The Juilliard School ( ) is a
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
performing arts
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perform ...
conservatory in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in
dance
Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
,
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
, and
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
. It is widely regarded as one of the most elite drama, music, and dance schools in the world.
History
Early years: 1905-1946
![John Erskine crop](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/John_Erskine_crop.jpg)
In 1905, the Institute of Musical Art, Juilliard's predecessor institution, was founded by
Frank Damrosch
Frank Heino Damrosch (June 22, 1859 – October 22, 1937) was a German-born American music conductor and educator. In 1905, Damrosch founded the New York Institute of Musical Art, a predecessor of the Juilliard School.
Life and career
Damrosch w ...
, the godson of
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
and head of music education for
New York City's public schools, on the premise that the United States did not have a premier music school and too many students were going to Europe to study music. In 1919, a wealthy textile merchant named
Augustus Juilliard
Augustus D. Juilliard (April 19, 1836 – April 25, 1919) was an American businessman and philanthropist, born at sea as his parents were immigrating to the United States from France. Making a successful career in New York City, he bequeathed ...
died and left the school in his will the largest single bequest for the advancement of music at that time. In 1968, the school's name was changed from the Juilliard School of Music to The Juilliard School to reflect its broadened mission to educate musicians, directors, and actors.
The Institute of Musical Art opened in the former Lenox Mansion,
Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...
and 12th Street, on October 11, 1905. It moved in 1910 to 120
Claremont Avenue
Claremont Avenue is a short avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It begins at 116th Street and runs north for a length of eleven blocks until it ends at Tiemann Place (the western segment of 127th Street) ...
in the
Morningside Heights
Morningside Heights is a neighborhood on the West Side of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Morningside Drive to the east, 125th Street to the north, 110th Street to the south, and Riverside Drive to the west. Morningside ...
neighborhood of Manhattan, onto a property purchased from
Bloomingdale Insane Asylum
The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum (1821–1889) was an American private hospital for the care of the mentally ill, founded by New York Hospital. It was located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, where Columbia U ...
near the
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
campus. In 1920, the Juilliard Foundation was created, named after textile merchant
Augustus D. Juilliard
Augustus D. Juilliard (April 19, 1836 – April 25, 1919) was an American businessman and philanthropist, born at sea as his parents were immigrating to the United States from France. Making a successful career in New York City, he bequeathed ...
, who bequeathed a substantial amount of money for the advancement of music in the United States. In 1924, the foundation purchased the
Vanderbilt family
The Vanderbilt family is an American family who gained prominence during the Gilded Age. Their success began with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the family expanded into various other areas of industry and philanthr ...
guesthouse at 49 E.
52nd Street
52nd Street is a -long one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan, New York City. A short section of it was known as the city's center of jazz performance from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Jazz center
Following the repeal of ...
, and established the Juilliard Graduate School. In 1926, the Juilliard School of Music was created through a merger of the Institute of Musical Art and the Juilliard Graduate School. The two schools shared a common board of directors and president (
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
professor
John Erskine) but retained their distinct identities. The conductor and music-educator
Frank Damrosch
Frank Heino Damrosch (June 22, 1859 – October 22, 1937) was a German-born American music conductor and educator. In 1905, Damrosch founded the New York Institute of Musical Art, a predecessor of the Juilliard School.
Life and career
Damrosch w ...
continued as the Institute's dean, and the Australian pianist and composer
Ernest Hutcheson
Ernest Hutcheson (20 July 1871 – 9 February 1951) was an Australian pianist, composer and teacher.
Biography
Hutcheson was born in Melbourne, and toured there as a child prodigy at the age of five. He later travelled to Leipzig and entere ...
was appointed dean of the Graduate School. In 1937, Hutcheson succeeded Erskine as president of the two institutions, a job he held until 1945.
Expansion and growth: 1946-1990
In 1946, the Institute of Musical Art and the Juilliard Graduate School completely merged to form a single institution. The president of the school at that time was
William Schuman
William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910February 15, 1992) was an American composer and arts administrator.
Life
Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. ...
, the first winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted i ...
.
![Alice Tully Hall (48047494177)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Alice_Tully_Hall_%2848047494177%29.jpg)
William Schuman graduated from
Columbia's Teachers College (BS 1935, MA 1937) and attended the Juilliard Summer School in 1932, 1933 and 1936. While attending Juilliard Summer School, he developed a personal dislike for traditional music theory and ear training curricula, finding little value in
counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
and
dictation
Dictation can refer to:
*Dictation (exercise), when one person speaks while another person transcribes
*'' Dictation: A Quartet'', a collection of short stories by Cynthia Ozick, published in 2008
*Digital dictation, the use of digital electronic m ...
