Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5HT

Phone:

020 7873 7443

Website:

www.ram.ac.uk/museum

Opening times:

Monday to Friday 11.30-5.30pm and Saturday 12-4pm, closed Sunday, public holidays and the month of December.

How to get there:

Tube: Baker Street/Regents Park

Entry fee:

Free

Additional information:

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MUSEUM CLOSURE UPDATE - SEE BELOW

The Royal Academy of Music was founded in 1822 at the instigation of the keen amateur composer Lord Burghersh, later Earl of Westmorland, and granted its Royal Charter by George IV in 1830. It was the original venue for the Proms, the ‘Promenade Concerts’ devised by the impresario Robert Newman in 1895 to ‘train the public’ to appreciate classical music. All that survives of the original building, destroyed by bombing, are five carved busts representing Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Haydn and possibly Purcell, now displayed in the basement lobby. The Royal Academy of Music (since 1999 a college of London University) moved here in 1911.

The museum is now housed in York Gate, designed in 1822 by John Nash as a main entrance to his new Regent’s Park. The collections include a number of treasures: a Renaissance-style lute by Venere of Padua, dating from 1584 and still with its original back; a horn used by Alfred Brain, principal horn of 20th Century Fox. ‘The Violin Family’ features selections from a collection of more than 200 stringed instruments, kept in playing order by the resident luthier, whose workshop can also be seen. The collection includes the Archinto violin (1696), the Rutson violin (1694), and the Maurin violin (1718), all by Stradivari, as well as instruments made by the Amati brothers. They form a representative selection of most of the famous names. Violins seem to have originated in eastern Lombardy, in the craftwork traditions of Cremona, native town of Stradivari and the Amati and Guarneri families. A Turkish violin here from 1737 was made by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, who incorporated the Jesus monogram into his label and was popularised by Paganini. The instrument has been played by the great Russian interpreter of Brahms Jaschka Heifitz; Isaac Stern,; and Polish violinist Henryk Szeryng, best known for his recordings of Bach and Mozart. The Savage-Stevens bequest of 1865 includes an important collection of 17th- and 18th-century Italian manuscripts, purchased in 1817. The Goetz Library of full scores was donated in 1902 and the David Munrow collection in 1993. Conductors’ libraries include those of Otto Klemperer, Henry Wood and John Barbirolli. On the second floor, the Piano Collection demonstrates the technical development of the grand piano in the first half of the 19th century and contrasts it with the daintier Viennese style, illustrated by nine examples. The sequence of English square pianos traces half a century of changes responding to composers and players.