AND WHAT ABOUT "CONSERVATOIRE"? THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM

"Conservatoire" versus "music school"

After years and years shut away within the walls of these institutions, these buildings full of instruments and sounds, how many of us have wondered why we study at a “conservatoire” and not at a “higher school of music” or “university”, as happens in other countries? Why are these places of learning called that? It is so commonplace, we start at the "conservatoire" so early, that we never even question it.

It is true that this is not the case in every country. In some there are music schools, and only when a student decides to turn their vocation into a profession do they enter a conservatoire. In others, the term simply does not exist, and higher studies are pursued at a university or a Higher School of Music offering an equivalent qualification.

To cite just two major European cities: what happens in Paris? It too has its Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse. London? The Royal College of Music.

Perhaps it is true that it is the countries or regions whose languages are closest to their Latin roots that use the term "conservatoire". The further away we move geographically, the more other terms are used: Musikschule, Musikakademie, School of Music, and so on.

Although the word Konservatorium exists in the Germanic regions, when you search for “conservatoire” in German, Google Translate throws up an amusing result: "wintergarten" (“greenhouse”). Coldly – and quite literally – we must admit that this fits the meaning of the verb "to conserve" better than the name of the places where we have studied...

But... what is conserved in conservatoires?

It is, to say the least, paradoxical that an institution devoted to teaching music should have a name based on a verb meaning "to conserve", when the raw material we work with is ethereal and intangible: nothing less than sound.

Very well, we accept the ethereal nature of sound. What then?

We, precisely we who devote ourselves to early music, can say that we conserve the music of other times. Well, in reality we learn to master our instruments so that we can bring this music to life. Music that people tried to transmit by means of notes on a score. Yes, true, we conserve scores of early music and books that help us find the way of performing it that is closest to the time of its creation.

But it turns out that conservatoires with early music specialisms are very few in proportion to all those that bear that name in a general way. Moreover, we could argue that it is not only what is known as “early music” but any other music of the 19th, 20th or 21st centuries that is conserved in conservatoires. The catch is that there is also a Composition specialism and Improvisation subjects. In other words: new music is created and, to a greater or lesser extent, students learn to improvise.

Let us be realistic: when a young person decides to enrol at a conservatoire, they do so because they want to learn to make music and to play an instrument, not to conserve who knows what.

Some of these centres, already historic, certainly gather valuable collections of scores, books, documentary archives and recordings (the only way of bottling sound!), as is the case with the library of the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, which holds important historical and administrative documentation, manuscript collections, printed music and sound recordings.

Let us, once again, be realistic: this is not the norm; and in any case all of it answers to the functions of one institution, the library, within another, the conservatoire.

A review of the dictionaries

The Diccionario de la Real Academia Española does not resolve our doubts: its definitions still do not explain why the term "conservatorio" is used, and the "fish pond" to which it refers in the etymology gives us a strange feeling...

Let us, then, carry out a small search – focused solely on nouns – in some dictionaries of the closest European languages:

SPANISH

Diccionario de la Real Academia Española ©

conservatorio, ria

From conservar; cf. medieval Lat. conservatorium 'fish pond'.

1. m. Establishment, generally public, where music and dance are taught.

2. adj. obs. Containing and preserving some thing or things.

ENGLISH

Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press

​conservatory noun [c] (SCHOOL) /kənˈsɜː.və.tər.i/

1. a school for the teaching of music or sometimes acting or art

conservatory noun [c] (ROOM) /kənˈsɜː.və.tər.i/

2. a room with glass walls and a glass roof, usually connected to a house, used for growing plants or for relaxing in

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers

conservatory /kənˈsɜːvətrɪ/n ( pl -tories)

1. a greenhouse, esp one attached to a house

2. another word for conservatoire

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2017

con•ser•va•toire (kən sûr′və twär′, -sûr′və twär′; Fr. kôn ser va twar′), n., pl. -toires

1. Music and Dance conservatory, as of music or theatrical arts.

*Etimology: Italian conservatorio conservatory, origin, originally, orphanage; early schools of music originated in orphanages where a musical education was given

FRENCH

Dictionnaire de l'Académie française

conservatoire n. m. XIV^e siècle. Dérivé du radical de conserver.

1. Établissement d'enseignement artistique. Conservatoire national supérieur de musique. Conservatoire national d'art dramatique. Professeur au Conservatoire. Les élèves du Conservatoire sont recrutés par concours. Un premier prix de violon, un premier prix de tragédie du Conservatoire. Les conservatoires municipaux. Un conservatoire de danse. Par anal. Le Conservatoire national des arts et métiers ou, par abréviation, CNAM, établissement public d'enseignement supérieur technique.

2. Organisme administratif chargé de veiller à la conservation et à la sauvegarde d'un bien du domaine public. Le Conservatoire du littoral.

