The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University: A Legacy of Artistic Excellence and Innovation

The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University stands as a beacon of artistic training and community engagement, nurturing musicians and dancers from diverse backgrounds to achieve their highest potential. Its history is rich with milestones, from its founding as America's first conservatory to its current position as a leading institution in the performing arts.

A Historical Overview

Philanthropist George Peabody established the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 1857 with a generous gift of $1.4 million. The institute officially opened in 1866, solidifying its place as the first conservatory in the United States. George Peabody's initial fortune was amassed in Massachusetts and later augmented in Baltimore, where he lived and worked from 1815 to 1835. The original building, a white marble Grecian-Italianate structure designed by Edmund George Lind, was delayed by the Civil War. In 1878, the east wing, which houses the George Peabody Library, was added. The library was created and endowed in 1882 by Peabody's friend Enoch Pratt.

Over the years, the institute expanded, adding a preparatory school, an auditorium, and additional structures along East Centre Street and Saint Paul Street, including a parking garage and two dormitory towers in 1971. During the early 1990s, several remaining townhouses on East Mount Vernon Place were acquired and rebuilt, enabling The Peabody to round out its campus to the entire city block.

The Peabody campus is located in the Mount Vernon Place Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1971.

Affiliation with Johns Hopkins University

In 1977, the Peabody Institute affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University, becoming a full division in 1986. Today, the Conservatory is one of ten degree-granting schools of the Johns Hopkins University.

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The Peabody Conservatory and Preparatory

The Peabody Institute comprises both the degree-granting Peabody Conservatory and the community-facing Peabody Preparatory. The Peabody Preparatory, founded in the 1890s, offers musical instruction to students of all ages and skill levels.

Focused on the five pillars of excellence, interdisciplinary experiences, innovation, community connectivity, and diversity, Peabody has introduced the Breakthrough Curriculum into its rigorous core professional training to prepare flexible and innovative artists for 21st-century careers.

Academic Programs

Peabody offers a wide range of programs, including:

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Dance: This program prepares students to be at the forefront of dance innovation through performance, choreographic and critical historical and theoretical exploration.
Bachelor of Music in Music Education: Designed for gifted performers interested in teaching music in elementary or secondary schools.
Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts and Sciences: This program meets the need for skilled audio technicians, producers, and engineers with both technical expertise and a sophisticated knowledge of music.
Master of Arts in Audio Sciences: This program, developed with members of the professional audio and acoustics communities, offers practical and theoretical training for a career in audio engineering or acoustics.
Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA): This program provides students with the highest level of professional training in musical performance or composition. Peabody is one of 156 schools in the United States that offers a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree.
Graduate Performance Diploma (GPD): Designed for highly accomplished graduate-level performers who wish to pursue a more performance-intensive goal than represented by the MM or DMA.

In 1916, a joint degree program with the Johns Hopkins University established the Bachelor of Music. In the 1960s, the Doctor of Musical Arts degree was authorized.

Liberal Arts at Peabody

Peabody undergraduates complete 30 credits in the Liberal Arts. Most students do this by enrolling in a one-year core curriculum (6 credits) and then taking eight elective classes (24 credits). The Language Program offers full-year 6-credit courses in French I, German I, and Italian I, as well as German II, to meet the requirements of Peabody Voice Majors. Language courses at Peabody focus primarily on language acquisition.

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Liberal arts classes are spaces for the creation of new ideas in an intellectual community, and student attendance is required.

Daniel H. Foster chairs the Liberal Arts Department at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. As an educator, he champions liberal arts education by focusing less on what we teach than how we teach and by creating courses that help create community.

Other faculty members in the Liberal Arts Department include Carol Haddaway, Laura Kafka-Price, Meryl Lauer, Ahlam Muhtaseb, Oliver Thorndike, and Andrea Westcot.

A Commitment to Liberal Arts

The liberal arts are the heart of a university education, encompassing the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and fine arts. At Peabody, a liberal arts education focuses on universal goals, benefits, and skills.

