Schools designed for special instruction in music, often also in one or more of the other arts. The term originated in Italy as conservatorio; it was adopted by the French as conservatoire and by some German cities as Konservatorium. ‘Conservatory’, commonly used in the USA, has prevailed since the mid-20th century.
I. The role of the conservatory
WILLIAM WEBER (I; III, 1, 5), DENIS ARNOLD (II), CYNTHIA M. GESSELE (III, 2), PETER CAHN (III, 3), ROBERT W. OLDANI (III, 4), JANET RITTERMAN (IV)
The idea of a school where music is one of the principal if not the only subject of study dates back to medieval church choir schools. By 1600 these schools usually taught reading and writing, and sometimes rhetoric and literature as well. The concept of the conservatory, however, differs from this model in several respects. First, although in some early conservatories students were expected to take part in church ceremonial, that was never their sole occupation. Secondly, conservatories trained them for the music profession in general, rather than simply for church music. Thirdly, conservatories have usually been answerable to lay people, whether in the narrow sense of having lay governors or more broadly by being partly controlled by state or municipal authorities.
Before the advent of conservatories, musicians were educated by family members and through apprenticeships or guilds, as well as in church schools. A large percentage of musicians were trained by their parents and were bound to provide for their maintenance in old age unless given legal ‘emancipation’ from such support. Apprenticeship – for which contracts were written right up to the first decades of the 20th century – began as early as the age of eight, whether or not the child was being tutored by a parent. Lasting anywhere from three to 12 years, this agreement between the teacher and the child’s family involved either payment during that period or a percentage of the apprentice’s income in his early career. The teacher served as mentor, indeed as an agent for the young musician. Similar practices occurred for girls and young women, though contractual apprenticeship was less common than with males.
The establishment of opera companies in courts and cities in the 17th century, and the burgeoning of public concerts in the 18th century, increased the demand for musicians beyond what family training and apprenticeship could meet. The early Italian conservatories were orphanages from which opera companies could draw promising singers. For families of limited resources, training a young man as a castrato was often a good financial strategy. These schools produced the host of musicians who spread all over Europe and made Italian opera the dominant idiom internationally. Another impetus towards the founding of conservatories was the rise of new ideas about how musicians should best be trained. Competition among musical centres stimulated leaders in the musical community to build schools to improve musicianship in their regions. Conservatories also served as a source of musicians for performances in homes and private salons, a growing area of musical activity.
The widespread closing of monasteries and church music schools beginning in the late 1700s gave rise to a golden age of conservatory founding. As sacred and secular institutions diverged, the state and private patrons and societies took over many of the church’s functions in musical education. In Paris, London, Leipzig and other cities musicians were trained to take part in the musical life of bourgeois society. Yet religious music retained a place in the conservatory curriculum, and the movement for church music reform gave fresh impetus to the creation of specialist schools for church musicians.
Conservatories responded to the growing professionalisation of musical life during the later part of the 19th century by drawing a sharper distinction between the training of professional and amateur musicians. Increasingly their resources were directed towards meeting the demand for highly skilled orchestral musicians, instrumental soloists and opera singers. Yet there was also a need for teachers to serve the expanding middle class, especially in piano and voice training. Many conservatories made special provisions for teaching ‘dilettantes’ or maintained preparatory divisions alongside their central course of study.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, conservatories arose and developed in the context of general educational reforms that resulted in an increasingly diverse student body, the elimination or reduction of fees and greatly expanded curricular offerings. The large number of women who studied in early conservatories – usually as many as men, if not more – reflected the expansion of formal education generally. While the great majority of teachers were men, a few women achieved prominence, such as Clara Schumann in Frankfurt and the violinist Nobu Koda in the Tokyo Conservatory at its start in the 1880s. Both staff and student bodies became steadily more international in their make-up, especially after World War II.
The notion of conservatories as ‘conservators’ of national or regional styles of performance and composition has gradually been eroded in the face of the internationalization of musical life and the trend towards standardization of musical pedagogy. If the 18th century may be said to have been dominated by the Italian conservatory and the 19th century by the French and German models, the 20th century was characterized by a more eclectic approach. This reflects the spread of the conservatory movement to Russia and eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, the USA, Britain’s overseas dominions, Latin America and Asia. This article focusses on the central lines of that development; the histories of individual conservatories are covered in greater detail in the respective city and country articles.
The origins of conservatories must be sought in communal rather than purely ecclesiastical institutions, and the most probable source of the concept lies in the humanist view of music’s social and educational role, which affected the curricula of schools and other institutions from the late 15th century. This view, following Plato, insists that music should be taught alongside the other subjects of the Trivium and Quadrivium and was expressed by the humanist Alberti (1404–72): ‘if I had children of my own, I would have them learn not only languages and history but singing and instrumental music, together with a full course of geography and mathematics’. It should be noted that music is here considered as a practical rather than a purely theoretical study; in Protestant grammar schools, this became formalized when the timetable advocated by Melanchthon in 1528 included an hour each day devoted to music, a practice widely followed north of the Alps. In Roman Catholic schools it was not so rigidly prescribed, but nevertheless music was often included in the curriculum.
Music became the predominant activity in certain charitable organizations in Venice and Naples during the late 16th century and the first half of the 17th. These were orphanages charged with looking after indigent children, and in their earliest years they had no specific educational role. The Venetian institutions dating from the 14th century were originally hospitals, founded to succour the sick and helpless; they were endowed by private individuals, with funds administered by trustees. In Naples such institutions were founded by confraternities whose role was in one case to ‘bury the dead’ and ‘distribute alms’ and in another to look after ‘abandoned male children’. By about 1600 their teaching functions were firmly established, and schoolteachers were employed on a permanent basis. These usually included a musician who taught singing and provided music in the institution’s chapel. In the earliest years of the 17th century these musicians were of no great distinction, but in the 1630s members of the cappella of S Marco were in charge of music at some of the Venetian hospitals, and in Naples several competent composers were given similar offices.
It was the Neapolitan conservatories that first discovered that music could be a profitable activity. In Germany the music teachers and their charges had augmented their stipends by singing at weddings and similar functions, and also by giving street entertainments. The pupils at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo in about 1600 were similarly encouraged ‘to search for alms for their own upkeep and to go out [into Naples] singing litanies and laudi spirituali’. Later they had more formal engagements at official city celebrations, were also hired by various churches on festival days and in 1680 took part in over 100 recorded ‘concerti’ and processions. In Venice this was less common, but during this same period the governors of the Ospedale della Pietà noticed that the quality of the music attracted a greater public to its chapel on saints’ days, and that collections on the occasion and later donations and bequests grew accordingly. This was especially true during Lent: music at churches was reduced in scale, thus allowing the conservatories to take the opportunity of giving oratorios and other elaborate musical performances. By 1700 guidebooks to Venice were virtually advertising the days when such music was to be heard in the conservatories’ chapels, increasing the audience still further. In response to this financial incentive, the conservatories in both Naples and Venice appointed specialist teachers. The Neapolitan Conservatorio di S Onofrio had a violin teacher as well as a maestro di cappella in the mid-17th century, while the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo had teachers of strings (magister lyrae) and brass (magister buccinae) as well as two general musicians as early as 1633. In 1675 the same establishment hired a castrato, beginning a tradition of employing and teaching eunuchs, some of whom were of great distinction. Such developments took place somewhat later in Venice, Vivaldi, who was appointed about 1704, being the first violin teacher of note.
