Walter Damrosch Research Articles

“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States

“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States

Making an American Opera Career: Conductor May Valentine (1890–1974) and a Woman's Role(s) in the Business of Opera

Making an American Opera Career: Conductor May Valentine (1890–1974) and a Woman's Role(s) in the Business of Opera

Selling Orchestral Music in the Vaudeville Age: The Duncan-Damrosch Tours, 1908–1911

AbstractBetween 1908 and 1911, New York Symphony Orchestra conductor Walter Damrosch engaged the modern dancer Isadora Duncan to perform with his orchestra in New York and on three tours of the Midwest. Posing considerable risk to his reputation as an elite conductor, this unusual alliance grew in part from his concert manager's wish to compete with the Salomé dance craze raging in vaudeville halls across the country. Damrosch's “pioneering spirit” allowed him a genuine appreciation of Duncan's expressive, transcendent dancing. Yet for his critics, the shockingly under-dressed dancer, just back from her conquest of Europe, represented yet another sensational Salomé eager to capitalize on the popular profanities of market-driven entertainment. Music critics and Protestant clergymen from St. Louis to Boston berated Damrosch for what they saw as an immoral capitulation to mass consumerism and a desecrating abuse of the sacred repertoire he guarded—a repertoire defined in part by its distance from dancing. This article draws on critiques in the daily press, Damrosch's personal papers, and scholarship in dance and religious studies to situate Damrosch's marketing experiment with Duncan in the wider context of Progressive-era devotional life, where similar concessions to mass entertainment arose in the urban revival movement of the Third Great Awakening. Damrosch's recourse to Duncan's “barefoot dancing”—oddly akin to the tactics of big tent revivalists espousing Muscular Christianity and epitomized by Billy Sunday's pulpit pantomimes—illuminates the collision of spiritual and economic concerns that shaped both musical and ecclesiastical arenas of the American “sacred.”

Educators in Search of an Anthem: Standardizing “The Star-Spangled Banner” During the First World War

AbstractIn the spring of 1917 several of the most prominent musicians in the United States, including the bandleader John Philip Sousa, the orchestral conductor Walter Damrosch, and the scholar Oscar Sonneck, joined together in a fruitless effort to establish a standardized version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Most histories of the song note this effort but fail to recognize that the impetus for it came from the music division of the National Education Association and reflected a Progressive Era faith in the efficiencies of business, which could be manifest through the mass singing of schoolchildren. This paper examines the standardization of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in light of first world war political concerns, as well as broader cultural trends. It also explains the reasons for the effort's failure and shows how the period around the first world war set up many of the struggles that inform the national anthem even today.

Educational Radio, Listening Instruction, and the NBC Music Appreciation Hour

This article examines the educational and social impact of an instructional radio program, called the Music Appreciation Hour (MAH), broadcast on the NBC network from the 1920s to the 1940s. Walter Damrosch, who came from a musical family and had previously conducted the New York Symphony, envisioned the possibility to use radio to teach music to American schoolchildren by tapping into its aural and emotional qualities. Through archival materials, including correspondence, teachers’ manuals, student notebooks, and program evaluations, it is argued that while Damrosch positioned himself with a new progressive movement that espoused student-centered education, he instead became an appealing on-air “personality” to student listeners and the network. This research serves as an important example of some of the ongoing tensions between education, entertainment, and the mass media.

The Music of Wagner in Toronto before 1914

Wagner's music was first heard in Toronto in the 1860s, and in the years before 1914 it achieved extraordinary popularity. Orchestral and vocal excerpts became standard repertoire and the city enjoyed performances conducted by such notable Wagnerians as Walter Damrosch and Anton Seidl and other visitors, as well as by local musicians. There were enthusiastic local Wagnerians such as the conductors Herbert Torrington and Frank Welsman, and the pianist W. Waugh Lauder who had a personal association with Wagner through his teacher, Franz Liszt. Fully staged performances were rarer and depended entirely on touring companies, but nevertheless there were productions of Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Die Walküre, and Parsifal.

