The Prague Conservatoire

JAN 01 1811 · 12:00

The Rudolfinum, on the right bank of the Vltava. The Prague Conservatoire, founded in April 1811 at the Convent of the Knights of the Cross, moved here in 1885 and remained until 1946. The Dvořák Hall has stood at the heart of Czech musical training for more than a century. Place: Originally at the Convent of the Knights of the Cross; later at the Rudolfinum after 1885 Figures: Count Johann Joseph von Pachta and the Bohemian musical nobility (founders of the Verein) · Bedřich Diviš Weber, first director · Carl Maria von Weber, director of the Estates Theatre opera 1813–1816 (related to but distinct from Bedřich Diviš) Six Bohemian noblemen, all amateur musicians, found the Verein zur Beförderung der Tonkunst in Böhmen in spring 1810 with the explicit goal of opening a conservatoire. The state will not fund it. The Habsburg treasury is empty from the Napoleonic wars (the Austrian state has formally defaulted on 20 February 1811, two months before the conservatoire opens). The aristocracy pays. The Lobkowicz, Kinský, Sternberg, Pachta, Clam-Gallas, and Nostitz families subscribe. On 24 April 1811 the Prague Conservatoire opens with twenty-one pupils studying string instruments. It is six years ahead of the Vienna Conservatoire (1817), eighteen ahead of London's Royal Academy (1822), and seventy-four ahead of any Czech-language school in the city. The first director, Bedřich Diviš Weber (Friedrich Dionys Weber, in the German press) sets the curriculum on Italian conservatoire models: chamber playing first, theory second, solo performance third.