The Archive Collections
The Britten-Pears Library maintains an extensive archive which comprises one of the UK’s most important centres for music research and scholarship, holding an assemblage of manuscripts and other source materials unrivalled by that of almost any other single composer collection in its breadth and depth. The collection also includes a number of important special collections relating to aspects of music and musical life, primarily but not exclusively, in twentieth-century Britain. The main categories of the collection are:
Manuscript materials and ephemera
- Music manuscripts of Benjamin Britten
- Music manuscripts of other composers
- Correspondence and other papers of Britten and Pears
- Literary works
- Press cuttings
- Programmes
- Photographs
- Stage and costume designs
Special collections
- Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts archive
- Britten–Pears Young Artist Programme archive
- English Opera Group / English Music Theatre Company archive
- Lennox Berkeley and the Berkeley Family papers
- Holst archive
- Bernard and Joyce Barrell papers
- Cecil Armstrong Gibbs Papers
- Paul Hamburger Collection
- Nancy Evans and Eric Crozier papers
- Joan Cross papers
- Julian Herbage papers
- London Boy Singers Association archive
- Aldeburgh Music Club archive