In spite of the financial advantages brought about by these means, the charities found considerable difficulty in meeting their needs, especially since they still had general responsibilities as infirmaries and orphanages. Against their original purpose, they therefore began admitting convittori or fee-paying pupils. The Neapolitan Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto charged for both tuition and board as early as 1667 and had to raise its limit of 100 pupils to meet the demand. Since these pupils eventually became members of the choir or orchestra, thus earning money for the conservatory, they sometimes petitioned for and obtained reductions in their fees. There is some evidence that in times when admission as an orphan was difficult, poor children were entered as fee payers in the hope that they would almost immediately obtain this remission. Nonetheless, there remained two distinct classes, especially in the 18th century when the fame of the conservatories inspired foreign nobility to send their promising young musicians. To cope with the teaching demands, the conservatories organized themselves more formally. The maestro di cappella was appointed for his fame as a composer and administrator rather than as a teacher, although he may have taught theoretical subjects. He was supported by a nucleus of staff, including teachers of strings, wind, brass and singing, some of these also distinguished men. They taught the most advanced pupils, members of the choir or orchestra, who in turn taught the more junior ones, for which they gained various privileges.
During the first half of the 18th century the Venetian and Neapolitan conservatories had an enormous influence throughout Europe. The maestri included Gasparini, Galuppi, Porpora, Locatelli, Bernasconi, Donatoni and Leo who often travelled abroad to produce operas. Many of the famous opera singers were taught in the conservatories, the castratos coming mainly from Naples; such women as Faustina Bordoni were taught in Venice, where the Pietà, as one of the few girls’ schools, was especially well known for its singers. In Venice it was common for an orchestra to be formed from the 80 best pupils of the four conservatories to perform on state visits by foreign princes; this again added to the chances of gaining foreign pupils. Thus the domination of Italian musicians in Europe was to a large degree due to their efficiency.
The decline of the conservatories came in the later 18th century. In Naples it was due to mismanagement and even fraud by financial officials, to student unrest resulting from the opposition between fee pupils and orphans and to lack of royal support. In Venice the decreasing prosperity in the final years of the republic was the principal cause. Burney’s report on the conditions at the conservatories in 1770 reveals an unhappy state of affairs: substantial overcrowding, pupils all practising in the same room at S Maria di Loreto and sometimes indifferent musical performances in Venice. Even so, Cimarosa, Zingarelli and Sacchini were among their composers, while some of the best church musicians in Venice taught at the Pietà and the Incurabili.
In Germany a private singing academy had been founded in Leipzig in 1771, and in England two proposals to set up a music school had been mooted, one by John Potter (1762), the other by Burney after his return from Italy (1774). In his Sketch of a Plan for a Public Music School, Burney postulated a foundation based on the Foundling Hospital (the English equivalent of the ospedali) in the Italian manner, with two classes, one for girls ‘chiefly in Singing’ and the other for boys ‘who have talents for Composition and for performing on different instruments’. The basic course was to last seven years, the pupils to leave not later than 21 years of age. Funds were to be raised by letting out the boys ‘singly or in Bands, for Musical Performance in Churches, for Oratorios, and Public and Private Concerts; as well as to attend Persons of Rank into the Country, at a settled and stated price’. This was clearly based on the Neapolitan model, and the teaching was to be organized similarly, with two maestri and four assistants, and with a preference for native rather than foreign talent. Nothing came of this scheme immediately, and several others followed it before England achieved its first conservatory.
In France the Roman Catholic Church was the main institution of musical education before the political and social upheaval of 1789. About 500 maîtrises, choir schools associated with leading cathedrals and religious colleges, were estimated to have existed before the Revolution. The weaknesses of the maîtrises were numerous: their intake was limited to male students and the educational programme varied widely in content and quality, centring on the performance of plainchant, although it occasionally included rudimentary counterpoint lessons and instruction on instruments used in religious services, such as the serpent, bassoon, cello and organ.
The demand for well-trained opera singers of both sexes was an important impetus for the reconsideration of institutionalized musical education in France in the years before the Revolution. The Ecole Royale de Musique et de Déclamation, directed by Gossec, was established in 1784 by royal decree. It had a faculty of 16 professors, but the enrolment never increased beyond 30 students, who were thus virtually private pupils. The school was not greatly successful and was attacked for extravagance and general incompetence, but it does represent the first attempt to found a national academy supported entirely from public funds.
3. Germany and central Europe.
5. English-speaking countries.
Conservatories, §III: 1790–1945
The founding of conservatories between 1793 and 1850 grew out of the shift of political and cultural authority from church and monarchy to the state and private associations. Not only did funds decline for church music schools, but the growth of cities and the rise of parliamentary government brought about new kinds of leadership that reshaped musical life profoundly. The Paris Conservatoire quickly emerged as the model for such institutions, owing to the central role it achieved in opera and instrumental music and its unusually strong government funding. Other conservatories were established and maintained chiefly by private means, both aristocratic and bourgeois; extensive state support was not common until the 20th century. As few schools offered a large number of scholarships, their students included many who did not intend to pursue professional careers in music. Indeed, during this period the term ‘conservatory’ usually meant a music school for amateurs and future professionals alike, and as such it reflected the dramatic expansion of the musical world generally. Students were often enrolled in their early teens; the Paris Conservatoire admitted them from the age of eight.
Throughout the 19th century formal and informal musical training existed side by side. Pupils often studied privately with teachers outside their conservatories or took only part of the curriculum offered by a school. Some conservatories did little more than match teachers with students, and it was not uncommon for young musicians – singers in particular – to achieve prominence with little formal training of any kind. Most leading soloists did not have extensive education until conservatories received significant state funding and were able to admit many students free of charge. Only after 1945 did it become virtually essential for professional musicians to obtain a formal musical education.
Likewise, the assumption that central conservatories train the highest-level singers and instrumentalists has come about only since the middle decades of the 20th century. The Paris Conservatoire was the main exception to this rule, since from the early 1800s on it educated most of the best orchestral players in the city. A refocussing of conservatories towards the training of high-level musicians began in the late 19th century in such cities as Leipzig, Cologne, Moscow and St Petersburg and became firmly established after World War II with the proliferation of state-funded educational programmes at all levels. Training in the early and mid-teens shifted to special schools and informal teaching, transforming conservatories into strictly tertiary-level institutions. In the process universities came to play increasingly important roles in musical education. The establishment of music schools within universities was part of a wider trend towards upgrading the status and quality of professional musical training (see Universities, §III, 4).
