About
The Royal Northern College of Music holds one of Britain's more remarkable specialist collections: over three hundred European and non-Western musical instruments, displayed in the college's building on Booth Street West in Manchester and open free to the public during term time. It is a small museum by floor area and an unusually rich one by content, ranging from a fifteenth-century virginal to Japanese drums and a Tibetan trumpet made from a human femur.
The collection came to the college through three principal bequests. Henry Watson, the Manchester musician, organist and collector whose library forms the core of the city's music holdings, gave instruments in 1900 and again in 1910; Josiah Chapman added a further bequest in 1942. These gifts were made to the college's predecessor institutions — the Royal Manchester College of Music and the Northern School of Music, which merged in 1973 to form the RNCM — and they reflect a period when serious private collecting of early instruments was well established in a city with exceptional musical wealth.
The European holdings are strongest in early keyboard instruments, including virginals, spinets, harpsichords and early pianos, together with historic woodwind, brass and stringed instruments illustrating the development of the modern orchestra. Many are of a type that no longer exists in playing use, and the collection is valuable to performers and researchers working on historically informed performance as well as to visitors simply looking at beautiful objects.
The non-Western material — instruments from Asia, Africa and elsewhere — reflects the same collecting era and its interests, and the museum handles this material as evidence of both the instruments' own musical traditions and the collecting practices that brought them to Manchester. The collection sits within the RNCM Library on the ground floor, and opens for an hour before the college's Monday and Thursday lunchtime concerts during term.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Opening is very restricted: Mondays and Thursdays only, 12 noon to 1pm, during term time — this is the single most important thing to plan around.
- Telephone the RNCM Library on 0161 907 5243 before making a special journey, as the college advises.
- Time the visit to stay for the lunchtime concert that follows; the collection opening exists precisely to precede it.
- Admission to the collection is free, though the lunchtime concerts are ticketed separately.
- The collection is on the ground floor to the left of the main entrance, with step-free access throughout.
- The Oxford Road corridor has heavy traffic restrictions — come by train to Oxford Road station or by bus rather than driving.
- Combine the trip with Manchester Museum or the Whitworth, both a short walk away and open far longer hours.
- If you want to study a particular instrument rather than simply view the display, contact the library in advance to arrange access.
Highlights
Early Keyboard Instruments
The collection's greatest strength is its early keyboards, running from a fifteenth-century virginal through spinets, harpsichords and early pianos. These instruments document the long transition from plucked to struck string action that culminated in the modern piano, and they matter to performers as well as to historians: the sound, touch and dynamic range of a harpsichord or an early fortepiano are so different from a modern instrument that music written for them is substantially misrepresented when played on anything else.
Several are of types that survive in very small numbers anywhere.
The Tibetan Bone Trumpet
Among the collection's most striking objects is a Tibetan trumpet — a kangling — made from a human femur. Instruments of this kind belong to Tibetan Buddhist ritual practice, where the use of human bone carries specific meaning about impermanence and the transcendence of ordinary revulsion, and they are not curiosities in their own tradition.
The RNCM displays it as part of the non-Western holdings, and it prompts, more sharply than most objects here, the question of how instruments made for particular ritual contexts should be understood and displayed in a Western conservatoire.
The Henry Watson Bequests
Henry Watson was a Manchester musician, organist and collector whose extraordinary music library became the foundation of the city's public music collections, and whose instrument gifts of 1900 and 1910 form the core of the RNCM holdings. His collecting belongs to a period when Manchester's commercial wealth supported serious private scholarship and acquisition on a scale that few provincial cities could match.
The instruments he gave, together with Josiah Chapman's 1942 bequest, explain why a conservatoire founded for teaching performance holds a historic collection of this quality at all.
Historic Woodwind
The woodwind holdings illustrate the development of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and their predecessors across several centuries, covering the shift from simple-system instruments with few keys to the complex mechanised instruments of the nineteenth century. Recorders, flageolets, chalumeaux and other types that fell out of orchestral use are represented alongside the ancestors of modern instruments.
For students at the college the material is directly relevant to historically informed performance; for other visitors it is a legible account of how instrument makers solved acoustic and ergonomic problems by increments.
Collections
The RNCM Collection of Historic Musical Instruments comprises over three hundred European and non-Western instruments held by the Royal Northern College of Music and displayed within the college library on Booth Street West, Manchester. The European holdings are strongest in early keyboard instruments, from a fifteenth-century virginal through spinets, harpsichords and early pianos, and include historic woodwind, brass and stringed instruments documenting the development of the modern orchestra — among them obsolete types such as serpents, ophicleides and viols.
Non-Western holdings include instruments from Asia and Africa, among them Japanese drums and a Tibetan kangling trumpet made from a human femur.
The collection derives principally from three bequests: two by the Manchester collector Henry Watson in 1900 and 1910, and one by Josiah Chapman in 1942.
Historic Keyboards
Virginals, spinets, harpsichords and early pianos tracing the development of keyboard instruments.
The Orchestral Instruments
Historic woodwind, brass and strings, including obsolete types displaced by nineteenth-century developments.
Instruments Beyond Europe
Asian and African instruments collected in the same period as the European holdings.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.