The collection contains materials relating to Spivacke's life and career, including correspondence, student notebooks, speeches, his dissertation, photographs, clippings, programs, manuscript and printed music, artwork, awards and honorary degrees, and business papers. The Correspondence series contains both personal and business correspondence with composers, musicians, musicologists, and librarians, including Richard Angell, Higini Anglès, Leonard Bernstein, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Aaron Copland, Luigi Dallapiccola, Olin Downes, Carl Engel, Alberto Ginastera, Roy Harris, Jascha Heifetz, Otto Kinkeldey, Riccardo Malipiero, Dayton C. Miller, Fritz Oberdörffer, Elie Siegmeister, Isaac Stern, Igor Stravinsky, and Gertrude Clarke Whittall. In addition to his dissertation and student notebooks, the Writings series includes essays, notes for speeches and presentations, writings about Spivacke by others, and a number of articles and essays dealing with music. The Photographs series contains personal and professional photographs of Spivacke and his friends and family, including Gertrude Clarke Whittall, Patrick Saul, Olin Downes, Otto Kinkeldey, Alberto Ginastera, Ira Gershwin, Percy Grainger, the Budapest String Quartet and the London String Quartet. In addition, there are photographs of Albert and Alfred Einstein, Eugen d'Albert, and family portraits of Spivacke with his wife Rose Marie. Items in the Artwork series include small watercolors by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a charcoal portrait of Spivacke from 1929, and a reproduction of a charcoal portrait of Spivacke's first wife, Carolyn Le Fèvre, both by George Beline. The Music series includes holograph scores inscribed to Harold Spivacke and signed by Luigi Dallapiccola and Riccardo Malipiero.