Early Twentieth Century Orchestra Education Outreach in Minneapolis: Young People's Symphony Concert Association and the Repertoire Programmed and Conducted by Emil Oberhoffer 1911–1922

Young people's concerts in America began in the second half of the nineteenth century. (1) Germania Society Orchestra of Boston held an afternoon concert for children in April 1849. (2) Theodore Thomas and Walter Damrosch both produced concerts for children in the 1880s and the 1890s. (3) In Minneapolis, young people's concerts began in 1911, eight years after the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra was formed. (4) This article will relate the early history of that series, which was created by the Young People's Symphony Concert Association (known as YPSCA). YPSCA, the Minneapolis community and its schools, orchestral leaders, and conductor Emil Oberhoffer established the traditions which still exist today. primary source of Oberhoffer's contributions to the series is his handwritten notes, which reveal his enthusiasm. His written plans conveyed useful and meaningful ways to teach children to appreciate symphonic repertoire he chose was varied and contemporary for his time. Emil Oberhoffer's insightful and inspiring presentations, along with the women's association support, secured the future of symphonic music in Minnesota. Developing a future audience became their mission. From 1911 until the present, hundreds of thousands of children have benefited from their efforts. Early Young People's Concerts: A National View In 1911, Walter Damrosch and his work presenting children's programming in New York City served as inspiration for young people's concerts in Minneapolis. Although Minneapolis was one of the earliest and perhaps one of the few cities to establish and maintain a consistent program each school year, it was not the only city to offer such a series. Between 1923 through 1930, orchestras in the following cities also presented children's concerts: Kansas City, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Rochester, New York; (5) Cincinnati, Ohio; (6) San Diego, California; (7) Topeka, Kansas; (8) Cleveland, Ohio; (9) and, Bloomington, Illinois. (10) Margaret Lowry, a specialist in music appreciation from Kansas City, Missouri, wrote in 1928: Children's concerts as we know them are primarily an American idea. They were born of the large vision and boundless enthusiasm which makes all things possible because it recognizes no obstacles and does not hesitate to try a thing merely because it has not been tried before. (11) Teaching children to appreciate classical music was the main objective of those organizing these concerts. Mabelle Glenn, Music Supervisor of the Kansas City, Missouri, Schools, wrote: The great majority of people will become listeners rather than performers of Therefore music listening, under skillful guidance, should constitute a large part of a child's musical (12) Preparing students to attend young people's concerts became an inherent part of that training. Two of the primary tools for studying compositions were the phonograph and the player piano. In the San Diego elementary schools, under the music supervision of Annie Marie Clarke: pieces are presented to the children in the schools by means of phonograph records. In presenting the work 'the drawing out' rather than the 'pouring in' process is used, that is by adroit questioning the children are made to think about the musical content of the piece and develop an active rather than a passive listening attitude. At all times the music is studied rather than the hundred and one things that might be taught 'about' the (13) Edward B. Birge wrote in a 1924 Music Supervisors Journal, One of the inevitable results of the use of the phonograph and player-piano in the school is the desire on the part of the children to not only hear but see the artists who are performing the music. (14) A third way of preparing students for a live concert was to have a guest speaker visit classes prior to an upcoming concert. …

"Excellence in Execution" and "Fitness for Teaching": Assessments of Women at the Conservatoire Américain

IN 1921 GERMAN-BORN AMERICAN CONDUCtor Walter Damrosch and French conductor and composer Francis Casadesus opened a new school for American musicians in the Palais de Fontainebleau, just outside of Paris. This school, which became known as the Conservatoire Americain, was created to offer American musicians advanced training in performance, composition, and teaching. Over time, the Conservatoire produced numbers of successful composers, performers, scholars, and instructors such as Bathia Churgin, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Dorothy de Val, Herbert Elwell, Pamela Frank, Helen Hosmer, Charles Rosen, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Andre-Michel Schub, Louise Talma, Augusta Read Thomas, and Charles Wuorinen. Prior to the First World War American musicians frequently traveled to Germany and Austria for such education, which was not readily available in the United States' fledgling conservatories and schools of music. Female instrumentalists were especially drawn to study in Germany and Austria, where, following the model of Clara Schumann and other professional women, female concert artists were both comfortably situated as normal members of society and positively received in the concert hall as serious artists. The students who made this trek and enrolled in the Hochschule in those countries were serious practitioners, having exhausted their domestic resources for coaching and pedagogy, and they were, without exception, less interested in pursuing the more traditional path of becoming educators than in attaining careers as soloists. Pianist Julie Rive-King, violinists Camille Urso and Maud Powell, and cellist Elsa Reugger all left the United States to pursue further training in Germany and Austria, having found that the societal limitations placed on women in the United States hampered their abilities to reach their full potential. With the advent of the war, however, travel to Germany was neither practical nor politically advisable. Seeing this as an opportunity to both help repay the assistance of their allies in the war and promote French culture above German culture in America, the French government assisted Casadesus and Damrosch in their venture. Because the Paris Conservatoire placed strict restrictions on its applicants in terms of age and nationality, Casadesus and Damrosch decided to hire members of its faculty during the summer to staff a summertime conservatory. Thus, the Conservatoire Americain opened its doors to some ninety American music students in June 1921, offering them three months of rigorous study. In establishing the Conservatoire, Casadesus and Damrosch had three primary goals: that students of the highest level would be trained at the school by the best French musicians; that Franco-American exchange and goodwill would be cultivated on an advanced cultural and artistic level; and, most remarkably for its time, that men and women would be trained for professional careers on an equal basis. (1) In this article I examine this last tenet of the founders through the lens of the assessment of female students at the Conservatoire Americain. Admissions assessments, internal examinations, and the granting of diplomas were three ways in which women were evaluated and taught at the Conservatoire. Drawing on the school's archival documents and the testimony of students, I show that despite both deliberate and unintended stereotyping and discrimination among some school policies and instructors, women at the Conservatoire did in fact receive educations equal to their male counterparts, in some cases surpassing them in overall achievement. The evidence presented here also establishes that the exit assessments--diplomas and prizes--made by the Conservatoire had an impact on the acceptance of its alumnae as professionally qualified musicians. Although a full examination of their posttraining careers is outside the scope of this article, it is important to note that many women who graduated from the Conservatoire Americain went on to hold positions in American musical life as soloists, orchestra concertmasters and principals, chamber musicians, conductors, composers, instructors, and music school deans and heads. …

