In 2023 the music librarian at the W. H. Bell Music Library, Engela Britz-Glanville, discovered that the library holds a significant collection of concert programmes. After a cursory glance at the collection, Rebekka Sandmeier, Professor of Musicology, thought this collection could form the basis for a research project within the third- and fourth-year Bachelor of Music course “Music in History and Society”.

In the second semester of 2024, students in the course were introduced to the part of the collection consisting of concert programmes of the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra. Having first learned about “archival etiquette” they perused the programmes to develop a research question. These range from questions about the repertoire played, the people playing and listening to the companies placing ads in the programmes. In the following weeks, the students collected data from the programmes as well as background information from secondary sources and brought everything together in a visual presentation. The exhibition of posters in the W. H. Bell Music Library presents their findings.