Walter Johannes Damrosch
Encyclopedia
Walter Johannes Damrosch (January 30, 1862 – December 22, 1950) was a German-born
American conductor
and composer
. He is best remembered today as long-time director of the New York Symphony Orchestra
and for conducting the world premiere performances of George Gershwin
's Piano Concerto in F
(1925), and An American in Paris
(1928).
and brother of Frank Damrosch
. 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.
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 masses.
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.
Damrosch was best known in his day as a conductor of the music of Richard Wagner
and 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. At the request of General Pershing he reorganized the bands of the A.E.F.
in 1918.
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 Tonkünstler-Verein, of which Franz Liszt
was president, to conduct some of his father'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. He composed operas based on stories such as The Scarlet Letter
(1896), Cyrano
(1913), and The Man Without a Country
(1937). Those operas are very seldom performed now. His Wagner recordings are still widely available. He also composed songs such as the intensely dramatic Danny Deever
.
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
Although Damrosch took an interest in music technologies, he recorded sporadically. His first recording, the prelude to Bizet
's Carmen
, appeared in 1903 (on Columbia, with a contingent of the New York Symphony credited as the "Damrosch Orchestra"). He recorded very few extended works; the only symphony he recorded was Brahms
's Second
with the New York Symphony shortly before the orchestra merged with the New York Philharmonic (again for Columbia, in 1928), and he recorded the complete ballet music from the opera Henry VIII
by Camille Saint-Saëns
, with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., for RCA Victor in the early 1930s.
Walter Damrosch died in New York City
in 1950. Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center is named in his honor. The public school P186x The Walter J. Damrosch School in the Bronx is named after him.
criticism. Adorno, without always naming Damrosch, wrote during his rather unhappy tenure at the "Princeton Radio Research Project", funded by Sarnoff's RCA, that the Damrosch approach towards popularizing classical music was infantilizing and authoritarian, and part of a broader, if not centrally planned, system of domination.
Adorno showed ways of teaching both children and adults about classical music that would describe its form simply, whereas Damrosch focused on being able to identify pictures of composers, instruments, and the bare bones of symphonic themes. Adorno's criticism, regarded by some of his colleagues as ground-breaking and by others as pedantic (and by some as both) resulted in his being eased out of the Radio Research Project. Adorno contrasted what he considered a dead end (being able to whistle the theme of the Fifth Symphony) with the child who hears a string quartet in the next room and cannot sleep because the music holds his attention.
Today, despite Adorno's popularity in literary studies, his criticism of Damrosch is regarded by musicians and musicologists as an historical curio. It should be noted, however, that, through no fault of Adorno, classical music broadcasting and listening is today at an all-time low in the USA, meaning that RCA's goals for the Princeton Radio Research project, and Damrosch's pedagogy, failed to accomplish their stated goals.
Adorno felt that Damrosch's musical pedagogy was a justification of class oppression, in which the conductor, without actually "working" at least in the sense that the musicians "work", is shown as "above" the mere musicians, none of whom can be said to play other than a part. Without claiming that the symphony orchestra was completely a product of capitalism (while pointing out that to be economically viable it had to find a place in exchange), Adorno saw the Radio Research Project and Damrosch as introducing, to children and working class adults, a justification of alienation and oppression.
If Adorno was right, this may have caused the rejection by the public of classical music that began in the Depression (with its images of well-fed opera goers passing starving men) and gathered steam in the "big band" era of the 1940s, in which the "jazz" fan defined himself in part as too "hip" to like the music of "squares", negatively, without in fact any special love or understanding for what Adorno overbroadly called "jazz".
According to Hullot-Kentor , most music on radio in the 1920s was European and classical. Of course, it has rapidly and continuously declined, which shows that the "Damrosch" approach to musical pedagogy was a dead end, since it was so widely adopted in schools.
Perhaps the funniest, if untargeted, comment on the whole situation was made by New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, famous for gnomic aphorisms: "I would like to go back to college and study. But I would not study music appreciation. I already like music".