Beethoven, Walter Damrosch, and Miss Jessie Lee

Everyone knows that Beethoven was one of the greatest composers in the classical music scene. Walter Damrosch was conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the late 1930s. Miss Jessie Lee Fleming was the principal and sixth grade teacher at the Terry-Norman grade school where I began my formal education. What they had in common was a love for really good music.

The Grand Ole Opry and the Urban South

One Saturday evening in 1927, George D. Hay, the program director of Nashville radio station WSM, was preparing to introduce the evening's local program, the WSM Barn Dance. Not really a barn dance at all, the program's succession of what was then called "old time" or "hillbilly" musical acts interspersed with comedy routines made it more akin to vaudeville or minstrelsy. Hay had begun the program soon after arriving at the then one-month-old station in November 1925, and the heady brew of traditional string-band music performed by musicians drawn from Nashville and its hinterland proved extremely popular with radio audiences across the South. On that night, the Barn Dance followed an NBC network presentation of symphonic music from New York. The conductor, Walter Damrosch, stating over the airways that he was making an exception to his rule that "there was no place in the classics for realism," ended his program with a performance of a brief orchestral composition depicting a locomotive. As the program went on the air, Hay announced, "For the next three hours we will present nothing but realism. It will be down to earth for the earthy." Thereon, DeFord Bailey, harmonica virtuoso and the sole African American performer of the program, laid into a rousing rendition of "Pan American Blues." After Bailey's opener, Hay sought again to differentiate his program from its high culture predecessor and bragged that "for the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera, but from now on we will present 'The Grand Ole Opry.'" And that is how the "mother church" of country music, and Nashville's best-known and most enduring contribution to the nation's popular culture, got its name. 1