. Soon after being appointed as president of the Juilliard School of Music in 1945, Schuman created a new curriculum called the ''Literature and Materials of Music'' (L&M), designed for composers to teach. L&M was a reaction against more formal theory and ear training, and as a result did not have a formal structure. The general mandate was "to give the student an awareness of the dynamic nature of the materials of music." The quality and degree of each student's education in harmony, music history, or ear training was dependent on how each composer-teacher decided to interpret this mandate.
In 1946, the
Juilliard String Quartet
The Juilliard String Quartet is a classical music string quartet founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York by William Schuman. Since its inception, it has been the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School. It has received numerous ...
was created by Schuman as a resident ensemble at the school, and it quickly established an international reputation as one of the most notable classical music groups in the United States. That year, the school had more than 1,800 students, with more than 500 supported by the
G.I. Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
. Two years later, the number was close to 1,100 students in total.
In 1951, Schuman established the dance division of the school under the direction of
Martha Hill
Martha Hill (December 1, 1900 – November 19, 1995) was one of the most influential American dance instructors in history. She was the first Director of Dance at the Juilliard School, and held that position for almost 35 years.
Early lif ...
.
In 1957 after months of meetings with various organizations and individuals, it was announced that the Juilliard School of Music will relocate from upper Manhattan to the future
Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
.
It was also announced that upon the school's eventual relocating, it will add a drama division.
Juilliard's new building at Lincoln Center was designed by
Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi (August 18, 1899 – February 14, 1994) was an Italian-American architect. A leading figure in modern architecture
Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based up ...
with associates Eduardo Catalano y Helge Westermann.
The Center would cover the costs for the construction project and Juilliard would be changed with renting the space.
![The Juilliard School photo D Ramey Logan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/The_Juilliard_School_photo_D_Ramey_Logan.jpg)
William Schuman was elected president of Lincoln Center in 1962 and
Peter Mennin
Peter Mennin (born Mennini) (May 17, 1923 in Erie, Pennsylvania – June 17, 1983 in New York City) was a prominent American composer, teacher and administrator. In 1958, he was named Director of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and in ...
, another composer with directorial experience at the
Peabody Conservatory
The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University is a private conservatory and preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in 1857 and opened in 1866 by merchant/financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795–1869) ...
, was elected as his successor. Mennin made significant changes to the L&M program—ending ear training and music history and hiring the well known pedagogue Renée Longy to teach
solfège
In music, solfège (, ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a music education method used to teach aural skills, Pitch (music), pitch and sight-reading of Western classical music, Western music. Solfège is ...
. In 1968, Mennin hired
John Houseman
John Houseman (born Jacques Haussmann; September 22, 1902 – October 31, 1988) was a Romanian-born British-American actor and producer of theatre, film, and television. He became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director ...
to manage the new Drama Division, and in 1969 oversaw Juilliard's relocation from Claremont Avenue to Lincoln Center. The School's name was changed to The Juilliard School to reflect its broadened mission to educate musicians, directors, and actors.
On October 26, 1969, the dedication ceremony for the new building at Lincoln Center included a concert at
Alice Tully Hall
Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The hall is named for Alice Tully, a New York performer and philanthropist whose donations assist ...
(built into the Juilliard School) with the Juilliard Orchestra under
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski (18 April 1882 – 13 September 1977) was a British conductor. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appeara ...
and
Jean Paul Morel Jean Paul Morel (January 10, 1903 in Abbeville – April 14, 1975 in New York City) was a French-born naturalized-American conductor. He served on the conducting staff of the New York City Opera from 1946-1951. He had a long association with th ...
, and with soloists
Itzhak Perlman
Itzhak Perlman ( he, יצחק פרלמן; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist widely considered one of the greatest violinists in the world. Perlman has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that hav ...
,
Shirley Verrett
Shirley Verrett (May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles, i.e. soprano sfogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s, particularly wel ...
, and
Van Cliburn
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. (; July 12, 1934February 27, 2013) was an American pianist who, at the age of 23, achieved worldwide recognition when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 during the Cold Wa ...
.