, flutist Georges Barrère
, 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. In addition to achieving the intended effect of improving the quality of the New York Symphony Orchestra, Damrosch brought the United States five extremely fine musicians. Tabuteau
(q.v.) was particularly influential. He served as principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra
from 1915 to 1954 under Leopold Stokowski
and, just as importantly, taught in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music
. Laila Storch wrote, "During the thirty years during which Tabuteau taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, he came to exercise a decisive influence on the standards of oboe playing in the whole United States, as well as raising the level of woodwind achievement in general. Nor was the impact of his teaching confined to winds alone, as the many string players and pianists who attended his classes will testify." Barrère was well known as conductor of his own ensembles and as an influential teacher as well as for being the long-time principal flute player (1905—1928) in the New York Symphony Orchestra. Although perhaps less known, the other three Damrosch imports were important additions to the pool of New York musicians. Mesnard (from 1913—1928) and Leroy (from 1911—1914) were principal players in the New York Philharmonic after leaving the New York Symphony Orchestra. Nathaniel Shilkret
's payrolls show Mesnard played in Shilkret's orchestras for more than thirty radio broadcasts.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
American conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. He is best remembered today as long-time director of the New York Symphony Orchestra
New York Symphony Orchestra
The New York Symphony Orchestra was founded as the New York Symphony Society in New York City by Leopold Damrosch in 1878. For many years it was a fierce rival to the older Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York. It was supported by Andrew Carnegie who built Carnegie Hall expressly for the...
and for conducting the world premiere performances of George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
's Piano Concerto in F
Concerto in F (Gershwin)
Concerto in F is a composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and orchestra which is closer in form to a traditional concerto than the earlier jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue...
(1925), and An American in Paris
An American in Paris
An American in Paris is a symphonic tone poem by the American composer George Gershwin, written in 1928. Inspired by the time Gershwin had spent in Paris, it evokes the sights and energy of the French capital in the 1920s. It is one of Gershwin's best-known compositions.Gershwin composed the piece...
(1928).
Biography
Walter Damrosch was born in Breslau, Silesia, a son of the conductor Leopold DamroschLeopold Damrosch
Leopold Damrosch was a German American orchestral conductor.- Biography :Damrosch was born in Posen , Kingdom of Prussia, and began his musical education at the age of nine, learning the violin against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to become a doctor...
and brother of Frank Damrosch
Frank Damrosch
Frank Heino Damrosch was a German-born American music conductor and educator.-Biography:He was born on June 22, 1859 in Breslau, and came to the United States with his father, Leopold Damrosch, and brother, Walter Damrosch in 1871. He had studied music in Germany under Dionys Pruckner. He studied...
. 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
Felix Draeseke
Felix August Bernhard Draeseke was a composer of the "New German School" admiring Liszt and Richard Wagner. He wrote compositions in most forms including eight operas and stage works, four symphonies, and much vocal and chamber music.-Life:Felix Draeseke was born in the Franconian ducal town of...
at the Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
Conservatory. He emigrated with his parents in 1871 to the United States.
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
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and another in Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
. 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
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...
's Tower of Babel, Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's La damnation de Faust, and Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's Requiem were performed. He was then only 19 years of age, but showed marked ability in drilling large masses.
In 1884, when his father initiated a run of all-German opera at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in New York, Walter was made an assistant conductor. After his father's death in 1885, he held the same post under Anton Seidl
Anton Seidl
Anton Seidl was a Hungarian conductor.-Biography:He was born at Pest, Hungary. He began the study of music at a very early age, and when only seven years old could pick out at the piano melodies which he had heard at the theatre...
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
James G. Blaine
James Gillespie Blaine was a U.S. Representative, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, U.S. Senator from Maine, two-time Secretary of State...
. They had four daughters.
Damrosch was best known in his day as a conductor of the music of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and 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. At the request of General Pershing he reorganized the bands of the A.E.F.
American Expeditionary Force
The American Expeditionary Forces or AEF were the United States Armed Forces sent to Europe in World War I. During the United States campaigns in World War I the AEF fought in France alongside British and French allied forces in the last year of the war, against Imperial German forces...
in 1918.
One of his principal achievements was the successful performance of Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
, 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 Tonkünstler-Verein, of which Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
was president, to conduct some of his father's compositions at Sondershausen
Sondershausen
Sondershausen is a town in Thuringia, Germany, capital of the Kyffhäuserkreis district, situated about 50 km north of Erfurt. On 1 December 2007, the former municipality Schernberg was incorporated by Sondershausen....
, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
. 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.
The Scarlet Letter (opera)
The Scarlet Letter is an opera by Walter Damrosch, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel of the same name. The libretto was by George Parsons Lathrop, son-in-law of the author. The work is Wagnerian in style, Damrosch being a great enthusiast and champion of the composer...
(1896), Cyrano
Cyrano (Damrosch)
Cyrano is an opera in four acts composed by Walter Damrosch to an English language libretto by William James Henderson based on Edmond Rostand's play, Cyrano de Bergerac...
