Scan 5
Musical Courier 1891-08-19: Vol 23 Iss 600, 1891
32 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 178. See the scan on archive.org.
1Front of the Institute Building.
3great, a glorious art, and is only immoral when it is bad music. It is an extremely good servant, but a very tyrannical master for highly strung, delicately balanced natures.
5An overdose of Chopin is almost a moral prussic acid to some souls.
7To music is closely allied its dark sister—Insanity. The whole dissonant gamut of hysterical woes, poetic frenzies, morbid despair and sensualistic caterwauling may be encountered in the domain of harmony.
9Music revenges itself on its most ardent adorers by afflicting them with spiritual pride, narrowness of mental vision and extremely loose views about their neighbor's wife.
11There is no positive basis for morality in music. Music will never make an immoral man moral, but often makes a moral man unmoral.
13THE ROYAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC AT LEIPSIC.
15THE extraordinary importance and consideration which are assigned in Germany to the study of music arise from the great number of conservatories; for every country—indeed, every province—can point to one or more. Most of the conservatories owe their existence to the liberality of art loving citizens, while others have raised themselves by their own exertions, yet the most of them flourish and enjoy an ever increasing clientele, for each one is unceasingly striving to attract to itself the best teachers of the place, and to assure to the pupils as extensive and many sided musical culture as is possible with the least expenditure of money and time.
17If then the Leipsic Conservatory—of which alone we speak here—maintains, in spite of competition that must not be underestimated, the first rank among German conservatories, there must be some unusual factors that contribute to this effect. The circumstance that the Leipsic Conservatory is the oldest institution of the kind in Germany and that it was founded by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdi in 1843, while other brilliant stars, Robert Schumann, Niels Gade, Moritz Hauptmann, E. F. Richter, Ferdinand David, Moscheles, joined its teaching staff, are facts of great value and were of great advantage; but the nimbus of a glorious past alone is not sufficient to keep an art institution, in and on the same high plane. This can only be secured by its performance, and in fact up to the present day it has been artistic results alone that have enabled the Leipsic Conservatory to maintain its dominant position, and these must enable it to do so in the future. Furthermore, the musical student, apart from the instruction which he receives from the best teachers in Leipsic, enjoys in unusual measure animating and stimulating artistic surroundings which must have an enduring influence on his musical thought and feeling. Such are the famous Gewandhaus concerts, the ten chamber music evenings in the Gewandhaus, the regular church performances, the numberless private concerts, the excellent opera—all artistic feasts of the distinguished kind to which the pupil of the conservatory has usually free admission.
19All the daily papers, too, give great space to music criticism, and the most important music papers appear in Leipsic, and thus the student's judgment and power of discrimination are sharpened and cultivated to a high degree. Nowhere else are so many opportunities offered—in case he has acquired the necessary knowledge as executant or composer—to appear in public and see his performances illustrated and judged by competent people. Mendelssohn's keen perception did not overlook the advantages which such a spot possessed for the founding of his favorite scheme, a conservatory.
21In a lengthy letter as early as 1840 he applied to the then Minister, Von Falkenstein, to devote to the erection of a conservatory a legacy of 20,000 thalers left by an art loving citizen for founding an institute of science and art. In this letter he writes: "For a long time past music has been domesticated in Germany, and that in the form which lies nearest the heart of every thinking and feeling friend of art, the love for the true and earnest has taken deep root here. Such a widespread interest is neither accidental nor without important consequences for general culture, and hence music has become an important factor (Moment), not merely of momentary enjoyment but of higher spiritual needs. Everyone who is truly interested in this art must cherish the wish to see its future assured and on a firm basis in this country."
23Mendelssohn proceeds to notice the prevailing positive technical material tendency of those days,* which renders the maintenance of the first feeling for art and its propagation a task doubly important and therefore doubly difficult. "Furthermore," he continues, "for that branch of art which will always remain as the chief foundation of musical study, for higher instrumental and spiritual compositions, Leipsic possesses in its numerous concerts and its church music a means of education for incipient artists such as no other German city can display to the same extent." Mendelssohn's unselfish exertions were fulfilled the next year, and the opening took place April 2, 1843. He entrusted the technical management to his friend, the advocate Conrad Schleinitz, who retained it till his death in 1881. As early as the year of the foundation of the conservatory the number of pupils rose from twenty-two to sixty-three; it has now ten times as many—nearly six hundred—of whom half are English and Americans, and therefore a large proportion of the teachers give their instruction in the English language.
25It is needless to mention that the success of an institution like the Leipsic Conservatory depends essentially on the management, and hence the present director, Dr. Otto Günther, must be first mentioned, for to him in the highest degree is due the great advance which the conservatory has made in late years. To his exertions must be ascribed the erection of a home for the school which is, in its external splendor, in harmony with the importance and world wide fame of the institution. From 1843 to 1887 the conservatory was located in an old smoke blackened building that was more like a prison than a home of music. The city voted 700,000 marks for a new building, and the gift of 300,000 marks by a citizen named Radians expedited the plan.
27The building, erected by Hugo Licht, is close to the new Gewandhaus in the southwest quarter of the city, which is adorned with handsome edifices. The new conservatory contains one large and two smaller halls, forty-four class rooms, a director's room, library and sitting room, workrooms and rooms for janitor and heating apparatus. On the ground floor of the left wing is the beautiful main hall with folding seats for 760. The background of the orchestra is formed by an organ by Walker with thirty-seven registers. On the front of the gallery, in which is the director's box opposite the organ, are small tablets bearing the names of Bach, Händel, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, Gluck, Weber, Spohr, Hauptmann and Volkmann. A medallion portrait of the late director, Schleinitz, adorns the front of the director's box, and the medallion with the head of Mendelssohn in relief is on the cover of the box with the inscription: "Edles nur Künde die Sprache der Tone."
29On one side, beneath the gallery, is the marble bust of Radians, the citizen who presented the above mentioned munificent sum to the conservatory; on the other side the marble bust of the director O.
31* What would he think of ours?
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