Overview
In the Summer of 2005, the Academy completed a project to catalogue three collections of papers held at the Academy's Library: Jenny Lind, Priaulx Rainier and David Munrow.
The project incorporated a public exhibition (September 2005 to February 2006, in the Academy's museum) as well as workshops and other activities that support the Academy's planned outreach programme. Each fully-searchable catalogue appears online as part of the A2A national database of on-line archive catalogues.
Read an article by Chris Becket about the project, kindly reproduced by permission of 'IAML (UK & Irl)', published in Brio vol.43/1 (Spring/Summer 2006), pp34-52 (PDF format).
Search A2A (Access to Archives) catalogue
The Collections
Jenny Lind (1820-1887)
The "Swedish Nightingale". Material gathered by husband Otto Goldschmidt in the preparation of a two-volume biography, by Canon Scott Holland and William Rockstro, published by John Murray in 1891.
View gallery of selected images
David Munrow (1942-1976)
Early woodwind instrumentalist, inspiring early music enthusiast, and founder and director of the Early Music Consort of London. Munrow also taught at the Royal Academy of Music. Passionate about communicating with a wide audience, his natural enthusiasm led to commissioned work in radio, television and the cinema. Between 1971 and 1976, Munrow presented the popular Radio 3 programme Pied Piper, broadcasting four programmes per week. The archive reflects the range of Munrow's career, and includes autograph film scores, radio scripts and many music files prepared for concerts and recordings.
It is regretted that copyright considerations prohibit a gallery of selected images from the collection.
Priaulx Rainier (1903-1986)
South African composer, and former student and Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music (1943-61). Although Rainier's musical scores are now housed at the University of Cape Town, her remaining personal files are housed at the Academy. Her wide circle of friends in the arts, and her broad intellectual interests, are reflected in regular and illuminating correspondence with several major figures of the last century. These included Michael Tippett and Barbara Hepworth, with both of whom she worked closely to develop a St Ives Festival of Arts in the coronation-year of 1953.
What is A2A?
A2A is the acronym for the national initiative Access to Archives. The database is continually growing in size. In September 2006, A2A contained 10 million records relating to 408 repositories. For further information, and a look at catalogues already available, visit the A2A website.
Images on this page (left to right):
- Portrait of Jenny Lind. Engraving by Hermann Sagert after a portrait by Eduard Magnus, dedicated to Sir Arthur Sullivan.
- Portrait of Priaulx Rainier as a young girl. Sepia photograph by Hood's, Cape Town, c.1918. Digital image.