Conservatories differed greatly in the relative emphasis they placed on instrumental, vocal and keyboard music. The Paris Conservatoire was at first concerned chiefly with instrumental music but by the 1830s became focussed on opera. The conservatory founded in Vienna by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde aimed above all to train singers for performances of oratorios, while the Prague Conservatory emphasized the training of orchestral players. Most 19th-century conservatories provided tuition in harmony, counterpoint, sight-reading and ear-training, but until the end of the century little in composition and almost none in the history of music. Some institutions, mainly in Germany and the USA, also created positions for the teaching of music theory. Concerts presented by conservatories became central to musical life in Paris, London, Brussels and numerous other cities.
The piano moved to the centre of the conservatory curriculum during the second half of the 19th century, even as the range of instruments taught expanded to keep pace with the development of the modern symphony orchestra. The rise of the solo recital as a new type of concert, most commonly for piano, paralleled the growing prominence of conservatories and renowned teachers such as Anton Rubinstein in St Petersburg, Liszt in Geneva and Weimar and Clara Schumann in Frankfurt. The movement towards a ‘piano in every home’ within the middle classes led some conservatories to devote themselves chiefly to training piano teachers and amateurs. British conservatories placed particular emphasis on the testing and licensing of teachers; in Germany and France the development of uniform methods of pedagogy was a major concern.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries reformers called for improving the quality of teaching at conservatories. Some schools responded by focussing their efforts on producing outstanding soloists and orchestral and chamber musicians, others by cultivating higher standards of overall musicianship. Composition became a central part of the curriculum, and most conservatories chose their directors from among the leading composers of the time. Curricula became at once more varied and specialized to meet the demands of the marketplace; new programmes were established in such disciplines as contemporary music, chamber music, early music, music therapy and musical technology. New schools with innovative goals rivalled traditional institutions: in London the Royal College of Music competed with the Royal Academy of Music, and in Paris the Schola Cantorum challenged the Conservatoire. Conservatories designed to serve the needs of specialist constituencies, such as organists and students of early music, broadened the range of opportunities available to young musicians.
Conservatories, §III: 1790–1945
With the Napoleonic invasion of Italy in 1796, political conditions changed so radically that most Italian conservatories closed, and although some were reopened a few years later, none regained its former stability or fame. The closing of religious houses disrupted charitable foundations still further and helped to force a reorganization of music schools. In Paris the Ecole Royale de Musique et de Déclamation was reorganized as a more general music school concentrating on singing and theatrical performances. In 1792 Bernard Sarrette, a captain in the National Guard, founded the Ecole de Musique de la Garde Nationale to supply wind players for the grandiose revolutionary fêtes – rituals designed for the mass education of the populace – and other civic ceremonies, as well as for the expanding armies of the republic. In 1793 it was renamed the Institut National de Chant et Déclamation.
As criticism of the aims, methods and administration of the two schools heightened, their programmes were re-examined, and on 3 August 1795 the Conservatoire National supérieur de Musique et de danse was established as a result of deliberations at the Convention Nationale. The new school, which was to be free to all qualified students, can be seen as a product of the general educational reforms initiated during the revolutionary period. The Paris Conservatoire was to be a practical training school, much like the recently established Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, an intellectual centre for the education of all French citizens, akin to the new Institut des Sciences et des Arts, and an institution that ‘conserved’ the music of the French nation, in the manner of the Biliothèque Nationale. Provision was made for training instrumentalists and singers, for offering courses in theory, composition and music history and for creating a repository of instruments, scores and music books. The Conservatoire was the first truly modern institution of its kind, organized on a national basis, free from charitable aims and with an entirely secular, indeed anticlerical, background. As such it soon emerged as the model for all subsequent conservatories in the West.
Among the Conservatoire’s innovations was the creation and dissemination of uniform methods of pedagogy (first mandated in 1796). Both curriculum and examinations were prescribed in some detail. Students were admitted between the ages of eight and 13; they were chosen on a geographical basis, six from each département, with equal numbers of boys and girls. They were to progress through three basic stages, each examined by inspectors, with intermediate examinations carried out by professors twice a year to test progress within each stage. The first of these stages was devoted principally to solfège, the second broadening out into various branches of singing and the playing of instruments, the third demanding theoretical knowledge, history of music and accompaniment of singers, as well as skill as performers, with suggestions of both a principal and a secondary study. The timetable was constructed to ensure regular lessons on a ten-day basis, and pupils had to practise at fixed hours. Method and harmony texts were circulated by the Conservatoire’s own publishing house, which existed until 1826, and later by private firms.
The Paris Conservatoire was part of an ambitious scheme of the revolutionary authorities to install music schools of various sizes throughout France and, subsequently, the conquered states of Europe. Many plans were submitted for extending the Conservatoire’s reach beyond the capital, but not until 1826 did existing schools in Lille and Toulouse become officially connected to the Conservatoire as succursales. Leading conservatories on the Paris model were established in Brussels (1813) and Liège (1826). The former grew out of a state-sponsored school of vocal training headed by Jean-Baptiste Roucourt, whose goal was to send promising students to the Paris Conservatoire. Under the directorship of Fétis (1833–71), the Brussels Conservatoire Royal de Musique became central to the musical life of Belgium. As the century progressed the Parisian model was adopted throughout Europe, particularly in Italy and the German-speaking lands, as well as in Russia, England and the USA.
The expansion of the Conservatoire’s sphere of influence was accompanied by a broadening of its curriculum and improvement of its facilities. By 1811 a new building was erected with a concert hall. Under Cherubini’s directorship (1822–42), the piano came to hold a privileged place both as a performance medium and as a pedagogical tool in singing and harmony classes. As orchestral instruments changed and orchestras increased in size, new disciplines were added, such as harp, double bass, trumpet, valve horn and trombone. The Société des Concerts, founded in 1828, became one of the leading performing ensembles in Paris and was the basis for the Orchestre de Paris. In 1864 an independent museum of musical instruments was opened.
Although the Conservatoire dominated musical life in France until the end of the 19th century, its position was challenged by a succession of smaller, mainly anti-establishment conservatories. The school founded by Choron in 1817 focussed on the study and performance of early vocal music; it closed soon after government funding was withdrawn in 1830 and was resuscitated by Niedermeyer, who shared Choron’s concern for religious music and the decline of the maîtrises. The Ecole Niedermeyer became a general music academy in 1895. A year earlier d’Indy, Bordes and Guilmant had founded the Schola Cantorum with a curriculum similarly orientated towards early sacred music. The Schola was recognized as an Ecole Supérieure de Musique and became a serious rival to the Conservatoire until after d’Indy’s death in 1931. Other prominent Paris conservatories were the Ecole Normale de Musique, started in 1919 under the direction of Cortot, and the Conservatoire Américain, where Nadia Boulanger taught a generation of English and American composers. However, the high degree of centralization in French musical life ensured that the Conservatoire was never eclipsed: by 1930 it was the centre of a national system of music schools that included 23 succursales, 21 ‘national’ schools and 20 municipal schools.