Joseph W. Polisi
Joseph William Polisi (born 1947) was the President of The Juilliard School from 1984 to May 2017, having assumed the position upon the death of his predecessor, Peter Mennin.
Born in New York City to an Italian family, Dr. Polisi is the son of W ...
became president of Juilliard in 1984 after the death of Peter Mennin.
Modernization: 1990-2020
During the early 1990s, there were many budget cuts in
music education
Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do origina ...
throughout
public schools in New York, most of which served underrepresented communities. In 1991, Polisi had the idea of creating the Music Advancement Program (MAP) to help students affected by the budget cuts. That year, 40 students from across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx successfully auditioned and were chosen to participate in the program. Like the pre-college division, it is a Saturday program. Many other changes took place in the years under Polisi. Between 1990 and 1993, individual departments for all instruments and voice were established, the Merideth Wilson Residence Hall was built next to the school, salaries for teachers were increased, and the school hoped to accept fewer people and eventually cut 100 students to allow for more funding.
In 1999, the Juilliard School was awarded the
National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and Patronage, patrons of the arts. A prestigious American honor, it is the highest honor given to artists and ar ...
.
In 2001, the school established a
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
performance training program. In September 2005,
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis (25 September 1927 – 14 April 2013) was an English conductor, known for his association with the London Symphony Orchestra, having first conducted it in 1959. His repertoire was broad, but among the composers with whom h ...
conducted an orchestra that combined students from the Juilliard and London's
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...
at the BBC
Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...
, and during 2008 the Juilliard Orchestra embarked on a successful tour of China, performing concerts as part of the
Cultural Olympiad
An olympiad ( el, Ὀλυμπιάς, ''Olympiás'') is a period of four years, particularly those associated with the ancient and modern Olympic Games.
Although the ancient Olympics were established during Greece's Archaic Era, it was not until ...
in Beijing,
Suzhou
Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade ...
, and Shanghai under the expert leadership of Maestro
Xian Zhang.
In 2006, Juilliard received a trove of precious music manuscripts from board chair and philanthropist
Bruce Kovner
Bruce Stanley Kovner (born 1945) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is chairman of CAM Capital, which he established in January 2012 to manage his investment, trading and business activities. From 1983 through 2 ...
. The collection includes autograph scores, sketches, composer-emended proofs and first editions of major works by
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
,
Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...
,
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
,
Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
,
Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
,
Chopin,
Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...
,
Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
,
Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
,
Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
,
Copland, and other masters of the classical music canon. Many of the manuscripts had been unavailable for generations. Among the items are the printer's manuscript of Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony, complete with Beethoven's handwritten amendments, that was used for the first performance in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
in 1824; Mozart's autograph of the wind parts of the final scene of ''
The Marriage of Figaro
''The Marriage of Figaro'' ( it, Le nozze di Figaro, links=no, ), K. 492, is a ''commedia per musica'' (opera buffa) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premie ...
''; Beethoven's arrangement of his monumental ''
Große Fuge
The ''Grosse Fuge'' (German spelling: ''Große'' ''Fuge'', also known in English as the ''Great Fugue'' or ''Grand Fugue''), Op. 133, is a single-movement composition for string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven. An immense double fugue, it was ...
'' for piano four hands; Schumann's working draft of his
Symphony No. 2; and manuscripts of Brahms's
Symphony No. 2 and
Piano Concerto No. 2. The entire collection has since been digitized and can be viewed online. In 2010, philanthropist
James S. Marcus
James Stewart Marcus (15 December 1929 – 5 July 2015) was an American philanthropist and investment banker at Goldman Sachs who supported classical music, opera, and the vocal arts in and around New York City. He served as Chairman of the Board ...
donated $10 million to the school to establish the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at the school.
![Tianjin Juilliard School](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Tianjin_Juilliard_School.jpg)
On September 28, 2015, the Juilliard School announced a major expansion into
Tianjin
Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...
during a visit by China's first lady,
Peng Liyuan
Peng Liyuan (; born 20 November 1962) is a Chinese soprano and contemporary folk singer and the spouse of Xi Jinping, current General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of the People's Republic of China. Peng gained popularit ...
, the institution's first such full-scale foray outside the United States.
The school opened in 2020 and offers a
Master of Music degree program.
In May 2017, retired
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company' ...
principal dancer
Damian Woetzel
Damian Woetzel (born May 17, 1967) is an American choreographer.
Woetzel was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, where he performed from 1985 until 2008. He also frequently performed with companies like the Kirov Ballet and America ...
was named president, replacing Joseph W. Polisi.
