Jeanette Thurber was amongst the first major patrons of classical music in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. She was the daughter of Henry Meyers, an immigrant violinist from Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 and Annamarie Coffin Price. Jeanette Thurber was educated at the Paris Conservatory.

She married a millionaire grocery wholesaler, Francis Beattie Thurber, on September 15, 1869. In 1884 she founded the National Conservatory of Music of America

National Conservatory of Music of America

The National Conservatory of Music of America was an institution for higher education in music founded in 1885 in New York City by Jeannette Meyers Thurber...

 and its adjunct American Opera Company

American Opera Company

The American Opera Company was the name of four different opera companies active in the United States. The first company was a short-lived opera company founded in New York City in February, 1886 that lasted only one season...

, both in New York. In 1884 she sponsored New York City's first Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 festival. In 1888-9 she sponsored the New York debut of the Boston Symphony. In 1892, she was responsible for bringing the Czech

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 composer Antonín Dvořák

Antonín Dvorák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

 to the United States to head her conservatory. It was her ambition to found a uniquely American school of classical music composition, a national conservatory, federally funded and based in Washington DC with branches throughout the United States.

At her death, a laudatory obituary article appeared in the New York Times and said of her national conservatory:

“The conservatory, of which the New York home was intended as the beginning, never reached Washington. Nor were national branches ever established. An educational plan of the loftiest and best, admirably developed on the artistic side, did not find the full measure of financing necessary, for its permanence. But it was Mrs. Thurber who established a precedent in this field which never will be forgotten, as one of the works which made her life and her vision and invincible spirit so valuable to the musical advancement of America.

External links

• "On the Money: New Music Funding in the United States", an excerpt concerning Jeanette M. Thurber