Louis Lombard's "Our Conservatories" (1892)

Abstract

This address was originally delivered to the officers of the New York State Music Teachers Association in Syracuse on June 27, 1892. It is here reprinted from the 1897 edition (called the third and published by F. Tennyson Neely, London and New York, under the title The Art Melodious) of Lombard's very popular book Observations of a Musician (originally published in Utica, New York, in 1893). Whatever the title, the work sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was translated into French, German, and Italian. Louis Lombard, one of the most extraordinary figures in the musical life of both the United States and Switzerland, was born in Lyon, France, on December 15, 1861, and died in Genoa, Italy, on November 1, 1927. He began his musical study in 1870 at the conservatory in Marseilles and completed his work in violin, song, and harmony at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1876, after the death of his father, he was engaged for a tour of the United States and remained in this country, after several trips abroad, until 1900. He took up the study of languages (he was master of eight) and began to compose and conduct. His first works were published by C. Berdan in Detroit, Oliver Ditson in New York, Theodore Presser in Philadelphia, and E. D. Buckingham in Utica. He became an American citizen in 1886, settled in upper New York State, and in 1889 founded and directed the Utica Conservatory of Music (which is still in existence) on the model of the Paris Conservatoire.