(1913), and The Man Without a Country
The Man Without a Country (opera)
The Man Without a Country is an opera in 2 acts by composer Walter Damrosch. Arthur Guiterman wrote the English language libretto which was based on Edward Everett Hale's 1863 short story of the same name. The work premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on May 12, 1937.-Roles:...
(1937). Those operas are very seldom performed now. His Wagner recordings are still widely available. He also composed songs such as the intensely dramatic Danny Deever
Danny Deever
Danny Deever is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad, describes the execution of a British soldier in...
.
Damrosch was the National Broadcasting Company
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's music director under David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American commercial radio and television. He founded the National Broadcasting Company and throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his...
, and from 1928 to 1942, he hosted the network's Music Appreciation Hour
Music Appreciation Hour
Music Appreciation Hour was an National Broadcasting Company radio series that offered lectures on classical music aimed at students. The show was part of a broader mid-20th-century movement to popularize serious music...
, 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
Harold C. Schonberg
Harold Charles Schonberg was an American music critic and journalist, most notably for The New York Times. He was the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism...
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
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
's Unfinished Symphony
Symphony No. 8 (Schubert)
Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor , commonly known as the "Unfinished Symphony" , D.759, was started in 1822 but left with only two movements known to be complete, even though Schubert would live for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages...
, 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
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, appeared in 1903 (on Columbia, with a contingent of the New York Symphony credited as the "Damrosch Orchestra"). He recorded very few extended works; the only symphony he recorded was Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
's Second
Symphony No. 2 (Brahms)
The Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73, was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1877 during a visit to Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a town in the Austrian province of Carinthia. Its composition was brief in comparison with the fifteen years it took Brahms to complete his First Symphony...
with the New York Symphony shortly before the orchestra merged with the New York Philharmonic (again for Columbia, in 1928), and he recorded the complete ballet music from the opera Henry VIII
Henry VIII (opera)
Henry VIII is an opera in four acts by Camille Saint-Saëns, from a libretto by Léonce Détroyat and Armand Silvestre, based on El cisma en Inglaterra by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.-Composition history:...
by Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
, with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., for RCA Victor in the early 1930s.
Walter Damrosch died in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1950. Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center is named in his honor. The public school P186x The Walter J. Damrosch School in the Bronx is named after him.
Criticism by Adorno
Damrosch is often remembered today as the target of Theodore Wiesengrund Adorno'sTheodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
criticism. Adorno, without always naming Damrosch, wrote during his rather unhappy tenure at the "Princeton Radio Research Project", funded by Sarnoff's RCA, that the Damrosch approach towards popularizing classical music was infantilizing and authoritarian, and part of a broader, if not centrally planned, system of domination.
Adorno showed ways of teaching both children and adults about classical music that would describe its form simply, whereas Damrosch focused on being able to identify pictures of composers, instruments, and the bare bones of symphonic themes. Adorno's criticism, regarded by some of his colleagues as ground-breaking and by others as pedantic (and by some as both) resulted in his being eased out of the Radio Research Project. Adorno contrasted what he considered a dead end (being able to whistle the theme of the Fifth Symphony) with the child who hears a string quartet in the next room and cannot sleep because the music holds his attention.
Today, despite Adorno's popularity in literary studies, his criticism of Damrosch is regarded by musicians and musicologists as an historical curio. It should be noted, however, that, through no fault of Adorno, classical music broadcasting and listening is today at an all-time low in the USA, meaning that RCA's goals for the Princeton Radio Research project, and Damrosch's pedagogy, failed to accomplish their stated goals.
Adorno felt that Damrosch's musical pedagogy was a justification of class oppression, in which the conductor, without actually "working" at least in the sense that the musicians "work", is shown as "above" the mere musicians, none of whom can be said to play other than a part. Without claiming that the symphony orchestra was completely a product of capitalism (while pointing out that to be economically viable it had to find a place in exchange), Adorno saw the Radio Research Project and Damrosch as introducing, to children and working class adults, a justification of alienation and oppression.
If Adorno was right, this may have caused the rejection by the public of classical music that began in the Depression (with its images of well-fed opera goers passing starving men) and gathered steam in the "big band" era of the 1940s, in which the "jazz" fan defined himself in part as too "hip" to like the music of "squares", negatively, without in fact any special love or understanding for what Adorno overbroadly called "jazz".
According to Hullot-Kentor , most music on radio in the 1920s was European and classical. Of course, it has rapidly and continuously declined, which shows that the "Damrosch" approach to musical pedagogy was a dead end, since it was so widely adopted in schools.