Dictionnaire Larousse © Editions Larousse

conservatoire nom masculin

Nom donné à certains organismes administratifs et à certains établissements d'enseignement, en particulier dans le domaine musical. + info

ITALIAN

Dizionari Garzanti Linguistica ©

conservatorio

[con-ser-va-tò-rio] n.m.

pl. -ri

1. istituto in cui s’insegnano le discipline musicali: studiare al conservatorio

2. (antiq.) collegio femminile; educandato

Etimologia:← deriv. di conservare; nel xvi sec. la voce designava quegli istituti napoletani che si prendevano cura degli orfani e nei quali era data notevole importanza all’insegnamento musicale.

GERMAN

Das Wortauskunftssystem zur deutschen Sprache in Geschichte und Gegenwart ©

Konservatorium, das

Substantiv (Neutrum) · Genitiv Singular: Konservatoriums · Nominativ Plural: Konservatorien

Musikschule, Musikhochschule

Etymologie: Die Bezeichnung der seit Ausgang des 18. Jhs. in verschiedenen europäischen Ländern nach italienischem Vorbild gegründeten Musik(hoch)schulen ist eine latinisierte Entlehnung (letztes Viertel 18. Jh.) von ital. conservatorio ‘Musikschule’, auch ‘Erziehungsanstalt, Internat, Asyl, bes. (zur Rettung) für Frauen und Mädchen’. Der auf ital. conservare ‘bewahren, erhalten, retten’ (lat. cōnservāre, s. konservieren; vgl. hierzu mlat.conservatorium ‘Fischbecken’) beruhende ital. Ausdruck erklärt sich daraus, daß in Italien die ersten öffentlichen Ausbildungsstätten für Gesang und Instrumentalmusik (im 16./17. Jh.) an Waisenhäuser und Einrichtungen der Armenpflege angeschlossen sind, wird aber seit Beginn des 19. Jhs. meist im Sinne von ‘Institution zur Bewahrung und Förderung der Musikkultur’ umgedeutet.

Convents, hospices, orphanages... and music

Aha, we have it: beyond greenhouses (apparently the main English sense), administrative bodies and girls’ schools, the etymology of the term in the Italian, German and American dictionaries puts us on the trail of its origin: ancient Italian institutions that took in abandoned children and offered them musical instruction.

The musicologist Adelmo Damerini gives us the explanation in his entry "Conservatorio" in the Enciclopedia Italiana (1931):

The word "conservatorio" originally means "asylum", "hospice", "orphanage". That, in fact, is what the first conservatoires in Italy were: places where young people without parents were "conserved". There they were taught to read and write, and ways were sought to provide them with some trade. Those who showed a particular aptitude were also offered a musical education.

Among the many Neapolitan examples, we may cite the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo, the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, that of San Onofrio, the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini...

With the same purpose, musical institutions known as "ospedali" arose in Venice: della Pietà, dei Mendicanti, degli Incurabili, dei Ss. Giovanni e Paolo.

The most famous composers of the day worked in these institutions, such as Francesco Gasparini, Johann Rosenmüller and Antonio Vivaldi, whose names are inextricably linked with the Ospedale della Pietá in Venice.

Appropriation of the term and expansion from the 18th century onwards

It was from the 18th century that these hospices began to become institutions devoted to the teaching of music. Institutions and name alike were adopted outside Italy wherever an important school of music or dramatic art arose, losing over time the charitable character of the first conservatoires.

The first example of a modern state conservatoire is the Conservatoire National de Musique et de Déclamation, founded (with some music schools as antecedents) in 1795 with the mission of devising a method for each of the artistic disciplines and of safeguarding the traditions of dramatic and musical art.

Following this model, the Conservatorio de Milán was created in 1808, and in the following years those of Prague (1811), the Hochschule för Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna (1817), the Royal Academy of Music in London (1822), the Real Conservatorio de Música de Madrid (1830), the Conservatoire Royal in Brussels (1832) and the Hochschule för Musik in Leipzig, founded by Mendelssohn in 1843 and which attracted students from all over Europe.

The Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid was founded in 1830 by Queen María Cristina, a great music lover, on the model of the institutions then being created in Italy and France.

Its website gives an account of the state of music before that moment, which was not so far removed from the Italian ospedali:

Until then, musical teaching had been taken care of by institutions such as the choir schools of cathedrals and monasteries, the universities and the Real Colegio de Niños Cantores on calle Leganitos in Madrid. The fortunate founding of the Conservatorio by Royal Decree of 15 June 1830 (published on 16 September of the same year) helped to remedy a grave error of the 18th century, namely the exclusion of music from the Reales Academias de Bellas Artes created by Philip V and Ferdinand VI.

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