Conservatories, §III: 1790–1945
In the latter part of the 18th century rationalism and the Enlightenment led to the decline of church music and of the study of music in the Lateinschulen (Latin grammar schools). In many areas the provision of civic financial support for sacred music soon ceased entirely. This, together with the closure of many monasteries and above all the abolition of ecclesiastical principalities and many secular territories in the wake of secularization and mediatization in 1803 and 1806, had far-reaching consequences for musical education. In many cases the chapels of the princely courts and noble houses had trained their own musicians, and once they were dissolved yet another basis for professional education was lost. Finally, while the old practice of training musicians in guilds or Stadtpfeifereien had not entirely died out, it had outlived its usefulness in the face of the demands made by the music of the Viennese Classicists. The shortage of qualified young singers and orchestral musicians was increasingly obvious. H.C. Koch, in his Musikalisches Lexikon (1802), described the objective of the Paris Conservatoire and emphatically endorsed the French state commitment to musical education. In 1808 a group of Bohemian counts called for the founding of ‘a society to promote the art of music in Bohemia’. The society was set up in Prague in 1810, each member making a minimum annual contribution of 100 gulden. It in turn founded the Prague Conservatory in 1811 and appointed Dionys Weber as director. The conservatory was clearly conceived as an orchestral school. The various disciplines (for all the instruments of the orchestra) were designed with that purpose in mind, as were the duration of training (six years, divided into two ‘classes’ of three years each) and the manner in which new students were to be admitted every three years: they were selected and their numbers supplemented to ensure that a balanced orchestral ensemble was always available. Foreign pupils were charged 60 gulden a year; teaching was free to Bohemian students, but they were required to perform at the society’s academies or in private houses. To some extent, therefore, the conservatory provided the Bohemian nobility with a substitute for their private chapels. As students were accepted between the ages of ten and 13, they also received a general education. From 1815 the conservatory had a singing department and from 1826 an opera department; there was no piano department until 1888. The conservatory’s main purpose was to train not virtuosos or composers but able orchestral musicians.
Similar initiatives in other cities led to the founding of schools for singers, instrumentalists, church musicians and (later) composers. They were supported by musical associations or the new promotional societies created by the music-loving middle classes or, as in Prague, the nobility. Only occasionally, when conservatories were affiliated to universities or academies, did the state follow the French example and provide support, as it did in Bavaria with the Akademisches Musikinstitut, founded by Joseph Fröhlich in Würzburg in 1804 and deriving from the collegium musicum of the university, and in Prussia with the Akademisches Institut für Kirchenmusik, set up at the instigation of Zelter in Breslau (1815), Berlin (1822) and Königsberg (1824). The Berlin institute trained teachers as well as church musicians, and a Meisterschule for composition was added in 1833; later Busoni, Schoenberg, Strauss and Pfitzner, among others, taught there.
The flourishing musical life of the middle classes fostered the growth of conservatories in the early 19th century. In 1817 the five-year-old Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna opened a singing school, directed by Salieri, to satisfy the demand for performances of large-scale oratorios. Instrumental classes were introduced after 1819, beginning with the violin, then the cello and finally the other instruments of the orchestra. Conservatories were soon founded in other cities: Graz (1817), Innsbruck (1819), Linz (1823) and Klagenfurt (1828), and later Pest (1840) and Brno (1862). All were supported by local music societies and sometimes by such church music associations as that of the episcopal city of Passau (1812). In Salzburg the Mozarteum, founded in 1841, developed from the Dommusikverein.
Piano teaching played a subordinate part in most early conservatories, and this accounts not only for the proliferation of private piano schools – some of them of considerable importance, for instance Joseph Proksch’s in Prague (1830) – but also for the widespread utilization after the 1820s of piano teaching systems such as that of Logier. As a rule music theory was an auxiliary discipline, consisting of instruction in basso continuo and the elements of harmony, usually described as ‘composition’. The study of composition became the main purpose of a teaching institution only in Friedrich Schneider’s Musikschule in Dessau (1829) and the Berlin Meisterschule mentioned above. The same aim was pursued by the Mozart-Stiftung set up in 1838 in Frankfurt to promote the work of young composers by granting scholarships.
The oldest conservatory in the Netherlands was founded in 1826 by King Willem I in The Hague. In Rotterdam the initiative for the founding of a conservatory in 1844 came from the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst, one of the promotional societies also set up in Amsterdam and other cities. The first Swiss conservatory was founded in Geneva in 1835 and attracted many students in its first year because of the piano courses given by Liszt.
The conservatories founded around the middle of the 19th century differed in many respects from the earlier Musikschulen. First, leading (or at least well-known) composers, music theorists and performers were more committed to founding, directing or teaching in them. Secondly, they were less dependent on promotional societies and were supported instead (for instance in Leipzig and Strasbourg, and later in Frankfurt) by the interest on their endowment capital, by civic subsidies or more rarely by state subsidies. Thirdly, their educational aims were more ambitious, extending beyond teaching the craft of music-making to greater intellectual depth of understanding, as described in Mendelssohn’s letter of 8 April 1848 to P. von Falkenhain (Festschrift … des Königlichen Konservatoriums der Musik zu Leipzig, 44–5).
Mendelssohn’s primary concern in founding the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843 was no longer to train young musicians for orchestras, opera houses or choruses. Rather, it was to provide ‘higher education in music, both theoretical and practical: in all branches of music regarded as a science and an art’ (§1 of the 1843 prospectus) and in concrete terms to train composers and virtuoso performers. Accordingly, students were no longer accepted as children, but at the age of about 14 to 17; Theodor Kirchner, the first student registered, was 19. With Mendelssohn, Schumann, Hauptmann and David, and later Gade, Moscheles and Franz Brendel, Leipzig offered a teaching staff of extraordinary eminence which attracted an international student body: of about 6000 students of its first 50 years, only 3300 were from Germany, 1800 coming from other parts of Europe and 1000 from the rest of the world. Leipzig had no orchestra school until 1881, but rehearsals and concerts were given by the Gewandhaus Orchestra, which was closely connected with the conservatory both artistically and administratively. In the years that followed, conservatories were founded in many German and central European cities, including Cologne (1845), Munich (1846), Berlin (1850, 1855, 1869), Strasbourg (1855), Dresden (1856), Stuttgart (1857), Berne (1858), Lausanne (1861), Basle (1866), Weimar (1872), Hamburg (1873), Budapest (1875), Zürich (1876), Frankfurt (1878, 1883), Brno (1882) and Karlsruhe (1884). The large number of students who flocked to these and other conservatories soon led, in many cases, to problems of space and finance. Only a few had such generous state funding as the conservatories in Munich, Würzburg and Karlsruhe. If the cities granted any subsidies at all, they were usually small, and as a result many conservatories opened their doors to amateurs in order to increase income. Stuttgart had a department for dilettantes from the first; in Karlsruhe there were preparatory, intermediate and senior classes. In 1884 Frankfurt added a seminar in which female students taught children from eight to 12 under the supervision of experienced male teachers; two years later this became the Vorschule where qualified women graduates served as ‘auxiliary teachers’.
