National Training School for Music

The National Training School for Music, sometimes given as the National Training School of Music, was a music conservatory located in Kensington, London, England. Established in 1873 and opened in 1876, the school's first principal was Arthur Sullivan. He was succeeded by John Stainer in 1881. In 1882 the school was absorbed into the newly created Royal College of Music which began instructing students in 1883.

History

Founded in 1873, the idea for the National Training School of Music (NTSM) was initially proposed by the Prince Consort who envisioned a school that would provide free musical training to winners of scholarships across the United Kingdom. After a three-year period of acquiring facilities, faculty, resources, the school opened in 1876, with Arthur Sullivan as its principal. Conservatoires to train young students for a musical career had been set up in major European cities, but in London the long-established Royal Academy of Music had not supplied suitable training for professional musicians: in 1870 it was estimated that fewer than ten percent of instrumentalists in London orchestras had studied at the academy. The NTSM's aim, summarised in its founding charter, was:

To establish for the United Kingdom such a School of Music as already exists in many of the principal Continental countries, – a School which shall take rank with the Conservatories of Milan, Paris, Vienna, Leipsic, Brussels, and Berlin, – a School which shall do for the musical youth of Great Britain what those Schools are doing for the talented youth of Italy, Austria, France, Germany, and Belgium.

The school was housed in a new building in Kensington Gore, opposite the west side of the Royal Albert Hall. The building was not large, having only 18 practice rooms and no concert hall.