The Dalcroze School of Music in New York City was founded in 1915 by Suzanne Ferrière to spread the teaching method of the Swiss composer and professor of music Émile-Jacques Dalcroze to America. After being dismissed from his position at the Geneva Conservatory for his revolutionary and shocking involvement of physical movement in music education, Dalcroze founded a school in Hellerau, Germany to further promote his new teaching method. The first wave of American students who were attracted there by the school's international reputation for excellence, returned home in 1912 and began teaching Dalcroze's method in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, California and a few years later, New York City. Because of the accidental death of one of the Hellerau School's primary benefactors, and political problems during World War I, it closed in 1914, after being open for only four years. Émile-Jacques Dalcroze returned to his home country and founded his still existent Institute Jacques Dalcroze in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1915, the same year as the New York School. The Geneva school continues to be the authoritative, worldwide source of Dalcroze's method. In its beginning, the Dalcroze School of Music in New York City struggled with financial problems and a lack of support from the parent school in Geneva. Fortunately, it persevered and became a teacher-training school that attracted students from all over the world. Many active teachers of Dalcroze's method who attended the Dalcroze School of Music were trained by Dr. Hilda Schuster, its eminent director for more than 50 years.