Post-Pandemic: 2020-present
In June 2021, members of the student group ''The Socialist Penguins'' organized a protest against rising tuition costs after claiming that they "weren't being listened to" when meeting with president and provost about the tuition fees. In September, the school's Evening Division was renamed to Juilliard Extension which would broaden to offer programs in person and online. In December of the same year, a $50 million gift was given to the school's Music Advancement Program to help students of underrepresented backgrounds.
Admission
Juilliard admits both degree program seekers and pre-college division students. The latter enter a conservatory program for younger students to develop their skills; All applicants who wish to enroll in the Music Advancement Program, for the Pre-College Division, must perform an audition in person before members of the faculty and administration and must be between ages 8 and 18.
The Juilliard admissions program comprises several distinct steps. Applicants must submit a complete application, school transcripts, and recommendations;
some majors also require that applicants submit prescreening recordings of their work, which are evaluated as part of the application.
A limited number of applicants are then invited to a live audition,
sometimes with additional callbacks.
After auditions, the school invites select applicants to meet with a program administrator.
Admission to the Juilliard School is highly competitive. In 2007, the school received 2,138 applications for admission, of which 162 were admitted for a 7.6% acceptance rate. For the fall semester of 2009, the school had an 8.0% acceptance rate.
In 2011, the school accepted 5.5% of applicants.
For Fall 2012, 2,657 undergraduate applicants were received by the college division and 7.2% were accepted. The 75th percentile accepted into Juilliard in 2012 had a
GPA
Grading in education is the process of applying standardized measurements for varying levels of achievements in a course. Grades can be assigned as letters (usually A through F), as a range (for example, 1 to 6), as a percentage, or as a numbe ...
of 3.96 and an
SAT
The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schola ...
score of 1350.
A cross-registration program is available with
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
where Juilliard students who are accepted to the program are able to attend Columbia classes, and vice versa. The program is highly selective, admitting 10-12 students from Juilliard per year. Columbia students also have the option of pursuing an accelerated
Master of Music degree at Juilliard and obtaining a bachelor's degree at
Barnard Barnard is a version of the surname Bernard, which is a French and West Germanic masculine given name and surname. The surname means as tough as a bear, Bar(Bear)+nard/hard(hardy/tough)
__NOTOC__
People
Some of the people bearing the surname Ba ...
or Columbia and an MM from Juilliard in five (or potentially six, for voice majors) years.
Academics
The school offers courses in dance, drama, and music.
The Dance Division was established in 1951 by William Schuman with Martha Hill as its director. It offers a
Bachelor of Fine Arts
A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students for pursuing a professional education in the visual, fine or performing arts. It is also called Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) in some cases.
Background
The Bachelor ...
or a Diploma.
The Drama Division was established in 1968 by the actor
John Houseman
John Houseman (born Jacques Haussmann; September 22, 1902 – October 31, 1988) was a Romanian-born British-American actor and producer of theatre, film, and television. He became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director ...
and
Michel Saint-Denis
Michel Jacques Saint-Denis (13 September 1897 – 31 July 1971), ''dit'' Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theatre director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European the ...
. Its acting programs offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts, a Diploma and, beginning in Fall 2012, a
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.)
is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...
. Until 2006, when James Houghton became director of the Drama Division, there was a "cut system" that would remove up to one-third of the second-year class. The
Lila Acheson Wallace
Lila Bell Wallace (December 25, 1889 – May 8, 1984) was an American magazine publisher and philanthropist. She co-founded ''Reader's Digest'' with her husband Dewitt Wallace, publishing the first issue in 1922.
Early life and education
Born Li ...
American Playwrights Program, begun in 1993, offers one-year, tuition-free, graduate fellowships; selected students may be offered a second-year extension and receive an Artist Diploma. The
Andrew W. Mellon
Andrew William Mellon (; March 24, 1855 – August 26, 1937), sometimes A. W. Mellon, was an American banker, businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, and politician. From the wealthy Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylva ...
Artist Diploma Program for Theatre Directors was a two-year graduate fellowship that began in 1995 (expanded to three years in 1997); this was discontinued in the fall of 2006.
