10 Years of the RSNO Centre: Richard Payne, the RSNO’s Librarian Posted Thu 31 July 2025
As we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the RSNO Centre in Glasgow, we are highlighting the many aspects of the Orchestra’s activity that have been made possible because of the brilliant space we work in.
Richard Payne has been the RSNO’s Librarian and Head of Library Services for the past 16 years. At the core of all the Orchestra’s activity, Richard, along with Library Assistant Megan Bousfield, acquires and prepares performance materials for the Orchestra’s activity during a typical week of rehearsals, concerts and recording sessions. In addition to orchestra repertoire, the library delivers support for auditions, chamber music, and community engagements with smaller ensembles which all require help with acquiring and preparing parts for their performances.
‘In a nutshell,’ Richard explains, ‘The library is there to manage the Orchestra’s music collections, ensuring that the musicians are supplied with the right music for our projects and performances. Each day is a little different, based around what orchestra activity is taking place.’
‘The key is preparation,’ Richard says, ‘it takes a long time to research and make decisions about editions, discuss them with artists as necessary and prepare them accordingly. The goal is to get the parts into a condition so that no time is wasted in rehearsal.’
The RSNO has around 2,100 performance sets of music in its collection, dating back to the mid-19th century through to the present day and beyond. Orchestral sets are stored in bespoke steel rolling shelving constructed to fit the available space in the RSNO Centre.
‘The music we play from is a living entity; it changes every time it’s used. Just because a work is in our collection it doesn’t mean it simply moves from shelf to stand; we may not have played the piece for decades and what worked in the 1990s may not work well now, so we must check if the material fits with how the Orchestra operates today.
The Orchestra still plays from sets that can be described as archival. ‘The material for Debussy’s Gigues, for example, bears the indentations on the paper from the printing plates. There’s a sharpness which you only get from the first impression; the orchestral material was published in 1910. There are also several sets of Richard Strauss works which we likely bought for and used on his visits to the Orchestra in the early 1900s. They’re still in use today, which is quite cool!’
Using material that’s over 100 years old comes with risks, but it creates a bond between our current players and their predecessors. Our material of Ein Heldenleben is a good example of this. Some of the parts have been quite badly defaced as they have been marked in ink (which would never happen now), either to cover an instrument not deemed necessary at the time or to write in a difficult transposition.
A lot of the music in the RSNO’s collection is rich in history, not just relating to composers and players, but also the broader industry. Richard explains that many of the older works bear not only the stamps of the Glasgow Choral and Orchestral Union, so can be confidently dated to that period in the Orchestra’s history, but also the dealer stamps, from both home and abroad, of companies that are no longer trading. Breitkopf & Härtel was the dealer who represented most of the continental publishers, and as a German company, had to transfer its business in 1914. Due to rising production costs and the need to protect composers’ royalties, especially as mechanical sound reproduction takes a hold from the 1920s onwards, there’s a move towards publishers making works only available on rental. That continues to be the case: most copyright music is only available on rental from the publishers or their agents.
Richard and Megan also play an essential role in the RSNO’s work recording for film, television and video game soundtracks in Scotland’s Studio.
‘This is a completely different process from preparing for concert projects. For a film session you may receive files for printing as little as 48 hours in advance; sometimes they even trickle in during the sessions themselves. We’re up against the clock: it can be frantic! Not only do all the individual pages need to be printed but they must be taped together in the traditional style for this type of work and then collated for the individual stands.’
‘Recently, for six hours of session-time, we spent around 60 hours preparing the music. Preparing scores and parts for commercial sessions requires a different discipline from preparing for concert work. For example, the conductor’s score is printed single-sided on heavy paper with the individual sheets taped together to make as little noise as possible when being turned: the microphones are so sensitive that any minor noise is easily picked up.’
Looking ahead to next Season, Richard shares what he is most looking forward to hearing. ‘Probably the Mahler Seventh, possibly my favourite Mahler Symphony. Certainly the Cinderella of the cycle – it’s a gargantuan thing. Our last experience of it was a chamber version filmed for the Edinburgh International Festival. It was the first project for the Orchestra coming out of lockdown in 2020 which is engrained in my memory.’
And for those who want some insider knowledge…Richard recommends a 0.9mm 2B-lead pencil for marking scores and parts. ‘I do have an absurd attachment to various brands of pencil: the Pacific Music Papers Music Writer and the Blackwing 602s are among my favourites. The latter is the pencil that Hemingway and other writers traditionally used and gives a good strong image on the page. Although modern technology surrounds us with PDFs, image-editing and notation software at hand, librarians still work principally with paper, pen and pencil.’
