hastily sent abroad to nd out how universities in France, Germany, and Swit-

zerland were organized.44 At about this time the charter of the new Conserva-
tory was published in an appendix to Senatskiye vedomosti, dated 17 October
1861, no. 95.45 The opening paragraph reads: Under the aegis of the Russian
Music Society, a music school is to be founded for instruction in the art of music
in all its disciplines. The school, on a par with the Society, is under the direct
patronage of Her Imperial Highness the grand duchess Yelena Pavlovna. De-
spite Rubinsteins wish for the new institution to be known as a conservatory,
the government had objected to the foreign sounding word and insisted on it
being called a school. The title of Conservatory was not formally adopted
until 1873.
It was claimed that the charter would be published in Senatskiye vedomosti
without any change, but Rubinstein had already noticed that a deception had
been carried out, and he wrote to Vasily Kologrivov in Tula:
But I do not know how it happened that the report we submitted with the charter,
in which we requested a site or other form of assistance from the government, was
not submitted, but some other drawn up at the Mikhaylovsky Palace was sent,
which says that the Society undertakes to support the school through its own re-
sources. Where are they? . . . We are thinking of opening the school in September
and from that time the rst year will be counted. With what funds? God knows. I
have no idea.46

The most pressing question facing Rubinstein was to nance the new insti-
tution. Because of prevarication on the part of the government, and its refusal
to lend any direct nancial assistance, he needed to raise a considerable sum in
a very short time. Yelena Pavlovna was generous, donating one thousand rubles
a year from her own purse. She had also succeeded in persuading the Ministry
of the Court to provide a subsidy of ve thousand rubles annually for the music
school, but the remaining funds had to be raised by private means:
So we started the enterprise, for which, in the rst year, we should have had about
twenty thousand rubles. What did we start with? We praised Christ and went to
see the wealthy: Yusupov, Bernardaki, and the wood merchant Vasily Fedulovich
Gromov. Some gave three hundred, some ve hundred rubles and all this came to
about three thousand rubles. Soya Yakovlyevna Verigo (the wife of the member of
the State Council), driving around St. Petersburg, collected three thousand rubles
on a subscription sheet. . . . Yelizaveta Wittgenstein (ne Eiler) collected money, lit-
erally a ruble at a time. That is how it was.47

Rubinstein was no less energetic in trying to attract good musicians to the

Conservatory, among them, the eminent cellist Karl Davdov, and Nissen-
Saloman.48 Henrietta Nissen-Saloman was considered one of the nest singing
teachers, but she had more or less rejected the terms of her engagement by the
RMS. Rubinstein cajoled her with persuasive arguments, and eventually she ac-
cepted the engagement offered to her, although it was not without some external
pressure and Rubinstein was not entirely happy with the terms that she de-
manded. As director, he would tolerate no challenge to his authority, and this

The Founding of the Russian Music Society 97