The usual method of teaching at the conservatories, with students grouped in classes, came to present a number of difficulties. A class had two one-hour lessons a week, and the director determined the number of students per class. With three pupils each would get 20 minutes of teaching time; with more students each would get correspondingly less time. In practice it was possible for a single pupil to be allotted the whole hour while the others simply listened. Hauptmann disapproved of this method of teaching composition, because it divided ‘the lesson into as many parts as there are students’ (letter to Franz Hauser of 8 April 1847; ed. Schöne, C1871, ii, 53; also 72 and 97). In instrumental teaching, he admittted, mere listening could still be useful, but he claimed that individual students received too little teaching in all the conservatories, and the less proficient held back the abler students without learning anything themselves. Some 50 years later Riemann was even more sharply critical of the ‘exclusive training for practical performance’ in most conservatories and the lack of discipline and intellectual depth. Students ought, he said, to be provided with a minimum of general education, historical knowledge and aesthetic standards (C1895, p.24).
The number of free places for students decreased considerably over the decades, and fees varied widely. In Karlsruhe in 1884 they were 100 marks a year for the preparatory class, 200 for the intermediate class and 300 for the senior class; in Frankfurt they were 300 marks for all students. Smaller institutions charged according to the main subject studied: in Würzburg fees ranged from 40 to 100 marks and in Sondershausen from 150 to 200 marks.
Most conservatories were marked by a sense of tradition and generally regarded new developments with suspicion. The early sense of the word ‘conservatory’, as a place for the maintenance of orphaned children, was reinterpreted as signifying that the artistic and educational programme was of a ‘conservative’ nature. Music from Bach to Beethoven was regarded as ‘the model for all time’ and the tried and tested basis for musical education. More modern trends could not be banned from the piano classes and operatic training, but ‘our students should form their taste and build a secure foundation for their opinions above all on the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven’ (B. Scholz, annual report of the Hoch Conservatory, Frankfurt, 1883–4, pp.8ff).
The development of musical institutions in German-speaking countries is reflected in their changing nomenclature. Until the early 19th century most were called Musikschulen. The name ‘Konservatorium’ or ‘Conservatorium’ gained ground after 1843 and was transferred to many Musikschulen in the later 19th century. During the 20th century, however, ‘Konservatorium’ gradually became devalued in Germany and Austria and was increasingly used for institutions devoted to musical education for non-professionals. This tendency was fostered in the 1920s by the Prussian Ministry of Culture under its music adviser, Leo Kestenberg. In connection with the reform of musical education at upper schools, which demanded state examination of their music teachers, Kestenberg urged that leading conservatories should become Staatliche Hochschulen. This trend continued under the Third Reich, when the conservatories in Frankfurt (1937) and Leipzig (1941) were designated Hochschulen, and corresponding changes occurred after 1945 in both East and West Germany. To educational planners, conservatories seemed relics of a bygone age which could either rise to the university status of Hochschulen or be downgraded to Musikschulen (schools of music). Musical training for professionals was to be clearly separated from musical education for amateurs.
The term ‘Konservatorium’ was generally avoided for institutions established after World War I. For instance, the Westfälische Hochschule für Musik, founded in Münster in 1919, became in 1925 the Akademie für Bewegung, Sprache und Musik. In 1927 it moved to Essen as the Folkwang-Schule für Musik, Tanz und Sprachen (directed by Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg and Kurt Jooss), one of the pioneering Hochschulen of modern music and dance. In some cases not only was the term ‘Konservatorium’ avoided, but a new approach to teaching was sought, as at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, an early music academy founded in 1933.
In 1919 the newly created Czechoslovakian state founded publicly supported conservatories in Prague, Bratislava and Brno. When Czech became the only language used for teaching at the formerly bilingual Prague Conservatory, a Deutsche Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Künste was founded in Prague in 1920 under Zemlinsky; it was largely supported by a promotional society. The Vienna Conservatory, state-subsidized after 1872, was renamed the Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in 1909, became a Staatsakademie in 1920 and a Reichshochschule (like the Salzburg Mozarteum) in 1939, and reverted to a Staatsakademie in 1945.
Conservatories, §III: 1790–1945
Professional musical education came late to Russia. In the 18th century foreign music teachers started music classes for the children of the aristocracy or for the training of professional instrumentalists from the serf classes, and at the beginning of the 19th century there were also music classes at the universities of Moscow and Kharkiv. The St Petersburg Conservatory officially opened its doors on 8/20 September 1862; its parent organization, the Russian Musical Society (RMS), had sponsored classes in music from spring 1860. The driving force behind both society and conservatory was Anton Rubinstein, who held as his goal the establishment of musical life in Russia on a thoroughly professional footing, with musicians eligible to earn the same privileges and legal status available to the country’s other artists. Soon after the RMS classes began Rubinstein submitted a proposal for a government-sponsored music school to the Ministry of Education, only to have it quickly rejected on grounds of such a school’s uselessness. Rubinstein then sought the patronage of the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, Tsar Aleksandr II’s aunt by marriage and a devotee of the arts, who earlier had helped Rubinstein establish the RMS. Slightly more than six months after he submitted to her a Report on the Necessity of Opening a Music School in St Petersburg, the government granted a charter for Russia’s first conservatory, which was to be attached to the RMS under Yelena Pavlovna’s protection and subsidized through the Ministry of the Imperial Court.
The St Petersburg Conservatory offered instruction in singing, performance on the piano and all orchestral instruments, composition and music history and aesthetics. The academic programme filled six years. Classes in solfeggio, piano, music history and literature, and aesthetics were required of all students, along with participation in the school’s choir; as the first students progressed through their programmes of study, new classes in harmony, counterpoint, fugue, form, composition, orchestration and score reading were added to the curriculum. Courses in the Russian language and in Russian history, geography and literature were also offered, as was remedial instruction for those judged deficient in religion, history, geography, mathematics and languages (Russian, German and Italian). The curriculum was complete by 1865, and in December of that year 12 students, who had begun with classes taken under the auspices of the RMS, took their final examinations. Seven of these (including Tchaikovsky) met all requirements for graduation and thus were granted the title ‘free artist’, a privileged legal status which exempted its holder from military service and poll tax. Rubinstein served as director of both the conservatory and the RMS until 1867, establishing and maintaining the highest professional and artistic standards throughout his tenure.
Meanwhile Rubinstein’s brother Nikolay, with Anton’s encouragement, had established a branch of the RMS in Moscow in 1860. This branch offered music classes from its inception and in December 1865 received permission to open a second conservatory with Nikolay Rubinstein as director. The Moscow Conservatory formally opened its doors on 1/13 September 1866, with the young Tchaikovsky serving as professor of composition and head of the theory department. (This circumstance alone is an indication that one of Anton’s goals – to provide Russia with fully professional native musicians and teachers of music – was beginning to be realized.) In like manner to St Petersburg and Moscow, five other cities of the Russian Empire gained conservatories before the Bolshevik Revolution. In Kiev, for example, RMS concerts began in 1863 and music classes in 1868; a music institute followed in 1883 and a conservatory in 1913. Conservatories were also established in Saratov (1912), Odessa (1913), Kharkiv (1917) and Tbilisi (1918). All but the last were built on well-established institutions; in essence they were promoted in status from music schools or colleges (uchilishche) to conservatories. The goal of ‘music education for everyone’ was assisted by the foundation of the Free School of Music in 1862 by Balakirev and Lomakin and by the People’s Conservatory in Moscow after the 1905 Revolution.
