The Royal Academy of Music Museum (previously known as the York Gate Collections) is a museum of musical instruments and artefacts and research centre of the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

The building

The building was designed in 1822 as part of the main entrance to

Regent's Park Regent's Park (officially The Regent's Park) is one of the Royal Parks of London. It occupies of high ground in north-west Inner London, administratively split between the City of Westminster and the Borough of Camden (and historically betwee ...

, and was an important feature in John Nash’s architectural designs for Regency London. The interior of York Gate was largely destroyed by bomb damage in the 1940s, but the Nash exterior has

Grade 1 listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

status. The Royal Academy of Music moved to

Marylebone Road Marylebone Road ( ) is an important thoroughfare in central London, within the City of Westminster. It runs east–west from the Euston Road at Regent's Park to the A40 Westway at Paddington. The road which runs in three lanes in both direction ...

in 1911, and held a lease on part of York Gate during the 1920s and 1930s. A grant from the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

enabled the Academy to acquire and refurbish the building to house studios and practice rooms and a museum.

The galleries

The Museum has three permanent galleries, alongside regularly changing displays and exhibitions. Together they cover an array of eras, instruments and subjects, including

stringed instruments String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the st ...

from the 16th century onwards. The galleries act as a showcase for the work of performers, composers, instrument makers and scholars from a wide range of musical and other relevant disciplines.

The Ground floor gallery

The Museum has recently undergone refurbishment and now contains a 'History of the Academy' display that includes items from notable musicians associated with the Academy: one of Sir Henry Wood's conducting batons, letters by

Felix Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sy ...

and the restored

Alexander Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

horn Horn most often refers to: *Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound ** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various ...

which was played by

Dennis Brain Dennis Brain (17 May 19211 September 1957) was a British horn player. From a musical family – his father and grandfather were horn players – he attended the Royal Academy of Music in London. During the Second World War he served in the Roya ...

, damaged in the crash which killed him, and subsequently restored by Paxman of London. The Ground floor gallery also houses regularly changing temporary exhibitions. These have included "Yehudi Menuhin: Journeys with a violin", which was drawn from the extensive Foyle Menuhin Archive held by the Academy. It accompanied the 2016

Menuhin Competition The Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists (or simply the Menuhin Competition) is an international music competition for violinists under the age of 22. It was founded by Yehudi Menuhin in 1983 with the goal of nurturing you ...

in London and marks 100 years since the birth of

Yehudi Menuhin Yehudi or Jehudi (Hebrew: יהודי, endonym for Jew) is a common Hebrew name: * Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999), violinist and conductor ** Yehudi Menuhin School, a music school in Surrey, England ** Who's Yehoodi?, a catchphrase referring to the v ...

The Strings gallery

A selection of Cremonese instruments is on display in the Strings gallery. The exhibition features examples of instruments by makers

Stradivari Antonio Stradivari (, also , ; – 18 December 1737) was an Italian luthier and a craftsman of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas and harps. The Latinized form of his surname, ''Stradivarius'', as well as the colloquia ...

and Amati, as well as historical information, prints and engravings. The exhibition includes the ‘Viotti ex-Bruce’ violin by Stradivari which was saved for the nation in 2005. The instruments on display form part of the Royal Academy of Music’s fine collection of over 250 stringed instruments from the violin family. The collection includes examples of the work of the finest and most influential makers. These instruments are frequently played in concerts and recordings but are normally kept in the Academy. The present form of the collection can be said to date from 1890 when John Rutson (1829–1906) gave an important group of instruments to the Academy. The Rutson Collection includes the Archinto viola (1696), the Rutson violin (1694) and the Maurin violin all by Stradivari, as well as instruments by members of the

Amati Amati (, ) is the last name of a family of Italian violin makers who lived at Cremona from about 1538 to 1740. Their importance is considered equal to those of the Bergonzi, Guarneri, and Stradivari families. Today, violins created by Nicolò A ...

family, Pressenda and other influential makers.

The Piano gallery

The exhibition features pianos placed on loan by Kenneth and Mary Mobbs, Oswald de Sybel, Andrew Hunter-Johnston, the Beare family, and the Stodart grand piano bequeathed by Frank Brown.

