The George Crumb Papers span the period 1944 to 2022, with the majority of the materials dating from 1965 to 2013. The collection consists of holograph manuscript scores and sketches, correspondence and business papers, and a series of meticulously assembled scrapbooks chronicling Crumb's distinguished career as a composer.

The Music materials represent Crumb's compositions, beginning with short works he composed during his childhood. There are inked scores with pasteovers for publication, pencil scores and sketches, drafts, annotated photo-reproductions, and several score transparencies. Crumb's final copy scores are inked with extraordinary precision and reflect the influence of his father's skills as a copyist and Ross Lee Finney's pedagogy. Most contain extensive patches of inked-over whiteout and pasted insertions. Notable scores include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Echoes of Time and the River , American Songbook , Ancient Voices of Children , Black Angels , Five Pieces for Piano , A Haunted Landscape , Lux Aeterna , Madrigals , Makrokosmos , Mundis Canis , Star-Child , and Vox Balaenae . Beginning in the 2000s, Crumb began revising some of his earlier works. For these, the collection contains both original and revised versions of the scores. Additionally, the collection includes several sketchbooks with materials to numerous compositions, identified by letter or number.

Business Papers consist chiefly of letters, telegrams, contracts, programs, and other documents from 1956 to 2021. Included is university and publisher correspondence, student inquiries, and letters from various colleagues and friends, such as David Burge. The Scrapbooks comprise fourteen custom bound volumes of clippings, programs, photographs, interviews, posters, and other materials that detail Crumb's musical accomplishments from roughly 1963 to 2021. These were assembled with the same meticulous care as the composer's scores and include hundreds of performance reviews from both American and international newspapers. Clippings, programs, and correspondence intended for scrapbooks that were not completed before Crumb's death in 2022 are also part of this series. The Subject Files primarily consist of personal materials along with writings about Crumb's life and music.