Course Examples

Students in Liberal Arts can explore courses across various academic disciplines. Examples of courses offered include:

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Turning Literature into Opera: This course looks at what happens when “great” and “not-so-great” literature gets turned into opera.
Media Matters: This course investigates how media shapes the world around us and influences our lives.
Comedy and the Comic: This course introduces students to the comic in art and literature from its earliest forms in ancient comedy to the present-day.
Decolonizing Sound: Students will learn basic methods and concepts in the study of religion and ethics, in order to consider the ways that Muslims engage with voice, sound, and various musical genres and subcultures to define and debate spirituality, morality, and community.
Philosophy: What is it good for?: This course explores “philosophical” questions, starting with external world skepticism, the mind-body problem, free will, consciousness, and personal identity.
The US Constitution: This course will examine the United States Constitution as both a document and an argument.
Enduring Hepburn: This seminar examines the roles and movies that defined the pioneering Hepburn as an actress, a businesswoman, and progressive thinker in American history.
Can Music and Dance Heal the World?: This course is designed for students with all sorts of tastes, backgrounds, and interests in dance and music.
Gender and Performance: This course examines gender and gender relations as they are performed in spectacular and mundane settings.
Introduction to Sexuality Studies: This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary examination of sexual desires, sexual orientations, and the concept of sexuality generally, with a particular focus on the construction of queer identities.
Survey of Modern Art: An introduction to the history of art. Open to undergraduates only.
The Posthuman Condition: In this course we will explore what has become known as the Posthuman.
Psychology for Musicians: An introduction to the fields and research methods of contemporary psychology, including such topics as biological and social bases of behavior, human development, perception, memory, learning theory, intelligence, and abnormal behavior. Special emphasis will be placed on subjects of importance to music education.
What is Love?: This course explores the nature of love from various perspectives, examining it through the lenses of philosophy, science, and the arts.
Big Questions: Philosophizing means to think and ask questions.
Music and Social Change: Music is integral to social justice movements and has inspired social and global change.
United States History, 1877 to the Present: In this course, we will strive to understand some of that long, large, various, beautiful, and terrible history.

History Program at the Krieger School

The Krieger School classifies history as both a social scientific and humanistic discipline, reflecting the wide range of approaches to the past. The history program aims to introduce students to these varied approaches. While offering strong preparation for specialization in a particular region, history at Johns Hopkins is primarily issue and topic oriented.

The department offers undergraduate courses ranging from introductory classes to small, focused seminars. Beyond the introductory level, many courses are writing intensive, promoting critical reading skills and effective written arguments. The program aims to deepen the critical habits of mind that arise from the study of time and change. Students who focus on one geographical area must take two courses outside their area of focus.

Requirements for History Majors

Writing and Communication in the Major: Students must complete at least 6 credits of Writing and Communication foundational ability coursework in one major.
Language proficiency in a second language is required through the completion of the intermediate level.
Honors Track: The history department strongly encourages all eligible history majors to pursue the honors track in history.

To be eligible for the senior thesis option to graduate with honors in history, students must have a cumulative GPA of 3.25 and a cumulative GPA in history of 3.5 or higher by December of their junior year. Second language proficiency may be demonstrated by coursework or by special permission of the History Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS).

Cognate Courses

The History Department encourages interdisciplinary work in cognate fields of learning. A sample path toward degree completion might include a sequence of courses.

Senior Thesis

The honors track culminates in the senior thesis, a yearlong research project completed under the supervision of a faculty advisor. Students must enroll in both the AS.100.507 Senior Honors Thesis (fall, 3 credits) and AS.100.508 Senior Honors Thesis (spring, 3 credits). Enrollment requires instructor’s permission and a commitment from a faculty thesis advisor. A general cumulative GPA of 3.25 and a cumulative GPA in history of 3.5 are prerequisites for undertaking the senior thesis, and to obtain honors students will normally be expected to complete the thesis with a grade of A- or better.

Notable Faculty and Alumni

Among the leading musicians who have served on the Peabody faculty are composers Henry Cowell, Elliott Carter, Peter Mennin, Ernst Krenek, Benjamin Lees, Earle Brown, and Hugo Weisgall; violinists William Kroll, Louis Persinger, Oscar Shumsky, and Roman Totenberg; cellists Aldo Parisot and Zara Nelsova; pianists Erno Balogh, Harold Bauer, Leon Fleisher, Ernest Hutcheson, Mieczyslaw Munz, Reginald Stewart, and George Walker; and scholars Nadia Boulanger, Otto Ortmann, and Nicolas Slonimsky. The Conservatory’s current faculty includes Guggenheim and MacArthur fellows, Fulbright grantees, and Pulitzer Prize winners.

Peabody's Impact

Peabody extends the power of the performing arts and robust artistic training throughout the greater Baltimore community and around the world, staging more than 1,000 concerts and events each year both on- and off-campus.

The Peabody Institute has a long history of bringing world-class performances to Baltimore. The first Baltimore performances of Haydn’s The Creation and Handel’s Messiah were held at Peabody. The Peabody Symphony Orchestra was performing entire programs of American music as early as 1874.

In more recent history, the pioneering Young Conductor’s Project brought Leonard Bernstein and George Szell to Peabody to work with student conductors.

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