The Music Division is the largest of the school's divisions. Available degrees are
Bachelor of Music
Bachelor of Music (BM or BMus) is an academic degree awarded by a college, university, or conservatory upon completion of a program of study in music. In the United States, it is a professional degree, and the majority of work consists of prescr ...
or Diploma,
Master of Music or
Graduate Diploma, Artist Diploma and
Doctor of Musical Arts
The Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) is a doctoral academic degree in music. The DMA combines advanced studies in an applied area of specialization (usually music performance, music composition, or conducting) with graduate-level academic study in ...
.
Academic major
An academic major is the academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits. A student who successfully completes all courses required for the major qualifies for an undergraduate degree. The word ''major'' (also called ''conce ...
s are brass, collaborative piano, composition,
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
,
harp
The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...
, historical performance, jazz studies, orchestral conducting, organ, percussion,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
, strings, voice, and
woodwinds
Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and reed ...
. The collaborative piano, historical performance, and orchestral conducting programs are solely at the graduate level; the opera studies and music performance subprograms only offer Artist Diplomas. The Juilliard Vocal Arts department now incorporates the former Juilliard Opera Center.
All Bachelor and Master courses require credits from the Liberal Arts course; Joseph W. Polisi is a member of the Liberal Arts faculty.
Pre-College Division
The Pre-College Division teaches students enrolled in elementary,
junior high
A middle school (also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school) is an educational stage which exists in some countries, providing education between primary school and secondary school. ...
, and high school. The Pre-College Division is conducted every Saturday from September to May in the Juilliard Building at Lincoln Center.
All students study
solfège
In music, solfège (, ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a music education method used to teach aural skills, Pitch (music), pitch and sight-reading of Western classical music, Western music. Solfège is ...
and
music theory
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (ke ...
in addition to their primary instrument. Vocal majors must also study diction and performance. Similarly, pianists must study piano performance. String, brass and woodwind players, as well as percussionists, also participate in orchestra. The pre-college has two orchestras, the Pre-College Symphony (PCS) and the Pre-College Orchestra (PCO). Placement is by age and students may elect to study conducting, chorus, and chamber music.
The Pre-College Division began as the Preparatory Centers (later the Preparatory Division), part of the Institute of Musical Art since 1916. The Pre-College Division was established in 1969 with Katherine McC. Ellis as its first director. Olegna Fuschi served as director from 1975 to 1988. The Fuschi/Mennin partnership allowed the Pre-College Division to thrive, affording its graduates training at the highest artistic level (with many of the same teachers as the college division), as well as their own commencement ceremony and diplomas. In addition to Fuschi, directors of Juilliard's Pre-College Division have included composer Dr.
Andrew Thomas. The current director of the Pre-College Division is Yoheved Kaplinsky.
Music Technology Center
The Music Technology Center at the Juilliard School was created in 1993 to provide students with the opportunity to use
digital technology Digital technology may refer to:
* Application of digital electronics
* Any significant piece of knowledge from information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange al ...
in the creation and performance of new music. Since then, the program has expanded to include a wide offering of classes such as, Introduction to Music Technology, Music Production,
Film scoring
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...
, Computers In Performance and an Independent Study In Composition.
In 2009, the Music Technology Center moved to a new, state of the art facility that includes a mix and record suite and a digital "playroom" for composing and rehearsing with technology. Together with the Willson Theater, the Music Technology Center is the home of interdisciplinary and electro-acoustic projects and performances at the Juilliard School.
Juilliard Electric Ensemble
The Juilliard Electric Ensemble was created in 2003 to provide students from all three of Juilliard's divisions (
dance
Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
,
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
, and
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
) with an opportunity to use new technology in the creation and performance of interactive and multi-disciplinary work.
In past performances, the Juilliard Electric Ensemble has used interactive technology to expand the range of their instruments, control audio and visual elements with electronic tools, shape video and projection design in real-time by moving through a virtual field, and interact with artists and computers around the world via the web.
Since its debut, the Electric Ensemble has performed works by over 50 composers including
Joan La Barbara
Joan Linda La Barbara (born June 8, 1947) is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited w ...
,
Kenji Bunch
Kenji Bunch (born July 27, 1973) is an American composer and violist living in Portland, Oregon. Bunch currently serves as the artistic director oFear No Musicand teaches at Portland State University, Reed College, and for the Portland Youth Phil ...
,
Eric Chasalow
Eric David Chasalow (born 1955) is an American composer of acoustic and electronic music. He is Graduate Dean at Brandeis University, and Director of BEAMS, the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio.
Biography
He was born in Newark, New Jersey o ...