In 1866, after a student's unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Aleksandr II, the government’s educational policies took a sharp turn towards the right. Although the conservatories were not subject to the Ministry of Education, Yelena Pavlovna wanted them to conform to the new direction and sought to transform them, in effect, into trade schools for instrumentalists. Anton Rubinstein’s successor at St Petersburg, Nikolay Zaremba, directly resisted his patroness and was forced to retire in 1871 over the issue. The school’s new head, Mikhail Azanchevsky, took another tack, formally agreeing with the grand duchess but doing little to bring about the changes she wanted. During the same summer in which he promised to eliminate academic classes and concentrate on training performers, he brought new vigour to theory and composition by hiring the 27-year-old Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov as professor of composition and orchestration. Azanchevsky’s manoeuvre also effectively countered the hostility of The Five, who from the beginning had ‘challenged the conservatory’s ability to train creative artists’ (Ridenour, D1981), and it gave the conservatory a composer who, after making up the deficiencies in his own education through an extraordinary programme of self-instruction, was to become one of Russian music’s most influential pedagogues. Many of his pupils, including Arensky, Glazunov, Lyadov and Steinberg (Shostakovich’s teacher), became professors in the nation’s conservatories, often basing their own teaching on Rimsky-Korsakov’s textbooks and methods.
After the Bolshevik Revolution the new Soviet government nationalized the conservatories and designated them State Institutions of Higher Learning (decree of 12 July 1918). Graduate departments were established in 1925, and the education of professional musicologists and theorists, initially entrusted to the State Institute for Music Research in Moscow (founded in 1921), was given over to the conservatories. At the same time, curricular reform defined three large branches of study – composition and musicology (including theory), performance and education – with most specialities requiring five years. A new theory/composition curriculum, reflecting an awareness of modern music and thought, was proposed by Vladimir Shcherbachyov. The older professors – including Glazunov, rector of the Leningrad Conservatory until 1928 – leapt to the defence of the old curriculum. But both curricula, together with their adherents, were soon overwhelmed by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), who had little interest in extended professional training or art music, preferring instead simple mass songs and marches for use as propaganda. The Party permitted the RAPM to dominate musical education from 1929 to 1932; during their brief period of ascendency academic standards declined precipitously. The chaos of the RAPM years ended in April 1932 with the dissolution of all proletarian arts organizations and a return, in the words of Stalin’s commissar of education, to ‘musical education that will lead to the acquisition of musical technique and the assimilation of musical skill’ (Haas, D1989).
With Andrey Zhadanov's formulation in 1934 of the principles of Socialist realism, demanding that art reflect ‘reality in its revolutionary development’, the ferment of the 1920s ended. By 1945 conservatories existed in Riga (1919), Tallinn (1919), Baku (1920), Yerevan (1923), Minsk (1924), Sverdlovsk (1934), Tashkent (1934), L'viv (1939), Alma-Ata (1944), Vilnius (1945) and Kazan' (1945), with curriculum and organization generally paralleling those of Leningrad and Moscow. Although the Leningrad and Moscow conservatories were relocated away from the front in 1941 – the former to Tashkent, the latter to Saratov – both had returned home by 1944. After World War II the schools were sharply criticized during the cultural purges led with Stalin’s blessing by Zhadanov, but the institutional structures established during the 1920s remained viable until 1991.
The conservatory movement spread throughout eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In Warsaw in 1816 Chopin’s teacher Józef Elsner founded a school of singing and declamation modelled on the Paris Conservatoire; the Warsaw Conservatory was closed down after the failure of the 1830 Revolution, but reopened in 1861, and other conservatories were established in Lemberg (now L'viv) and Kraków. In Sofia a private school for music was opened in 1904; this came under state control in 1908 and became the Bulgarian State Music Academy in 1922. In Romania conservatories attached to the country’s first universities were founded in Bucharest (1864) and Iaşi (1860). The establishment of the Yugoslav state in 1918 led to the creation of conservatories in Zagreb and Ljubljana (both of which had had secular music schools for over a century) and later in Belgrade.
See §III, 3 above for other parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Conservatories, §III: 1790–1945
The British conservatories of the 19th and early 20th centuries served, first and foremost, the growing demand for instruction in piano and singing. They provided a training-ground for the growing population of teachers and amateurs and developed systems for testing and licensing them. While some high-level performers did attend these schools, before 1930 most such singers and instrumentalists were trained informally or by apprenticeship. Leading wind players came more commonly out of the Military School of Music at Kneller Hall, founded in 1857; many of its graduates found employment in leading orchestras. The main contribution of the London conservatories – the Royal Academy of Music (1822), the Royal College of Music (1882), the Guildhall School of Music (1880) and Trinity College of Music (1872) – lay in providing the world of amateur music and music teaching with coherent professional standards.
The conservatories of this period were funded almost entirely from student fees for courses and licences. A government grant of £500 per year to each school, begun in 1865, was not increased until after World War II, and the only substantial private endowment was that of Lady Barber to the Birmingham School of Music in 1932. That many students came from well-off homes and did not continue in the musical profession suggests the central role that music played in the life of the time.
The RAM and RCM grew out of quite different traditions and institutional goals, but ended up working closely together in the testing and licensing of students and teachers. The RAM was founded by the same aristocratic gentlemen who governed the Concert of Ancient Music and the Royal Society of Musicians; it was designed to train singers and instrumentalists for the King’s Theatre and for teaching in elite families. The failure to obtain substantial state or private funding led the committee of management in 1868 to reorientate the academy towards serving the needs of teachers and the public.
The original purpose behind the RCM was to develop a leading conservatory comparable to those of Paris and Berlin, but lack of scholarship funds limited achievement of that goal. The effort to model the college on continental institutions was reflected in the programmes of the pupils’ concerts, which focussed on the German/Austrian canon (whereas the academy emphasized recent music, especially by British composers). These differences were less marked by 1914, however, as compositions by both male and female students were more frequently performed. The Society of Women Musicians was active in both schools.
The curricula of conservatories during this period were less comprehensive than became the norm later in the 20th century. A certificate was awarded after one year, and in cases of special merit a student was made an associate. Piano and singing were the focus of attention; it was unusual for more than one person to teach any of the wind instruments. Courses were usually required in elements of music, harmony and counterpoint, as well as composition, a recent addition to conservatory teaching. Lectures on music history and programmes in ensemble playing were optional before World War I but became part of the regular curricula in the 1920s, as also happened with courses in conducting.
The testing and licensing of teachers grew to major proportions by the turn of the 20th century. Almost all conservatories conducted tests for teachers that led to the award of a licentiate. In 1889 the RAM and RCM set up the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, initially to license teachers nationally and in the British colonies, appointing honorary local representatives to administer the tests. In 1911–12, 7453 local centres participated in examining 21,135 candidates. The testing was rigorous; only a third normally passed these examnations. Trinity College, which developed the largest licensing programme, led the effort to include music teachers in a parliamentary bill mandating the registration of all teachers in 1912.
