Russell Collection

Raymond Russell Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments

St Cecilia's Hall, where the collection is housed
Established	1968
Location	St Cecilia's Hall, Niddry Street, Edinburgh
Coordinates	55°56′57″N 3°11′11″W / 55.94903°N 3.18649°W / 55.94903; -3.18649
Type	keyboard instrument collection
Collection size	21 instruments

The Russell Collection is a substantial collection of early keyboard instruments assembled by the British harpsichordist and organologist Raymond Russell. It forms part of the Musical Instrument Museums collection of the University of Edinburgh, and is housed in St Cecilia's Hall. Its full name is the Raymond Russell Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments.

Raymond Russell, a British harpsichordist and organologist, bought his first historic keyboard instrument in 1939. Over the next twenty years he assembled a considerable collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century clavichords and harpsichords. His collection included instruments from all the main harpsichord-building areas of Europe: a number of English spinets; early harpsichords and virginals from Italy; Flemish instruments by the Ruckers; a late French instrument by Pascal Taskin; and a clavichord and harpsichord from North Germany, both by Johann Adolph Hass. Russell described many of the instruments in detail in his book The Harpsichord and Clavichord: an Introductory Study, published in 1959.

By 1960 Russell had decided to donate his collection to Edinburgh University, where it was to become the nucleus of a centre for research in keyboard performance practice and organology, but this plan was not completed by the time of his sudden death in Malta in 1964 at the age of forty-one. Later that year, in his memory and in accordance with his wishes, his mother Maud Russell donated almost all of his collection – nineteen instruments – to the university; the donation also included his notes and his collection of documentary photographs. The collection was housed in St Cecilia's Hall in Edinburgh, which opened as a museum in 1968. The opening recital was given by Gustav Leonhardt.