This guide to archives of music is not intended to be exhaustive. It complements the Archives Catalogue, which includes a subject search facility and the Music Subject Guide.
Medieval manuscript fragments
- A fragment of a late sixteenth century Antiphoner.
- Three velum leaves of an Antiphoner and noted Missal fragments, dated to 1100-1300.
- A leaf from a fourteenth century choirbook.
- Sixteenth century music fragment.
- Fourteenth century Sequentiary fragments.
Transcriptions of medieval music and early English music
- Nineteenth century manuscript transcriptions of British Library music manuscripts.
- Transcriptions from the Ambrosian (Milan) Missal by choirmaster Thomas Helmore.
- Manuscript transcriptions of works by fifteenth century composer John Dunstable Maitland by music critic John Alexander Fuller, early twentieth century.
- Mid-eighteenth century manuscript copies of works by Stanley, Hasse, Handel, Purcell, Caporale and Arne, copied by Bayley Marley.
- Early twentieth century manuscript transcription of the parts of “Missa O quam suavis, for five voices, by an anonymous English composer c.1500”.
- Papers on early church drama collected by historian and composer William Smolden.
Italian Music
- A nineteenth century manuscript copy of Banchieri’s ‘The Nobleness of the Ass, produced for critic, editor, and forger John Payne Collier.
- Manuscript score of an extract from ‘Beatrice di Tenda’ by Vincenzo Bellini , 19th century.
- Late eighteenth century manuscript copy of a musical score of ‘Adoramus te Christe, a quattro voci’ by Giacomo Antonio Perti.
- A copy of a 1739 violin sonata composed by Francesco Geminiani dated1829.
- Early 18th century manuscript scores of Italian solo cantatas.
- Manuscript copy of Donizetti’s unpublished opera ‘Gabriella di Vergy‘, including passages in the composer’s own hand, c1825-1845.
18th-19th century scores and collections
- A late eighteenth century manuscript musical score of Christus factus est.
- Eighteenth century Portuguese musical score: Seis Modinhas com accompanhamento de Pianoforte de Differentes Autores.
- A collection of manuscripts books containing a range of works by various composers formerly in the collections of the Elvey family and Skeats family, c1770-c1870.
- An early nineteenth century Book of psalm and hymn tunes.
- Papers, including note books, scrapbooks and manuscripts of collector and musicologist Alfred James Hipkins.
20th century scores and collections
- Musical score extracts for incidental music for John Masfield’s Melloney Hotspur by John Hotchkiss, 1952.
- Manuscript scores of two versions of A Lyke-Wake: Border Ballad, 1934, by English composer Sir Arnold Bax.
- Scores by Vilem Tausky.
- Records of the Union of Graduates in Music, 1893-1972.