Controversy and Conflict in the Henry Street Settlement Music School, 1927-1935

Controversy and Conflict in the Henry Street Settlement Music School, 1927–1935 Shannon L. Green (bio) In 1971 Helen Hall (1892-1982), the president of the National Federation of Settlements, published Unfinished Business in Neighborhood and Nation, memoirs of her tenure as Henry Street Settlement's second di-rector.1 The book relates many of the activities that took place at the settlement house, including those of its music school. Hall also describes with fondness many of Henry Street's staff members, including Grace Spofford, the second director of the settlement's music school. Curiously, Hall's book fails to make any mention of Hedi Katz, the music school's founder and first director, even though their terms at Henry Street overlapped by at least six months and Katz had led the school for its first eight years. Katz's peculiar absence is symptomatic of divisive opinions regarding the purpose of musical training within the social settlements during the years of the Great Depression. Beginning in the late 1880s and continuing well into the first half of the twentieth century, middle-class Progressivists founded settlement houses to alleviate the difficult living and working conditions of tenement neighborhoods.2 As urban community centers, social settlement houses in the large industrial cities of the United States were emblematic of the Progressive era in which they originated; many settlements, especially Hull-House in Chicago, were centers of the era's reform activities. Settlement leaders [End Page 73] were essential in the passage and implementation of laws involving child labor, the eight-hour workday, and improved safety in factories.3 Settlement workers, many of whom were "residents" living within the settlement houses, were for the most part middle-class white Protestant men and women. Many subscribed to Progressive philosophy, devoting their professional and personal lives to helping those deemed less fortunate in immediate and concrete ways. They brought educational opportunities to the tenements, offering an affordable means for the inhabitants to better their circumstances. In addition, settlements offered arts programs such as private music lessons, participation in choirs and other ensembles, and regular low-cost concerts to help tenement workers forget, if only temporarily, their deplorable living and working situations. After many years of offering various musical activities to the surrounding neighborhood, the directors at Henry Street Settlement, located on Henry Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island in New York City, organized a formal music school in 1928.4 The school quickly gained the committed support of such renowned musicians as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Jascha Heifetz, all of whom were members of the school's advisory committee. The school also received aid from members of well-known business families such as the Marshall Field family. Director Lillian Wald chose Hedi Katz as the first director of the music school. A European-born violinist with impressive credentials, Katz had studied at the Royal Academy in Vienna and had been a pupil of Arnold Rosee, Emile Sauret, and Carl Flesch. For four years she served as a first violinist in the symphony orchestra in The Hague, Holland.5 Wald first made Katz's acquaintance, shortly after immigrating to the United States, through a mutual friend who had asked Wald to assist Katz with an "unfortunate" financial situation.6 Before making her final decision regarding who would lead the music school, Wald contacted Katz and asked her to write a plan for the school. Wald then asked three friends and experts to review Katz's plan: Janet Schenck, director of the Neighborhood Music School (later the Manhattan School of Music) in New York and a leader of the Music Division of the National Federation of Settlements, the conductor and composer Walter Damrosch, and Melzar Chaffee, associated with the Third Street Music School Settlement.7 After receiving their full approval of Katz and her plan, Wald hired her for the position. The school's first season began in the fall of 1928. As director, Katz was paid thirty-five hundred dollars for operating the school during eight months of the school year and for any necessary summer preparations. As for other settlement music school directors, her position was considered part-time, and Katz...

The NBC Music Appreciation Hour: Radio Broadcasts of Walter Damrosch, 1928–1942

Walter Damrosch, a pioneer in the early days of radio, introduced American and Canadian children to classical music through the radio broadcasts of the NBC Music Appreciation Hour, 1928–1942. This article contains a description of the format of the programs and instructional manuals. It includes a discussion of the programs sponsorship, Damroschs collaboration with MENC, and the national impact of the broadcasts. The Music Appreciation Hour broadcast four series of programs for four different age-groups, and various authors prepared instructors manuals and student notebooks. The successful programs were promoted as a supplement for school programs, and students were encouraged to expand the experience with other musical activities. The broadcasts were discontinued in 1942 for financial and personal reasons. The Music Appreciation Hour and other music programs of the past can be used as models for contemporary projects as educators explore the creative use of technology in music teaching. Although technology changes, many issues of the past (audience development, repertoire selection, finances, sponsorship) are still relevant today.

The Winner Loses: Ernest Bloch and His America

On December 12, 1925, the magazine Musical America initiated a historic $3,000 prize contest in search of the epic American symphony. The time was ripe, proclaimed its editor, Milton Weil, to stimulate the composition of a work by an authentic genius in a nation he believed lacked a great musical culture. Accordingly, the winning score would be selected by the eminent conductors Walter Damrosch, Alfred Hertz, Serge Koussevitzky, Frederick A. Stock, and Leopold Stokowski, and performed at a later date by their respective orchestras in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. As Weil boasted, Something never previously obtained for an American prize work is planned for the composition which wins the award.' More than two years later the Swiss-born Ernest Bloch, a naturalized citizen of the United States affiliated with the San Francisco Con-

Fine Arts in the Core Curriculum

Fine Arts in the Core Curriculum

Book Reviews

Abstract BIOGRAPHY: From Thirty Years With Freud by Theodor Reik. Farrar and Rinehart. 241 pages. $2.50. Mark Twain in Eruption by Mark Twain. Edited by Bernard DeVoto. Harper & Bras 393 pp. $3.75. Not to Me Only by Caleb Frank Gates. Princeton University Press. 329 pp. $3.00. Still Small Voice by August Derleth. D. Appleton-Century Company. 307 PP. $3.00. EDUCATION Abstracts of Graduate Theses in Education, Volume III, Teachers College, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. 251 pp. $2.00. Science for the Elementary School Teacher by Gerald S. Craig. Ginn and Company. 540 pp. $3.00. Stops: A Handbook for Those Who Know Their Punctuation and for Those Who Aren't Quite Sure. Introduction by Robert M. Gay. Middlebury College Press. 37 pp. $1.00. The Arts in the Classroom by Natalie Robinson Cole. Illustrated. John Day. 137 pages. $1.75. FICTION: Landfall by Nevil Shute. William Morrow and Company. 284 pp. $2.50. