As the education in most institutions of higher education in Austro-Hungarian Galicia was carried out mostly in Polish and German languages, in 1903 the Ukrainian minority of Lviv founded a separate Higher Musical Institute of Mykola Lysenko (Ukrainian: Вищий музичний інститут ім. М. В. Лисенка). Its teachers included Stanyslav Lyudkevych and Vasyl Barvinsky, and among the students were Roman Sawycky, Daria Gordinskaya-Karanovich, and Galina Levitskaya.
Simultaneously, the Galician Music Society continued to exist and prosper, and soon was renamed to the Polish Music Society in Lviv. Its conservatory, financing the society's daily operations, moved to a new building at Chorążczyzny Street (presently occupied by the Lviv Regional Philharmonic). Partially thanks to the Society's teachers, in 1911 the Lviv University opened a faculty of musicology, led by musicologist Adolf Chybiński. During World War I, the conservatory continued to function, but the Russian occupation of the city forced most of its students and teachers into a brief exile. A short-lived branch of the Polish Music Society was opened in Vienna. After the war, both Polish and Ukrainian societies continued to coexist until 1939. Following the joint Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland, the city had been occupied by the Soviet Union. Both societies were merged with the University's faculty of musicology into a new Lviv State Conservatory, M.V. Lysenko (Russian: Львовская государственная консерватория им. Н. В. Лысенко).
Following the war, the city was permanently annexed by the Soviet Union, and the conservatory continued to exist in a building formerly occupied by Academy of Foreign Trade in Lwów. However, after 1944 most of its Polish teachers and students were expelled, forced to emigrate and continued their careers in post-war Poland or abroad. Likewise, some Ukrainian teachers of the Higher Music Institute continued activities in exile in New York, from 1947, under the leadership of Roman Sawycky (1907–1960), creating the Ukrainian Music Institute of America.
After the war, teachers in Lviv included Vsevolod Zaderatsky. Since 1992 the conservatory had been called Higher State Music Institute. M.V. Lysenko and was changed in 2000 to Lviv State Musical Academy M.V. Lysenko. On September 13, 2007, Ukrainian PresidentViktor Yushchenko signed a decree conferring the national status on the Lviv State Music Academy.
Recent and current teachers at LNMA include: composers Mykola Kolessa, Myroslav Skoryk, conductor Yuri Lutsiv, Maria Boyko, organist Vladimir Ignatenko, professor of singing Igor Kushpler, violinist Lydia Shutko, director Igor Pilatyuk, pianist Oleg Krishtalsky, pianist Maria Krushelnytska, pianist Josef Ermin, pianist Ethella Chuprik, and others.
