The music is playing: The Department of Music is Austria’s biggest music archives and a modern academic research library in one. Music manuscripts, music prints, librettos of operas and vocal works, musicological literature, sound recordings, and bequests of important Austrian composers are conserved here and made available for use.

The approximately 51,000 music manuscripts, among them originals of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Anton Bruckner, form the historically most outstanding holdings. Large-format choral texts document the liturgical practice of the late medieval period. Many scribe manuscripts, especially material of the Viennese Court Music Choir and historical theatre and ecclesiastical archives, offer source material on the history of music. On top of that, in the Department of Music bequests of Austrian composers and interpreters are conserved and made available.

The entire history of music, in particular the history of music in Austria, is represented by 130,000 music prints. Among those the most significant is the collection of Anthony van Hoboken, which is one of the world’s best collections, having about 8,000 original and early prints.

Source material on musical theatre in the past and the present, above all on baroque opera, is offered by the libretto collection of about 8,000 items. Beside that there are available about 70,000 volumes of secondary literature on musicology. Finally, with approximately 4,000 records and CD’s and about 4,000 tape recordings, the Department of Music documents the history of Austrian music in audio form.