National Conservatory of America

National Conservatory of America ( Eng. National Conservatory of Music of America ) - American Conservatory, founded in 1885 and played a prominent role in the development of American music education at the turn of the XIX — XX centuries, and then gradually lost its value and finally abolished in 1952 . It was established and managed for the first six decades by the benefactor Dzhinet Thurber .

Thurber's idea was to create a nationwide musical educational institution modeled on the Paris Conservatory , the main center for the training of American music personnel. There was a lively controversy around the concept of such an institution in the United States , during which opponents of the National Conservatory spoke (also appealing to the experience of the Paris Conservatory) that the privileged position of an educational institution under the patronage of the state leads to stagnation ^[1] . In addition, Thurber insisted on the full access to admission to the conservatory of girls and black musicians, the most gifted and the poor, exempted from tuition fees.

The Conservatory opened in New York , then Thurber began her efforts to transfer her to Washington and in 1891 secured the adoption of a resolution by the US Congress on this matter, but this decision was never implemented. The Conservatory remained in New York under the patronage of the State of New York and it was in the 1890s, headed by Antonin Dvořák , that it had reached its peak; in 1900 about 3000 students studied there. Then, however, the National Conservatory began to experience increasing difficulties due to lack of funding, failures in artistic management and increasing competition (primarily from the Institute of Musical Art ), and as a result of the Great Depression it almost ceased to exist.