Biblioteka, Muzeum i Archiwum Warszawskiego Towarzystwa Muzycznego

What to expect

120 square metres on the ground floor of a post-war tenement on Zakroczymska street - and inside, an archive holding Chopin autographs and the complete opera manuscripts of Moniuszko. The Library, Museum and Archive of the Warsaw Musical Society (WTM) is one of the most important music collections in Poland, and most Varsovians have never heard of it.

The collection numbers over 47,500 objects: 4,300 music manuscripts, 36,000 printed scores, 4,500 books on music, 185 periodical titles, analogue and digital recordings, photographs, documents and memorabilia. In 1998, the holdings were designated part of the National Library Resource - Poland’s highest level of collection protection.

The crown jewels: Chopin’s autograph of the Mazurka in A-flat major op. 7 no. 4, the manuscript piano reduction of Maciej Kamienski’s “Nedza uszczensliwiona” (1778) - the first Polish opera, and some 700 letters by Stanislaw Moniuszko. The archive also holds manuscripts by Karol Szymanowski (including the Violin Concerto No. 2), correspondence by Brahms, and the estates of Karlowicz, Noskowski and Dobrzynski.

The Warsaw Musical Society was founded in 1871. It financed the Chopin memorial plaque in the Holy Cross Church, the first Chopin monument in Poland (Zelazowa Wola, 1894), and the Moniuszko monument in Warsaw. Its music school became today’s UMFC (Chopin University of Music), and it organised the first three International Chopin Piano Competitions (1927, 1932, 1937).

Around 40% of the manuscripts were destroyed during the war. The surviving materials were transported by the Germans to Adelsdorf in Silesia in December 1944 - Warsaw librarians recovered them in August 1945. The collection has been at Zakroczymska since 1956.

Tips

• By telephone appointment only (22 831 50 11). This is not a museum with open doors - it is a working archive with a reading room.
• Closed in August.
• Materials are available on-site only; no borrowing.
• WTM occasionally organises guided visits for groups and museum lessons for musicology students - worth asking.
• Do not confuse with the WTM headquarters at Morskie Oko 2 (Szuster Palace, Mokotow) - that is where concerts are held. The archive is here, on Zakroczymska.
• Some collections have been digitised at polish.musicsources.pl (in cooperation with NIFC).

Getting there

Bus: Sanguszki stop (lines 180, 503) - 3 minutes walk.

Tram: Plac Krasinskich stop (trams 4, 13, 20, 26) - 5 minutes walk.

Metro: Ratusz Arsenal (M1) - 10 minutes walk through Nowe Miasto.

On foot from the Old Town: 5 minutes from the Barbican, straight along Nowomiejska and then Zakroczymska.

Nearby museums

Marie Curie Museum (16 ul. Freta, 400 m) - the Nobel laureate’s birthplace. Barbican (seasonal, May-September, 5 min walk) - 16th-century fortification overlooking the Vistula.