The Library of the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève serves as the library for the Haute Ecole de musique. All of the HEM’s professors, students and staff are entitled to consult and borrow the books in the library.
The library in Geneva
Located at 35, rue de la Synagogue, and equipped with a reading room, two IT stations and a photocopier, the library of the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève contains more than 120,000 documents. Housed within its walls are scores numbering in the tens of thousands, including both ordinary editions of works for all kinds of instrumental and vocal training - covering every period of the history of music - and major, monumental collections, plus a plethora of method books and all manner of pedagogical works. It also has almost 20,000 books, regarding all areas of research in musicology and pedagogy, along with documents in the form of microforms.
It also gives users access to the primary online search and listening sites, not least via the HES-SO’s digital resources.
The Library is a resource for teaching and research whose reputation extends far beyond our borders, but also a site that houses archives from the musical life of Geneva and Switzerland (composers’ archives, documents of historical interest). Its reserve fund contains precious documents printed in the 16th-20th centuries, plus several hundred handwritten scores, including works by Berlioz, Britten, d’Indy, Honegger, Martinu, Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky. It also houses various special archives, including the Dmitry Markevich Library, dedicated to the cello and its history.
Browse the catalogue online
Reader’s guide
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, from 11am to 1pm and from 2pm to 5pm
The library in Neuchâtel
The library at the Haute école de musique de Genève, Neuchâtel site is an academic library located in a communal space on the second floor of the building, with the libraries of the Conservatoire de musique neuchâtelois and the Haute école de gestion Arc. The scores form the heart of the collections: methods and repertoire for solo instruments, music for chamber orchestras and orchestras, vocal music, and so on. In addition to all this, there are periodicals, reference books and recordings. Part of the national Swisscovery network (with approximately 500 libraries), it also enables users to access the main sites for online research and listening, via the HES-SO’s digital resources and those of the library at the site in Geneva.
The library also provides workstations (some of which are equipped with a PC), an area for perusing the catalogues and a workstation where visitors can listen to the Phonothèque nationale suisse, enabling them to listen to sound files.
Opening hours
Tuesday 9am-12pm
Wednesday 9am-12pm and 2pm-5pm
Thursday 9am-12pm and 2pm-5pm
