During the second half of the nineteenth century the teaching of music passed in large measure from the hands of single, independent teachers into the direction of music masters associated in institutions for class instruction, which are generally known as conservatories, although this term in its European signification of a large, completely equipped and nationally endowed school of music is misleading. Indeed, the pretense seems to have been deliberate. Dr. Frank Damrosch, in an address on 'The American Conservatory,' before the Music Teachers' National Association at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1906, said: 'The so-called conservatory, college, or university of music ... may be found in every American community.... It is usually organized by an individual whose commercial instincts are stronger than his musical conscience, and who, banking on the dense ignorance of the average citizen in matters of art, offers what seems to be a great bargain in the acquisition of musical ability in one form or another.... There are many such schools which seemingly flourish by the glittering, if empty, promises which they advertise. Some of them confer degrees; ... one of the first musical doctor degrees conferred by the director of one of these schools was on himself!' While there are hundreds of conservatories of the class described by Dr. Damrosch scattered over the Union, a number of institutions are to be found which rank in thoroughness and comprehensiveness of instruction with the best European conservatories. These have been in every instance of slow growth, the most pretentious in chartered plans having made early and signal failures in the province of musical education, though some of them won success in other musical activities. A typical example of this order is the Academy of Music of New York, whose career is recorded in Chapter VI.