossiers on each original portrait

(ii)  card-indexes of

(b)   international index of musical portraiture

(d)   portrait illustrations in pre-1900 books in RCM reference library

(e)   representations of opera throughout the collection

(f)   RCM professors

RIdIM Collection

Card index (plus detailed photographs) to musical subjects in the National Gallery and Tate Gallery and to British cathedral carvings relating to music.

RCM History

Photographs and prints (views and events): c.600 items, from 1870's to the present day. Building plans, architects’ correspondence, related literature, prospectuses, gift book.