Jeannette Thurber

Jeanette Thurber (also known as Jeannette Meyers Thurber, born in Delhi, New York, January 29, 1850, died in Bronxville, New York, January 2, 1946) was amongst the first major patrons of classical music in the United States. She was the daughter of Henry Meyers, an immigrant violinist from Copenhagen, Denmark and Annamarie Coffin Price. Jeanette Thurber was educated at the Paris Conservatory.

She married a millionaire grocery wholesaler, Francis Beattie Thurber, on September 15, 1869. In 1884 she founded the National Conservatory of Music of America and its adjunct American Opera Company, both in New York. In 1884 she sponsored New York City's first Wagner festival. In 1888-9 she sponsored the New York debut of the Boston Symphony. In 1892, she was responsible for bringing the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák to the United States to head her conservatory. It was her ambition to found a uniquely American school of classical music composition, a national conservatory, federally funded and based in Washington DC with branches throughout the United States.

At her death, a laudatory obituary article appeared in the New York Times and said of her national conservatory:

“The conservatory, of which the New York home was intended as the beginning, never reached Washington. Nor were national branches ever established. An educational plan of the loftiest and best, admirably developed on the artistic side, did not find the full measure of financing necessary, for its permanence. But it was Mrs. Thurber who established a precedent in this field which never will be forgotten, as one of the works which made her life and her vision and invincible spirit so valuable to the musical advancement of America.