National Conservatory of Music of America

The National Conservatory of Music of America was an institution for higher education in music founded in 1885 in New York City by Jeannette Meyers Thurber. The conservatory was officially declared defunct by the state of New York in 1952, although for all practical pedagogical purposes, it had ceased to function much earlier than that; however, between its founding and about 1920 the conservatory played an important part in the education and training of musicians in the United States. A number of prominent names are associated with the institution, including that of Victor Herbert and Antonín Dvořák, director of the conservatory from 1891 to 1895. (It was at the conservatory that Dvořák composed his famous E minor symphony and subtitled it, at Thurber’s suggestion, From the New World.)

The idea of federally funded national conservatory in the United States had been a dream of Thurber's; in the early 1880s she convinced a number of philanthropists, including Andrew Carnegie. to sponsor the founding of such an institution. The idea was to model the institution on the Paris Conservatory in order to create a “national musical spirit.” The conservatory was incorporated in the state of New York in September 1885. The first director was Belgian baritone, Jacques Bouhy. Among the faculty was also Emma Fursh-Madi, one of the great sopranos of the day. There were 84 students when the conservatory started operations, operating out of two converted homes at 126-128 East Seventeenth street in New York City.

It is not clear from sources exactly how much it cost to attend the conservatory or how scholarships were awarded. Some sources claim that no tuition was charged at all. In any event, the cost of operations was originally met by Mrs. Thurber and others. After three years of existence, the conservatory petitioned the US congress for $200,000 to support the institution, saying that “…hundreds of candidates have had to be rejected from lack of room to accommodate them and of funds to increase the staff of Professors which would be required by their admittance….” The petition failed. Thurber changed strategy and then proposed moving the conservatory to the nation’s capital, Washington D.C.. A bill to that effect was passed in congress and signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison in March, 1891.

A site for the new “national conservatory” in the District of Columbia was never selected, much less built. The school continued to function in New York City, existing solely from philanthropy. By 1900, the school had educated about 3,000 students. After that date and after a rapidly changing series of directors, the National Conservatory of Music of America started to fade, not from a single catastrophic failure such as bankruptcy, but more through the declining energies of its driving force, Mrs. Thurber, herself. Additionally, there was increasing competition from other institutions in the area, including The Institute of Musical Art of the City of New York, founded in 1904 and then becoming the Juilliard School of Music in 1924. As well there were concerns from many private institutions that a federally-funded national conservatory on the European model would reduce their own schools to the role of a “feeder system.”

By the 1920s, Mrs. Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music of America had faded to such obscurity that proposals from other quarters to fund a “national conservatory” were made in apparent ignorance that such an institution already existed. As late as 1928, Mrs. Thurber was still making her case that

“At no time more than the present has the necessity for a national conservatory of music been so evident…the National Conservatory of Music, which was founded in 1885 and has been in existence for over 40 years, is the only institution of its kind which in scope and in organization is in conformity with the old established models…From its inception the plan…has been to establish a national conservatory of music in Washington with branches….”

The stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression dried up monies from many philanthropic sources and spelled the end of conservatory. There is no record of operations after 1930.

Musically, the National Conservatory of Music of America was a brief but bright light in the cultural life of the United States. It aimed to provide affordable musical education for all-comers, including the physically handicapped and African Americans. Its prestige was greatly enhanced by the directorship of Dvořák, and it offered a yearly prize in the area of “American music,” a competition that led to the recognition of a number of young composers from the United States.