The Library

The Library is part of the Discoteca di Stato network – Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori ed Audiovisivi, and contributes to the SBN National Library Service catalogue through the SBNweb application developed by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism, and managed by the ICCU, the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue. Beyond the opening hours given in the Library’s register entry (Monday / Wednesday / Friday, 10am–1pm), books, audio and audiovisual material are available to all interested scholars as follows: by appointment, by email or telephonefor external users; without time limits, and as needed, for AIMART students and teachers. The library closes on the same days and for the same periods as lessons, as set out in the academic calendar. Also available to all readers is thereading room with open shelving, together with a computer for consultation and a colour photocopier for copy requests. The Library holds a standing subscription to the specialist music magazine Suonare news.

The Library, listed in the register of Italian Libraries under ISIL code IT-RM2042, can be consulted at the link below:

The name Aimart evokes the love of art: a place for those who cherish the most intimate, uncorrupted meaning of that word.

Art is a word easily abused, made a synonym for the approximate and the mediocre; imprisoned in the human, all-too-human sense of things, in a frustrating cage from which every true artist longs to escape towards an ideal world. Aimart is that world, that very place. With unassailable honesty it reaches beyond the boundaries of the word “art” itself and finds within it what an artist has always sought: the expression of inspiration, of that vital energy pulsing through one’s sensibility, which demands to tell the mystery locked in the soul through music, theatre, dance and cinema.

Book and Art Collection

The Library, currently being inventoried and catalogued, consists almost entirely of a collection in excellent condition that came from a donation from the family of the musician Helmut Reichel, a Swiss conductor of the twentieth century who lived in Zurich, where he worked for many years with distinction as an organist, piano teacher, and founder and director of the choirZürcher Bachkantorei, noted for performances with varied forces whose artistic standard is attested by recordings of sacred music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Anton Bruckner. Given its provenance, the collection comprises over a thousand scores and sheet music items, complete with their parts: masses, symphonies, concertos and quartets by the leading composers of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries — Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Dvořák, to name only a few — alongside a substantial number of scores for solo instrument(in particular for piano, violin, cello and organ) and of chamber music with and without piano (duos, trios, quartets). The music section is completed by Italian musical encyclopaedias and dictionaries (the Dizionario Enciclopedico Universale della Musica e dei Musicisti, the Enciclopedia Storica edited by L. Gatti and the Storia dell’opera edited by G. Barblan and A. Basso), as wellmonographs of musicological interest, such as the Storia della Musica edited by F. Abbiati and Zanetti. Beyond the Reichel collection, another substantial section comprises CDs — over 500 of musical interest ranging across genres from the Baroque to the present day. Smaller in number is the section of opera DVDs, to which are added further DVDs of cinematic interest. Completing the recorded-material section is a collection of vinyl records, around 100 across various genres. Notable for its breadth is the section devoted to art monographs: about 500 volumes, including some fine volumes on major figures of contemporary art.