Concerts Each year, a variety of regular student concerts and performances is organised by the Conservatory, boasting over hundred events and enhanced by two festivals. The right wing of the Conservatory contains a 600-seat ornate concert hall in
Napoleon III style with exceptional acoustic qualities, equipped with a
Cavaillé-Coll organ.
Musical Instruments Museum (MIM) Founded in 1877 to provide students with a practical education about ancien instruments, the Conservatory museum, currently referred to as the
Musical Instruments Museum (MIM) of Brussels displays over 8,000 ancient instruments acquired by the musicologist
François-Joseph Fétis, rare pieces from the initial collection, from the various funds or from new acquisitions. Since 2000, the museum, one of the most important ones of its kind, is located in the prestigious
Art Nouveau building conceived in 1899 by the architect
Paul Saintenoy for the former
Old England department store.
Library Initially created with a pedagogic aim, the Conservatory library hosts about 250,000 references, representing a scientific instrument of international resonance. It primarily consists of works about music (including more than 1,200 musical or musicological periodicals), as well as of autograph, printed or digitised (scanned) scores. There is also an important collection of more than 8,000
libretti of Italian, French or German operas from the 17th and 18th centuries,
lute and guitar
tablatures, several thousands of handwritten letters of musicians,
iconographic documents (over 9,000 pieces), concert programmes and various types of recordings (
magnetic tapes, video, 78 and 33 rpm
vinyl, CD, etc.). Next to the core collections, the library possesses several subcollections of historical importance, together forming an extensive patrimony: • the Johann J.H. Westphal collection bought by
Fétis (manuscripts of C.P.E. Bach and G.P. Telemann), • the Guido Richard Wagener collection acquired by the librarian Alfred Wotquenne (German music from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, including 40 autograph manuscripts from three sons of J.-S. Bach), • the
Jean-Lucien Hollenfeltz collection (documents of Constance Mozart and her youngest son Franz Xaver Amadeus Mozart), • the
Maria Malibran collection (documents and objects from the cantatrice and her close family), • the
Edmond Michotte collection (pieces from Rossini's private library), • the
Józef Wieniawski collection (autograph scores from the pianist), • the
Laurent Halleux collection, • the Joseph Jongen collection. The library is open to the general public. In 2015, the library acquired the score collection of CeBeDeM (Belgian Centre for Music Documentation). In doing so, it also took over the latter's objectives in promoting Belgian contemporary music worldwide. ==Personalities linked to the Royal Conservatory of Brussels==