El conservatorio de música de Valencia. Antecedentes, fundación y primer etapa (1879-1910)

by Fontestad Piles, Ana

ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the background, the creation, the functioning and the repercussion of the Valencia Music Conservatory from 1850 until 1910. Therefore, it also offers a panoramic vision of music in the educational Valencian frame from 1850 up to the foundation of this institution in 1879. It is composed by three sections, each of them is constituted by two chapters, that respond to three objectives: 1st. To study the expansion of music in the educational field up to the foundation of the Valencian Conservatory. 2nd. To analyze the internal functioning of this institution from its creation until 1910. 3rd. To investigate its external projection during the mentioned period. The first two chapters have as purpose to study the diffusion of music in the educational scope in order to discover the reasons that impelled the foundation of the Conservatory. The first chapter describes the situation of the private and public musical teaching until 1879. In the second, special attention is given to Pascual Pérez Gascón for stimulating the musical instruction in the general education and for supporting in this commission to the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País, main promoter of the Conservatory. In the third and fourth chapters, after knowing the motivations that impelled the Económica, the city council and the county council to found the Conservatory, its internal functioning is analyzed in order to strike a balance of the pedagogical activity. Its headquarters are indicated and especially, the linkage of its location with the pianos manufacturer Pedro Gómez, who contributed effectively to avoid its closing in a time of economic scarcity. In the last two chapters its external projection is investigated in order to show the interaction between its educational-musical labour and the society from 1879 until 1910, when the Económica leaves the centre to the two co-founder organisms so that it could obtain the officialdom. It is explained how it regulated the functioning of the municipal schools and their principal musical activities. It is analyzed the repertory and the interpreters, many of them of international range.