The collections

Since its foundation in 1822 the Academy has acquired important collections of instruments, manuscripts, letters, performance editions, artworks, teaching materials, memorabilia and other objects. Within this are many collections named after individuals, including those relating to the conductors

John Barbirolli Sir John Barbirolli ( Giovanni Battista Barbirolli; 2 December 189929 July 1970) was a British conductor and cellist. He is remembered above all as conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, which he helped save from dissolution in 194 ...

Otto Klemperer Otto Nossan Klemperer (14 May 18856 July 1973) was a 20th-century conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the US, Hungary and finally Britain. His early career was in opera houses, but he was later better known as a concer ...

Henry Wood Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 186919 August 1944) was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hund ...

and

Charles Mackerras Mackerras in 2005 Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras (; 1925 2010) was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the Eng ...

, pianist

Harriet Cohen Harriet(t) may refer to: * Harriet (name), a female name ''(includes list of people with the name)'' Places * Harriet, Queensland, rural locality in Australia * Harriet, Arkansas, unincorporated community in the United States * Harriett, Texas, ...

, the concert agent Norman McCann, lutenist and scholar Robert Spencer, composer

Arthur Sullivan Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for 14 comic opera, operatic Gilbert and Sullivan, collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including ''H.M.S. Pinaf ...

, jazz star

Kenny Wheeler Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC (14 January 1930 – 18 September 2014) was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards. Most of his performances were rooted in jazz, but he was also active ...

and the Foyle Menuhin Archive. The collections also include items concerning the history of the institution such as student registers, programmes, prizeboards, certificates, medals and commemorative photographs.

Manuscripts

The Academy houses original manuscripts by

Purcell Henry Purcell (, rare: September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Purcell's style of Baroque music was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest Eng ...

Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositi ...

Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...

Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...

, Sullivan and

Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

, musical memorabilia and other exhibits.

String instruments

The Academy holds a collection of more than 200

stringed instrument String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the st ...

s from the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

family. These have been acquired for the benefit of students and recent leavers and they are maintained by the Academy's resident

luthier A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers o ...

. The collections include several instruments of the

Stradivarius A Stradivarius is one of the violins, violas, cellos and other string instruments built by members of the Italian family Stradivari, particularly Antonio Stradivari (Latin: Antonius Stradivarius), during the 17th and 18th centuries. They are co ...

family, including the Rutson (1694), Kustendyke (1699), Viotti-ex-bruce (1709), Maurin (1718), and the Habeneck (1734), violas Archinto (1699), cello Marquis de Corberon-ex-Loeb (1726). Other instruments include

Nicolo Amati Nicola Amati, Nicolò Amati or Nicolao Amati (, ; 3 September 1596 – 12 April 1684) was an Italian master luthier from Cremona, Italy. Amati is one of the most well-known luthiers from the Casa Amati (House of Amati). He was the teacher of ...

violin (1662), Girolamo II violin (c.1671) and violin (1719), violin by

Antonio Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular male ...

and

Girolamo Amati Girolamo Amati (1561–1630) was an Italian luthier, active from 1580 to 1630. Biography Born in Cremona, Girolamo was the youngest son of Andrea Amati and brother of Antonio Amati. Girolamo worked, probably from 1575, with his brother, in ...

(1629) and a Hieronymus Amati violin (1719). In 2005 the Academy acquired the famous "Viotti ex-Bruce" violin, made by

in 1709, on behalf of the nation.

Other collections

Other collections include the Foyle Menuhin archive (letters, music, photographs, artworks and more collected by

over his lifetime), Jenny Lind (1820–1887) Collection,

David Munrow David John Munrow (12 August 194215 May 1976) was a British musician and early music historian. Early life and education Munrow was born in Birmingham where both his parents taught at the University of Birmingham. His mother, Hilda Ivy (né ...

(1942–1976) Collection, the

Priaulx Rainier Ivy Priaulx Rainier (3 February 190310 October 1986) was a South African-British composer. Although she lived most of her life in England and died in France, her compositional style was strongly influenced by the African music remembered from he ...

(1903–1986) Collection and The McCann Collection.

References

External links

Royal Academy of Music museum website
{{authority control Royal Academy of Music Music museums in London Museums of the University of London Museums in the City of Westminster Musical instrument museums in England Grade I listed buildings in the City of Westminster