About The Digital Archives

The New York Philharmonic Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital Archives was launched in February 2011, and currently comprises more than four million pages, including printed programs, marked conducting scores, business documents, and photographs. Growing continually, the scope of the online collection is every document in the New York Philharmonic Archives from 1842 through 1970. This includes correspondence, marked scores and parts, contracts, and minutes from meetings of the Board of Directors — as well as all public documents from 1970 through today (e.g., marketing materials, press releases, and annual reports).

Current material available in the Digital Archives includes:

  • 4,000+ scores marked by Leonard Bernstein, Andre Kostelanetz, and others
  • 36,000+ music parts marked by Philharmonic musicians
  • 14,000+ printed programs
  • 9,000+ business and planning folders
  • 51,000+ photographs and images

All documents and the photographs themselves have been photographed — not scanned — by Ardon Bar Hama and his team using innovative and advanced techniques to achieve the highest quality. The images are managed in a Hadoop-based system configured by a team of developers at Technology Services Group (TSG) in coordination with the Philharmonic's Digital Archives team.

The New York Philharmonic Archives, the oldest and most comprehensive collection of any symphony orchestra, contains approximately six million pages that date back to its founding in 1842, with holdings that include correspondence, business records, orchestral scores and parts, photographs, concert programs, and newspaper clippings, as well as concert and broadcast recordings dating from the 1920s.