Perhaps the funniest, if untargeted, comment on the whole situation was made by New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, famous for gnomic aphorisms: "I would like to go back to college and study. But I would not study music appreciation. I already like music".
Importation of French musicians
In April 1905 Damrosch went to France and Belgium looking for musicians for the New York Symphony Orchestra, which he directed from 1885 to 1928. He engaged five musicians: oboist Marcel TabuteauMarcel Tabuteau
Marcel Tabuteau was a French oboist who is generally considered the founder of the American school of oboe playing.-Life:...
, flutist Georges Barrère
Georges Barrère
Georges Barrère was a French flautist.-Early life:Georges Barrère was the son of a cabinetmaker, Gabriel Barrère, and Marie Périne Courtet, an illiterate farmer's daughter from Guilligomarc'h. They married in 1874. They had previously had a son Étienne, out of wedlock, in 1872...
, 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. In addition to achieving the intended effect of improving the quality of the New York Symphony Orchestra, Damrosch brought the United States five extremely fine musicians. Tabuteau
Marcel Tabuteau
Marcel Tabuteau was a French oboist who is generally considered the founder of the American school of oboe playing.-Life:...
(q.v.) was particularly influential. He served as principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
from 1915 to 1954 under Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
and, just as importantly, taught in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music
Curtis Institute of Music
The Curtis Institute of Music is a conservatory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that offers courses of study leading to a performance Diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in Opera, and Professional Studies Certificate in Opera. According to statistics compiled by U.S...
. Laila Storch wrote, "During the thirty years during which Tabuteau taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, he came to exercise a decisive influence on the standards of oboe playing in the whole United States, as well as raising the level of woodwind achievement in general. Nor was the impact of his teaching confined to winds alone, as the many string players and pianists who attended his classes will testify." Barrère was well known as conductor of his own ensembles and as an influential teacher as well as for being the long-time principal flute player (1905—1928) in the New York Symphony Orchestra. Although perhaps less known, the other three Damrosch imports were important additions to the pool of New York musicians. Mesnard (from 1913—1928) and Leroy (from 1911—1914) were principal players in the New York Philharmonic after leaving the New York Symphony Orchestra. Nathaniel Shilkret
Nathaniel Shilkret
Nathaniel Shilkret was an American composer, conductor, clarinetist, pianist, business executive, and music director born in New York City, New York to an Austrian immigrant family.-Early career:...
's payrolls show Mesnard played in Shilkret's orchestras for more than thirty radio broadcasts.
Works
- The Scarlet LetterThe Scarlet LetterThe Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an...
(1894) - operaOperaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
in three acts based on HawthorneNathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
's romance of that name; published by Breitkopf and Härtel - The Manila Te Deum - for solos, chorus, and orchestra, written in honor of DeweyGeorge DeweyGeorge Dewey was an admiral of the United States Navy. He is best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War...
's victory at Manila Bay; published by the John Church CompanyJohn Church CompanyThe John Church Company was a 19th-century American publishing company that specialized in sheet music. They had offices in Cincinnati, Ohio; New York, New York; and Chicago, Illinois. The company published the works of John Philip Sousa, Dan Emmett, and other composers.The company was bought out... - Three songs published by the John Church Company
- Sonata for violin and piano
- At Fox Meadow, published by the John Church Company
- Cyrano (1913) - a grand opera in four acts, libretto by W. J. HendersonWilliam James HendersonWilliam James Henderson was an American musical critic and scholar, born at Newark, New Jersey.-Biography:...
, adapted from RostandEdmond RostandEdmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century...
's play; published by G. SchirmerG. SchirmerG. Schirmer Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1861. It publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Italian Ricordi, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello,... - The Dove of Peace (1912) - comic operaComic operaComic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
/musical - composerComposerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and co-librettist with Wallace IrwinWallace IrwinWallace Irwin was an American writer. Over the course of his long career, Irwin wrote humorous sketches, light verse, screenplays, short stories, novels, nautical lays, aphorisms, journalism, political satire, lyrics for Broadway musicals, and the libretto for an opera...
; published by G. Schirmer - ElectraElectra (Sophocles)Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career.Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan...
(1918 revivalRevival (play)A revival is a restaging of a stage production after its original run has closed. New material may be added. A filmed version is said to be an adaptation and requires writing of a screenplay....
) - playPlay (theatre)A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
- incidental musicIncidental musicIncidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
composerComposerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...