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New England Conservatory of Music

 
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: New England Conservatory of Music
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New England Conservatory of Music, at Boston, Mass.; coeducational; est. 1867, chartered and opened 1870. It is closely associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. Jordan Hall, its main auditorium, is noted for recitals and performances by outstanding artists.

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Neclogo.gif
Established 1867
Type Private
Location Boston, MA, U.S.A.
Campus Urban
Enrollment 750
Website http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Jordan Hall is NEC's 1,019 seat central performing space
Location: Boston, MA
Coordinates: 42°20′28.54″N 71°5′11.93″W / 42.3412611°N 71.0866472°W / 42.3412611; -71.0866472
Built/Founded: 1903, 1867
Architect: Wheelwright & Haven
Architectural style(s): Renaissance
Governing body: Private
Added to NRHP: May 14, 1980
Designated NHL: April 19, 1994
NRHP Reference#: 80000672 [1]

The New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent conservatory in the United States.[2]

The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of Continuing Education. At the collegiate level, NEC offers the Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts, as well as the Undergraduate Diploma, Graduate Diploma, and Artist's Diploma. Also offered are 5-year joint double degree programs with Harvard University and Tufts University.[3]

NEC is the only music school in the United States designated as a National Historic Landmark.[4] Its primary concert hall, Jordan Hall, plays an important role in the cultural scene of the entire New England region,[5] hosting over 600 concerts each year and receiving frequent praise for its acoustical qualities.[4]

Contents

History

1871 winter term

NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee, who modelled it after the European conservatories of that time. Initially, it was located in the Boston Music Hall just off Tremont Street in downtown Boston. In 1870 it moved to the former St. James Hotel in Franklin Square in the South End. It moved to its present location in the Symphony/Prudential Neighborhood on Huntington Avenue in 1903.

In 1881, when Henry Lee Higginson established the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he drew heavily on school's faculty to serve as section leaders. Today, the school and the orchestra continue to share a close association - nearly half of the BSO is composed of conservatory faculty and alumni.[6] When Boston established its first full-scale opera company in 1908, the manager, conductors, soloists, orchestra, chorus, library, and rehearsal rooms were all provided by the conservatory. After that company's demise, Boris Goldovsky's Opera Theater gave local audiences their first fully staged performances in more than a decade. In 1958, Goldovsky's protégé Sarah Caldwell founded the Opera Company of Boston, which gained international acclaim for its innovative programming.

Jordan Hall

Main article: Jordan Hall
The Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra performing in Jordan Hall.

Jordan Hall is NEC's central performing space, and seats 1019. Opened in 1903, Jordan Hall was the gift of New England Conservatory trustee Eben D. Jordan the 2nd, a member of the family that founded the Jordan Marsh retail stores and himself an amateur musician. In 1901, Jordan donated land for NEC's Main Building, while also offering to fund a concert hall with a gift of $120,000.

Working with the square plot of land, the hall's main architect Edmund Wheelwright modeled the building after the palaces of the Italian renaissance, in which courtyards often served as performance spaces. Wheelwright's design is what gives Jordan Hall its unique horseshoe shape, in which 1,019 seats are arranged to have clear sightlines to the stage. The floor is steeply graduated for maximum view, and the balcony has no obstructing supports. The shape and arrangement of seats give the hall its fine acoustical properties. Other distinctive features include the golden oak-colored finish of the interior and the great organ, also in oak with a gilt finish, and modeled on another Renaissance design: that of the organ in the Santa Maria Scala in Siena.

The dedication concert of Jordan Hall, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, took place on October 20, 1903, and created quite a stir. Effusive newspaper accounts deemed the hall "unequaled the world over," and the Boston Globe reported that it was "a place of entertainment that European musicians who were present that evening say excels in beauty anything of the kind they ever saw." [7]

A major renovation project was undergone in 1995, and since then Jordan Hall has won numerous awards including the 1996 Massachusetts Historical Commission Preservation Award, the Victorian Society in America's Preservation Commendation, the 1996 Boston Preservation Alliance Award, the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America Award of Merit, and the Illuminating Engineering Society 1996 Lumen Award.[5]

The hall is home to some 600+ student performances each academic year, and is also frequently used by third parties including outside organizations, touring artists, and guests. Both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Boston Philharmonic hold residencies at Jordan Hall. Some 125,00 guests attend concerts at the hall per year.[8] It is the only conservatory building to be designated a National Historic Landmark, and its acoustics rank with world's top concert halls for classical music.[9][10][11].

Campus

The NEC campus consists of three buildings occupying the block on Gainsborough Street between St. Botolph Street and Huntington Avenue, one block from the corner of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenue where the world-renowned Symphony Hall is situated. The Jordan Hall Building, whose main entrance is at 30 Gainsborough Street, is NEC's main building, home to Jordan Hall, Williams Hall, Brown Hall, the Keller Room, the Isabelle Firestone Audio Library, the Performance Library, professor studios/offices, and practice rooms. The second building, at 33 Gainsborough, is the Residence Hall, a coed dormitory which also houses the Harriet M. Spaulding Library and the "Bistro 33" dining center. The third building, entitled the "St. Botolph Building", at 241 St. Botolph street, contains the St. Botolph Hall, a computer laboratory, the electronic music studio, and the majority of the school's classrooms and administrative offices.