,
Sebastian Currier
Sebastian Currier (born March 16, 1959) is an American composer of music for chamber groups and orchestras. He was also a professor of music at Columbia University from 1999 to 2007.
Life
Currier was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and was ra ...
,
Avner Dorman
Avner Dorman (Hebrew: אבנר דורמן; born April 14, 1975 in Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli-born composer, educator and conductor.
Education
Dorman holds a doctorate in music composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied as a C ...
,
Jonathan Harvey,
Jocelyn Pook
Jocelyn Pook (, rhyming with "book"; born 14 February 1960) is an English composer and viola player. She is known for her scores for many films, including ''Eyes Wide Shut'', ''The Merchant of Venice'' and '' The Wife''.
Education
Pook gradua ...
,
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, a ...
,
Daniel Bernard Roumain
Daniel Bernard Roumain (known by his initials, DBR; born 1970) is a classically trained composer, performer, violinist, and band-leader, whose work combines classical music with jazz, hip-hop and rock.
Composer
In September 2010, ''Dancers, Drea ...
,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
,
Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933) is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition '' Silver Apples of the Moon'', the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the foun ...
,
Alejandro Viñao
Alejandro Viñao (born 4 September 1951) is an Argentinian composer currently living in the United Kingdom.
Life and career
Viñao studied musical composition in Buenos Aires with the composer Jacobo Ficher. In 1976 he was awarded a British Counc ...
,
Jacob ter Veldhuis
Jacob ter Veldhuis (born 14 November 1951), also known as Jacob TV, is a Dutch avant-garde classical composer, born in Westerlee. Ter Veldhuis favors tonal, melodic compositions: ‘I pepper my music with sugar,’ he says. Many of his works bu ...
,
David Wallace, Mark Wood, and Peter Wyer.
Performing ensembles
![WTM NewYorkDolls 056](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/WTM_NewYorkDolls_056.jpg)
The Juilliard School has a variety of ensembles, including
chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...
,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, orchestras, and vocal/
choral
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...
groups. Juilliard's orchestras include the Juilliard Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Juilliard Theatre Orchestra, and the Conductors' Orchestra. The Axiom Ensemble is a student directed and managed group dedicated to well-known 20th-century works.
In addition, Juilliard resident ensembles, which feature faculty members, perform frequently at the school. These groups include the
Juilliard String Quartet
The Juilliard String Quartet is a classical music string quartet founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York by William Schuman. Since its inception, it has been the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School. It has received numerous ...
and the
American Brass Quintet
When the American Brass Quintet gave its first public performance on December 11, 1960, brass chamber music was still relatively young to concert audiences. The New York Brass Quintet is regarded as the first brass quintet in the United States, ha ...
.
Notable people
References
Further reading
* ''Ten Years of American Opera Design at the Juilliard School of Music'', published by New York Public Library, 1941.
* ''The Juilliard Report on Teaching the Literature and Materials of Music'', by Juilliard School of Music. Published by Norton, 1953.
* ''The Juilliard Review'', by Richard Franko Goldman, published by Juilliard School of Music, 1954.
* ''The Juilliard Journal'', published by the Juilliard School, 1985.
* ''Nothing But the Best: The Struggle for Perfection at the Juilliard School'', by Judith Kogan. Published by
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
, 1987. .
* ''Guide to the Juilliard School Archives'', by Juilliard School Archives, Jane Gottlieb, Stephen E. Novak, Taras Pavlovsky. Published by The School, 1992.
*
Juilliard: A History', by Andrea Olmstead. Published by
University of Illinois Press
The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois system. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, plus 33 scholarly journals, and several electronic project ...
, 2002, .
* ''A Living Legacy: Historic Stringed Instruments at the Juilliard School'', by
Lisa Brooks
Lisa Brooks is an historian, writer, and professor of English and American studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts where she specializes in the history of Native American and European interactions from the American colonial period to the pr ...
Robinson, Itzhak Perlman. Amadeus Press, 2006. .
External links
*
The Juilliard School – its history at 100Andrea Olmstead papers, 1970–2013Music Division, The New York Public Library. Olmstead's papers hold the research she carried out for her book on Juilliard, and include recorded interviews with various faculty, former students, and staff.
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1905 establishments in New York City
Dance schools in the United States
Diller Scofidio + Renfro buildings
Drama schools in the United States
Educational institutions established in 1905
Lincoln Center
Music schools in New York City
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Universities and colleges in Manhattan
Dance in New York City
Private universities and colleges in New York City