German-American conductor and composer (1862?1950)
Walter Damrosch
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Walter Damrosch at age 27
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Born
| Walter Johannes Damrosch
(
1862-01-30
)
January 30, 1862
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Died
| December 22, 1950
(1950-12-22)
(aged 88)
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Burial place
| Ledgelawn Cemetery
,
Bar Harbor, Maine
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Occupation(s)
| Conductor, composer
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Years active
| 1881?1950
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Walter Johannes Damrosch
(January 30, 1862 – December 22, 1950) was a
Kingdom of Prussia
-born American
conductor
and
composer
.
[1]
He was the director of the
New York Symphony Orchestra
and conducted the world premiere performances of various works, including
Aaron Copland
's
Symphony for Organ and Orchestra
,
George Gershwin
's
Piano Concerto in F
and
An American in Paris
, and
Jean Sibelius
'
Tapiola
. Damrosch was also instrumental in the founding of
Carnegie Hall
.
[2]
He also conducted the first performance of Rachmaninoff's
Piano Concerto No. 3
with the composer himself as soloist.
Life and career
[
edit
]
Damrosch was born in
Breslau
,
Silesia
, to Helene von Heimburg, a former opera singer, and the conductor
Leopold Damrosch
. His brother
Frank Damrosch
became a music conductor and sister
Clara Mannes
a music teacher. His parents were Lutheran (his paternal grandfather was Jewish).
[3]
[4]
[5]
He exhibited an interest in music at an early age and was instructed by his father in harmony, and also studied under Wilhelm Albert Rischbieter and
Felix Draeseke
at the
Dresden
Conservatory. He emigrated with his parents in 1871 to the United States.
[
citation needed
]
During the great music festival given by his father in May 1881, he first acted as conductor in drilling several sections of the large chorus, one in
New York City
, and another in
Newark, New Jersey
. The latter, consisting chiefly of members of the Harmonic Society, elected him to be their conductor. During this time a series of concerts was given in which such works as
Anton Rubinstein
's
Tower of Babel
,
Hector Berlioz
's
La damnation de Faust
, and
Giuseppe Verdi
's
Requiem
were performed. He was then only 19 years of age, but showed marked ability in drilling large groups.
In 1884, when his father initiated a run of all-German opera at the
Metropolitan Opera
in New York, Walter was made an assistant conductor. After his father's death in 1885, he held the same post under
Anton Seidl
and also became conductor of the Oratorio and Symphony Societies in New York.
On May 17, 1890, he married Margaret Blaine (1867?1949), the daughter of American politician and presidential candidate
James G. Blaine
.
They had four daughters: Alice, Margaret (known as Gretchen), Leopoldine, and Anita.
[6]
Damrosch was best known in his day as a conductor of the music of
Richard Wagner
, and in 1894 he founded the Damrosch Opera Company for producing Wagner's works.
[7]
He was also a pioneer in the performance of music on the radio, and as such became one of the chief popularizers of
classical music
in the United States.
In June 1891, Damrosch searched for a first violinist for his permanent New York Symphony Orchestra, choosing well-known violinist and composer
Julius Conus
, who was touring in Berlin.
[8]
In April 1905 Damrosch went to France and Belgium looking for musicians to improve the
New York Symphony Orchestra
, which he directed from 1885 to 1928. He engaged five musicians: oboist
Marcel Tabuteau
, flutist
Georges Barrere
, bassoonist Auguste Mesnard, and clarinetist Leon Leroy from France, and trumpeter Adolphe Dubois from Belgium. Damrosch was fined by the musician's union for not advertising for musicians from New York, but the emigrating musicians were allowed to stay.
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
Damrosch conducted famed solo
harpist
Vincent Fanelli
from 1908 to 1911.
[14]
[15]
At the request of
General Pershing
he reorganized the bands of the
American Expeditionary Force
in 1918.
[7]
One of his principal achievements was the successful performance of
Parsifal
, perhaps the most difficult of Wagner's operas, for the first time in the United States, in March 1886, by the Oratorio and Symphony societies. During his visit to Europe in the summer of 1886, he was invited by the Deutsche Tonkunstler-Verein, of which
Franz Liszt
was president, to conduct some of his father Leopold's compositions at
Sondershausen
,
Thuringia
.
Carl Goldmark
's opera
Merlin
was produced for the first time in the United States under Damrosch's direction, at the
Metropolitan Opera House
, 3 January 1887.
Although now remembered almost exclusively as a conductor, before his radio broadcasts Damrosch was equally well known as a composer and teacher. His students included
Esther Zweig
. He composed operas based on stories such as
The Scarlet Letter
(1896),
Cyrano
(1913), and
The Man Without a Country
(1937). Those operas are seldom performed now. He also wrote music for performances of
Euripides
's
Medea
and
Iphigenia in Tauris
, and
Sophocles
's
Electra
,
[7]
and songs such as the intensely dramatic
Danny Deever
.
