The Concert Programmes Project Online Database (Phase 1) has been launched at the culmination of a three-year project to document the programme holdings of major libraries, archives and museums in selected regional centres throughout the UK and Ireland. The database currently offers descriptions of some 5,500 collections of music-related performance ephemera held by 53 institutions, including the British Library, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, the national libraries of Scotland and Ireland, the Bodleian Library and Trinity College, Dublin.
The project has unearthed programme material dating from 1690 to the present day, with the majority of records inevitably relating to material from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Many collections have been arranged, catalogued and made available to the public for the first time during the course of the project. In terms of geographical coverage, the database covers material from venues in some 80 countries worldwide, revealing the full diversity of institutional holdings and making this a truly international resource.
CPP descriptions outline the significance and content of each collection, with details of the physical arrangement, content date range, performers and venues. Users may search the dataset free-text or browse by time period, venue, name (of performers, concert series, ensembles, and collectors), subject, or holding institution. We thereby hope to facilitate improved access to an important category of research material that has previously been inadequately served by library and archive catalogues.
These largely hidden – and therefore significantly underused – documents will be of enormous interest to performers, musicologists, local, economic, social, cultural and theatre historians, and to librarians. Phase 1 of the project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and jointly hosted by Cardiff University and the Royal College of Music. The database is available free of charge at www.concertprogrammes.org.uk.
Any comments or feedback about the site would be very welcome: please email CPP .
Rupert Ridgewell
