Archive and Library

The Britten-Pears Foundation maintains an extensive archive and library 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. For this it has been officially Designated as an Outstanding Collection.

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.