Germany's first orchestra school opens, 1872
Liszt wanted a conservatory in Weimar and never got one; the school opened nineteen years after his attempt collapsed.
In 1872 an orchestra school opened in Weimar under the church musician Carl Müllerhartung, tied closely to the court orchestra — by its own account the first such school in Germany. It is the institution the Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT dates itself from.
An idea Liszt could not get built
Liszt had written down the notion of "progressive schools of music" as early as 1835, and he pressed for a conservatory in Weimar between 1849 and 1853, while he held the court post and had as much influence as he would ever have.[1] It failed. The school that finally opened in 1872 came about, in the Hochschule's own words, in an altogether different and more grassroots way than he had proposed — and it opened long after he had stopped asking for it.
What made it unusual
It was a vocational school for boys of fourteen to eighteen, bound very closely to the court orchestra, and it trained working players rather than gentlemen amateurs. In 1876 it added the training of young women of the same age as piano and singing teachers, plus a preparatory school for children of ten to fourteen of both sexes.[1] The name everybody knows it by came much later: it has carried Liszt's since 1956, seventy years after his death.
Sources
- Tradition seit 1872 — Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
Historical figures
Historical figures
1811–1886 • composer • pianist • conductor
The school realises the idea he had written down in 1835 and failed to establish between 1849 and 1853 — which is why it carries his name today.
Historic sites
Stages and venues
Platz der Demokratie 2 | 3, 99423 Weimar
The Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT dates its own tradition from this founding.
Period
1832–1918
The period's third institution, after the art school of 1860 and the museum of 1869, and the one that still teaches.