[16]
Damrosch was the
National Broadcasting Company
's music director under
David Sarnoff
, and from 1928 to 1942, he hosted the network's
Music Appreciation Hour
, a popular series of radio lectures on classic music aimed at students. (The show was broadcast during school hours, and teachers were provided with textbooks and worksheets by the network.) According to former
New York Times
critic
Harold C. Schonberg
in his collection
Facing the Music
, Damrosch was notorious for making up silly lyrics for the music he discussed in order to "help" young people appreciate it, rather than letting the music speak for itself. An example: for the first movement of
Franz Schubert
's
Unfinished Symphony
, the lyric went
- This is the symphony,
- That Schubert wrote and never finished
.
Although Damrosch took an interest in music technologies, he recorded sporadically. His first recording, the prelude to
Bizet
's
Carmen
, appeared in 1903 (for
Columbia Records
, with a contingent of the New York Symphony credited as the "Damrosch Orchestra"). He recorded very few extended works, and those were near the end of his most active time as a conductor; the only symphony he recorded was
Brahms
's
Second
followed by
Maurice Ravel
's
Ma mere l'Oye
suite with the New York Symphony for Columbia shortly before the orchestra merged with the New York Philharmonic. He also recorded the complete ballet music from the opera
Henry VIII
by
Camille Saint-Saens
, three "Airs de Ballet" from
Iphigenie en Aulide
by
Christoph Willibald Gluck
in an arrangement by
Francois-Auguste Gevaert
, and shorter works by
Johann Sebastian Bach
,
Gabriel Faure
, and
Moritz Moszkowski
with the National Broadcasting Company's predecessor of the
NBC Symphony Orchestra
under the name of the "National Symphony Orchestra" (not to be confused with the later
National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C.
) for
RCA Victor
in May and September 1930.
Walter Damrosch died in
New York City
in 1950. He is interred in
Ledgelawn Cemetery
in
Bar Harbor, Maine
.
[17]
Damrosch was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
in 1939.
[18]
Damrosch Park
at Lincoln Center is named in honor of his family. The public school P186X Walter J. Damrosch School in the Bronx is named after him. A collection of photographs and other items compiled by his daughter Anita is among the Special Collections of the
Lovejoy Library
at
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
.
Works
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
"Alexander Street Press Authorization | Walter Damrosch:
North American Theatre Online
"
. asp6new.alexanderstreet.com
. Retrieved
December 15,
2014
.
- ^
"Carnegie Hall | Acoustic Music"
.
acousticmusic.org
. Retrieved
March 30,
2018
.
- ^
Martin, G.W. (1983).
The Damrosch Dynasty: America's First Family of Music
. Houghton Mifflin.
ISBN
9780395344088
. Retrieved
December 15,
2014
.
- ^
Damrosch, L.; Agocs, K. (2005).
Symphony in A major
. Vol. 54. A-R Editions.
ISBN
9780895795823
. Retrieved
December 15,
2014
.
- ^
James, E.T.; James, J.W.; Boyer, P.S.; Radcliffe College (1971).
Notable American Women, 1607?1950: A Biographical Dictionary
. Vol. 1. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 1?490.
ISBN
9780674627345
. Retrieved
December 15,
2014
.
- ^
loc.gov/item/ihas.200035728 Walter Damrosch, 1862-1950.
- ^
a
b
c
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922).
"Damrosch, Walter Johannes"
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 30 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 794.
- ^
"Damrosch's First Violinist"
.
The Sun (New York City)
. New York, NY. June 14, 1891. p. 7.
- ^
"Damrosch Fined $1,000; Didn't Consult Union".
The New York Times
. June 1, 1905.
- ^
Shilkret, Nathaniel
(2005). Shell, Niel; Shilkret, Barbara (eds.).
Nathaniel Shilkret: Sixty Years in the Music Business
. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. p. 27.
ISBN
0-8108-5128-8
.
see also caption to centerfold picture of Henri Leon Leroy. (Before becoming well known as a conductor and musical director for RCA Victor and later RKO and MGM, Shilkret had been a rehearsal pianist for Damrosch and a member of the woodwind section of Damrosh's New York Symphony Orchestra; anecdotal stories about Damrosch are included in Shilkret's autobiography.)
- ^
Martin, George (1983).
The Damrosch Dynasty: America's First Family of Music
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
ISBN
0-395-34408-5
.
- ^
Toff, Nancy (2005).
Monarch of the Flute: The Life of Georges Barrere
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
0-19-517016-4
.
- ^
Mesnard, Auguste.
Memoires d'un musicien d'orchestre
. unpublished autobiography; copy deposited at the Southern Illinois University Library.
OCLC
17737175
.
- ^
"Vincent Fanelli, 82, A Harpist, Is Dead"
.
The New York Times
. March 3, 1966
. Retrieved
January 3,
2012
.
Vincent Fanelli, solo harpist of the New York Symphony Orchestra under Dr. Walter Damrosch from 1908 to 1911 and later of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, died yesterday ...
- ^
University Musical Encyclopedia. 1912, the University Society, NY.
- ^
Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911).
"Music s.v. United States"
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 83.
- ^
Spencer, Thomas E. (1998).
Where They're Buried
. Clearfield Company. p. 495.
ISBN
9780806348230
.
- ^
"APS Member History"
.
search.amphilsoc.org
. Retrieved
May 12,
2023
.
References
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External links
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