Musical Libraries and Catalogues

Abstract

With the exception of the libraries attached to such institutions as the Royal Academy and the Royal College of Music, the Students' Libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, the Henry Watson Library at Manchester, and Mr. Cobbett's Free Library of British Chamber Music, musical libraries, in the sense of libraries solely devoted to music and musical literature, can hardly be said to exist in this country. But the term Musical Libraries is short and convenient, and under it I propose to deal briefly with (1) Great Public Libraries which have (or should have) a special department devoted to music, and which can be used for purposes of both general instruction and special historical research; and (2) Smaller Libraries, where music can only form one of the many subjects for which provision has to be made. In this second category I include (a) Free Libraries and (b) Libraries of Institutions (such as Cathedrals and Colleges), into which for a variety of reasons a certain amount of music has drifted. Private collections, though they are often of considerable importance, hardly come within the scope of this paper.