Conservatories serving new constituencies, especially choral and sacred music, grew up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Trinity College trained teachers for district associations of choral societies around the country. The Royal College of Organists (1864) offered professional training for church musicians. The Guildhall School of Music brought formal musical education to the City of London. The Tonic Sol-fa college (1869) and the Matthay School of Music (1920) trained teachers in their special methods of instruction. Ties between conservatories and universities were initiated in 1902 with the founding of a Chair of Music jointly administered by Trinity College and the University of London.
Elsewhere in Britain conservatories began as music classes within cultural institutes in the 1840s and 50s, as comprehensive music schools at the turn of the century and as schools within universities in the 1930s. The Birmingham School of Music (1859) grew in prominence under the leadership of Granville Bantock, its first full-time salaried principal (1900–34). The Manchester College of Music (1893), founded by Charles Hallé and directed by Adolph Brodsky from 1895 to 1929, attracted unusually well-known faculty members such as Egon Petri and Wilhelm Backhaus. The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama began within the Glasgow Athenaeum (1847) and was originally the Athenaeum School of Music (1890).
During the 1930s, as the market for private music lessons waned, conservatories began to train more high-level performers; John Barbirolli and Myra Hess studied at the RAM and subsequently joined its staff, as did Leopold Stokowski at the RCM. After World War II such training became the chief goal, especially when government programmes made possible higher education for students in the arts as a whole.
The USA had no cultural capital comparable to London, and the earliest American conservatories were among a widespread group of music schools founded in the mid-19th-century, notably Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory (1857), the Oberlin College Conservatory in Ohio (1865) and the Cincinnati Conservatory (1867). The largest conservatory in the country, Boston’s New England Conservatory (1867), represented a highly entrepreneurial effort to train teachers for the expanding market of amateur musicians. By 1885, 4570 students, mostly women, were taught by 100 staff. Students were housed in a large hotel on Franklin Square, thanks to funds donated by the Jordan family, the city’s leading retail merchants.
During the 1890s an attempt was made to build a National Conservatory of Music with federal government funds. Begun in New York, the school was intended to move to Washington, DC, but failed after an auspicious three years under the leadership of Dvořák. In the late 19th century several American private universities – Harvard and Yale most prominently – established curricula in music not dissimilar to those of conservatories; Harvard in fact granted degrees for the New England Conservatory until 1929. Important music schools were begun at state universities in Michigan in 1880, in Indiana in 1893 and in Illinois in 1895. However, private patronage continued to be the principal source of support for conservatories; indeed, the three major schools founded in the 1920s had the largest endowments of any such institutions in the world. All three provided scholarships for most if not all of their students.
In 1921 the camera tycoon George Eastman donated $12 million to re-establish an existing conservatory within the privately incorporated University of Rochester, New York. Although originally intended to provide a liberal education for musicians, the Eastman School of Music became a leading centre for the training of performers. In Philadelphia the Curtis Institute was established in 1924 with a $12·5 million gift from the publisher Cyrus H.K. Curtis and his daughter Mary Louise Curtis Bok. She served as president until her death in 1970, and from the start the faculty included prominent singers and instrumentalists. Also in 1924 the Juilliard Graduate School was founded in New York with a bequest of $12 million from the textile magnate and banker Augustus D. Juilliard. Conceived as a graduate institute to train only the most talented young musicians to perform in public, the school nonetheless needed an undergraduate programme, and in 1926 it acquired the Institute of Musical Art (established in 1905) to form the Juilliard School of Music.
While conservatories established in the latter part of the 19th century were generally planned on European lines, the second half of the 20th century saw the emergence of several alternative models varying in size, purpose, formal status, relationships, curriculum and specialities. Some conservatories are independent institutions, others form part of universities. Some are funded by the state, others by different means. Some are devoted solely to music; in others music is studied alongside one or more of the other art forms. Some are located within, or funtion as, arts centres. Some conservatories have thousands of students, others only a few hundred. Each model has its strengths: the ultimate test is the quality of the experience the institution is able to provide for its students.
While the training of soloists with the potential to establish solo careers was once regarded as almost the sole purpose of the conservatory, since World War II stronger emphasis has been placed on the provision of education and training appropriate for a wider range of professional activities. Some conservatories have expanded their remit by offering advanced courses that focus explicitly on the needs of orchestral and chamber music players; of those wishing to specialize as church musicians; and of those aiming for careers in jazz and commercial music, and in fields such as music therapy and arts management. In some countries, such as Finland, the continuing professional development of musicians forms a key element of the role of a national conservatory. In many countries the initial training of music teachers is seen as closely linked with the training of performers and composers, and so is integral to the work of leading schools of music. In England and Wales, changes in the arrangements for teacher training in the last quarter of the 20th century tended to weaken the links between the conservatory and the training of music teachers for the state system.
As in the late 19th century, the conservatory curriculum has broadened considerably since 1934. The expansion that has taken place in Britain and elsewhere reflects shifts in educational philosophy, recognition of the changing needs of and opportunities for professionally trained musicians, and clearer identification by individual insitutions of their roles and responsibilities within their respective societies, as well as developments in school curricula. Although many North American music schools have long espoused a model of liberal education, encouraging most students to undertake some studies outside music, for many students in British conservatories enrolled on performance diploma courses, individual lessons and participation in ensemble activities were until the 1960s complemented mainly by harmony and ear-training, and limited study of history and music appreciation. Since then, British conservatories have strengthened the historical, analytical and critical elements of the curriculum, providing courses that aim to encourage a broader approach to the development of musicianship.
Curriculum design has been influenced by recognition of the range of professional careers and the need for specialization: while most conservatories prescribe a core curriculum, more and more options have become available in the latter years of undergraduate study, as well as at the postgraduate level. Students are encouraged to develop versatility as well as specialist skills: composition, arrangement and work produced in electronic and recording studios are increasingly part of their experience. Contemporary music now plays a more prominent part in the curriculum. Some conservatories also provide opportunities for intensive study of early music, liturgical music, non-classical music and musics of other cultures. Growing professional interest in historically informed performance has encouraged greater emphasis on issues of performing practice. In some leading European and American music schools musicology can be chosen as a main area of study. Teaching often explores links between music and other art forms – dance, drama, film and the visual arts. Conservatories have begun to give greater attention to the ‘professional integration’ of students by enabling them to develop skills of self-presentation and self-management and to gain professional experience. Some conservatories employ specialist staff to support this and to encourage community-based performance opportunities for individuals and ensembles.
In addition to the instrumental studies customarily available, more widespread opportunities now exist for the study of period instruments and instruments other than those in the standard 19th-century orchestra, such as accordion, saxophone and guitar, as well as those of the brass band. While most conservatories teach only Western instruments, some leading Asian music schools also include instruction in traditional eastern instruments. In British conservatories most instrumental teaching takes place in individual lessons, with occasional class sessions; in conservatories elsewhere in Europe and in some other parts of the world, classes generally meet several times a week, and individual students are taught in the presence of their peers.