Majors of study

Admission to NEC is based primarily on a live audition. In 2005, 292 students were admitted out of a total of 968 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 30%.[12] NEC is renowned for its strings, jazz and chamber music departments. The Conservatory's piano department has recently risen to international significance.

Preparatory School

New England Conservatory's Preparatory School is an open enrollment institution for pre-college students that offers music classes and private instruction for young musicians, and fosters over 20 small and large ensembles. Students enrolled in New England Conservatory's Preparatory School may participate in the Certificate Program, allowing students to achieve their optimum performance skills, competence in music theory, and a knowledge of the literature that includes choral, orchestral, and chamber music, as well as solo repertoire. NEC Prep is home to one of the world's leading youth orchestras, the highly selective Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (YPO), headed by Benjamin Zander. In June 2007, the orchestra embarked on a highly publicized three-week tour of China. The Preparatory School also houses the Massachusetts Youth Wind Ensemble (MYWE), a highly selective touring wind ensemble open to advanced high school woodwind, brass, and percussion players directed by Michael Mucci. The Preparatory School routinely sends students to the finest conservatories and universities in the world.

School of Continuing Education

New England Conservatory's School of Continuing Education allows members of the surrounding community to experience the benefits of New England Conservatory's world class instruction, offering classes, lessons, and ensemble opportunities to musicians of any background. At NEC's School of Continuing Education members can participate in chamber, jazz, and vocal ensembles, an opera studio, an adult chorale, a Klezmer Band, and a Community Gospel Choir. In addition, NEC's School of Continuing Education offers classes in several fields including music history, music theory, and Alexander technique, many of which are instructed by members of the New England Conservatory college faculty.

Composition department

The composition department at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston first started gaining international relevance in the contemporary classical music world under the tenure of Gunther Schuller, who was president of the conservatory from 1967 to 1977 and one of the most significant figures in 20th century music. The current chair of the department is the composer Michael Gandolfi. The music produced at NEC frequently fuses multiple genres, such as jazz and - to a lesser extent - various rock and folk music, in addition to the more conventional academic classical music. Notable composers who have been associated with NEC include Michael Gandolfi, Lee Hyla, Gunther Schuller, Daniel Pinkham, Donald Martino, Robert Cogan, Anthony Coleman, Chou Wen-chung, Eleanor Cory, Sean Callery, Pozzi Escot, Joe Maneri, William Thomas McKinley, Danilo Pérez, Halim El-Dabh, Raymond Wilding-White, George Russell, Kati Agócs, and others. The department also shares a close link to the Tanglewood Music Festival, which is co-headed by Michael Gandolfi and John Harbison.

Recent guests who have visited the conservatory to give lectures and masterclasses include Paul Chihara, Peter Child, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Michael Colgrass, Margaret Brouwer, David Lang and Christopher Theofanidis.

Also of note

NEC is co-founder and educational partner of From the Top, a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.

The conservatory offers 5 year joint double degree programs with Harvard University and Tufts University; year-long exchange programs with London's Royal College of Music and Royal Academy of Music; and cross-registration with Tufts, Northeastern University, and Simmons College.

NEC is the founding institution of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity.

Piatigorsky Artist Award

The Piatigorsky Artist Award is a cello competition held every two years at the New England Conservatory. Jacqueline Piatigorsky (nee Rothschild), a patron of the arts and wife of the great cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, created an endowment for the New England Conservatory of Music in 1985 to provide a cash prize and a series of concert engagements for the recipient.

Previous Winners of the Piatigorsky Artist Award

Notable alumni

Notable present and former faculty

Notes

  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-08. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. 
  2. ^ [1]
  3. ^ [2]
  4. ^ a b [3]
  5. ^ a b [4]
  6. ^ [5]
  7. ^ [6]
  8. ^ [7]
  9. ^ [8]
  10. ^ [9]
  11. ^ "Jordan Hall History" — Handel and Haydn Society (retrieved 6 June 2006)
  12. ^ [10]

External links

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Colleges and universities in metropolitan Boston
Andover Newton Theological School · Bay State College · Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology · Bentley University · Berklee College of Music · The Boston Architectural College · Boston Baptist College · Boston College · Boston Conservatory · Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis · Boston University · Brandeis University · Bunker Hill Community College · Cambridge College · Curry College · Eastern Nazarene College · Emerson College · Emmanuel College · Episcopal Divinity School · Fisher College · Harvard University · Hebrew College · Hellenic College · Labouré College · Lasell College · Lesley University · Longy School of Music · Massachusetts College of Art and Design · Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences · Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology · Mount Ida College · Newbury College · New England College of Optometry · New England Conservatory of Music · New England Institute of Art · New England School of Law · Northeastern University · Pine Manor College · Quincy College · Regis College · Roxbury Community College · St. John's Seminary · School of the Museum of Fine Arts · Simmons College · Suffolk University · Tufts University · University of Massachusetts Boston · Urban College of Boston · Wentworth Institute of Technology · Wheelock College
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U.S. National Register of Historic Places

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