Until the 1980s most students attending British conservatories, on successfully completing their studies, received diplomas, some of which were of graduate-equivalent status. By the end of the decade most of these institutions had replaced diplomas with bachelors’ degrees, reflecting the trend in higher education towards the degree as the standard professional award. At the postgraduate level masters’ degrees in performance as well as composition have become increasingly common. Similar developments have taken place in parts of Europe: in France and Belgium the premier prix was in the 1990s replaced by awards gained after pursuing more wide-ranging courses of study. In the USA the development of the Doctor of Musical Arts introduced a distinctive award at the doctoral level for performers and composers which focusses on practical work, normally supported by research into relevant literature and repertory.
A distinctive feature of the postwar period has been the burgeoning of specialist institutions for tertiary-level study. In 1949 Wales acquired its own conservatory with the embellisment in Cardiff of the Welsh College of Music and Drama. In Tel-Aviv the Rubin Academy of Music (now part of Tel-Aviv University) was founded in 1945, followed two years later by the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance. In 1950 new institutions were established in Beijing (Central Conservatory of Music), East Berlin (Deutsche Hochschule für Musik) and Hamburg. In a number of major public universities in the USA the creation of schools of music offering specifically professional programmes dates from the postwar period. In Germany individual states established their own Hochschulen; in Australia state conservatories were created in Queensland (1957), Tasmania (1965) and Canberra (1965). Some new conservatories arose from the linking of existing institutions, such as the National University of Fine Arts and Music (Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku) in Tokyo (founded in 1949), the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo (1973) and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (founded in 1973 by merging the former Northern School of Music and the Royal Manchester College of Music). Other notable schools established since 1970 include the Rotterdam School of Music (1971), the Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts (1984), the School of Music of the Korean National Institute of the Arts (1992) and the Hochschule für Musik in Rostock (1994).
The legal status of some long-established conservatories has changed as part of the revision of national systems of music education and training. In this process some leading European institutions, previously privately or locally run, became state-funded and state-controlled. These, along with others already recognized as state institutions, generally gained university status. This pattern can be observed throughout Europe; the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Prague was re-established on this basis in 1946, as were the Budapest Academy and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in 1948. In Austria university status was granted to the Hochschulen in Graz, Salzburg and Vienna in 1970. The Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, established in 1882, was essentially a private institution until 1980, when it came under state control. In certain countries, such as France and Finland, the postwar period has seen the establishment of what is essentially a two-tier system: a network of regional conservatories linked in various ways to a smaller number of national institutions. In France and Spain the inclusion of the term ‘superior’ in the name of the institution indicates its national standing.
In many countries conservatories functioned from their inception as the local or regional focus for instrumental teaching, admitting students of all ages irrespective of level. One effect of the definition of role and formalization of status which took place in some European countries in the postwar period was that work at the elementary (primary) and secondary levels, and adult education, were transferred to other institutions. In other countries, including Britain, Japan, the USA and Australia, leading music schools have maintained junior or preparatory departments. Some function as specialist schools offering intensive music tuition to enhance the normal school curriculum; others cater for part-time pupils of talent.
Formal links between conservatories and universities increased throughout the 20th century. Although most conservatories were conceived as independent, autonomous institutions, some were planned from the outset as existing within universities: the model of the Melba Conservatorium, founded in Melbourne in 1895 as a ‘University Conservatorium’, was emulated in 1898 by the creation of the Elder Conservatorum of the University of Adelaide. Since the late 1980s each of the other Australian conservatories has become formally affiliated to a university. Examples of both types of arrangement exist in North America. Some prominent American music schools are formally part of large universities, such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Northwestern and Southern California; the Eastman School of Music is a school of the University of Rochester. While some leading American music schools such as the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School remain independent, the latter strengthening its informal links with neighbouring institutions, the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore became an affiliated division of the Johns Hopkins University in 1977.
During the last quarter of the 20th century national policies for higher education in Britain brought conservatories and universities closer together. With the notable exceptions of the Royal College of Music in London and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, which have authority to award their own degrees, most British conservatories are associated with universities for degree-awarding puroposes. Degrees of the Royal Northern College of Music are validated by the University of Manchester, those of the Welsh College of Music and Drama by the University of Wales, those of Trinity College of Music by the Universities of Westminster and Sussex, those of Leeds College of Music by the University of Leeds and the Open University, music degrees of the Gulidhall School of Music & Drama by City University and the University of Kent at Canterbury, while the Royal Academy of Music is a college of the University of London. In 1989 the former Birmingham School of Music, now a faculty of the University of Central England in Birmingham, adopted the name Birmingham Conservatoire. The London College of Music and Media has become part of Thames Valley University. Many music schools belong to regional, national and European networks, and have institutional agreements which support the exchange of students and staff. Collaboration between institutions has become increasingly common since World War II.
In Europe as in North America some conservatories have strengthened their links with other university-level insitutions in order to offer students wider educational opportunities. While these developments have brought benefits, there can also be dangers: there is need for the conservatory to guard against loss of distinctiveness, and to retain its ability to admit those for whom the conservatory provides the most appropriate environment. The traditional staffing pattern of the conservatory, with its close ties to the music profession, is a particular strength.
The internationalization of musical life since 1945 has affected conservatories and been affected by them. This is evident both in the teaching staff and the student body. Although leading conservatories in the late 19th century attracted students from abroad, numbers remained relatively small. In the postwar period study overseas has become more common, particularly at the postgraduate level. Since the 1970s many foreign nationals have been admitted to conservatories in Europe and the USA, some remaining to perform and teach. National styles of performance and composition, as well as musical life internationally, increasingly reflect the impact of these changing social patterns.
A Up to 1790. B 1790–1945: French-speaking countries. C 1790–1945: Germany and central Europe. D 1790–1945: Russia and Eastern Europe. E 1790–1945: English-speaking countries. F Since 1945.
MGG1 (R. Schaal)
MGG2 (‘Musikausbildung’, §II, 3–4; C. Richter)
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C. Pierre: L'école de chant de l'Opéra (1672–1807) (Paris, 1895)
S. di Giacomo: Il Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesù Cristo e quello di S. Maria di Loreto (Palermo, 1928)
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J.C. Kassler: ‘Burney's Sketch of a Plan for a Public Music School’, MQ, lvii (1972), 210–34
M.F. Robinson: ‘The Governors' Minutes of the Conservatory S. Maria di Loreto, Naples’, RMARC, x (1972), 1–97
B. Brévan: Les changements de la vie musicale parisienne de 1774 à 1799 (Paris, 1980), 71–8, 146–60
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C. Pierre: B. Sarrette et les origines du Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation (Paris, 1895)
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M. Galerne: L'Ecole Niedermeyer (Paris, 1928)
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A. Cellier: ‘Écoles et conservatoires de musique’, La musique des origines à nos jours, ed. N. Dufourcq (Paris, 1946, enlarged 3/1959), 544–7
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J. Leduc: Le Conservatoire royal de musique de Bruxelles (Brussels, 1974)
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H. Barty-King: The Guildhall School of Music and Drama: a Hundred Years' Performance (London, 1980)
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P. Renshaw: ‘Orchestras and the Training Revolution’, British Journal of Music Education, ix (1992), 61–70
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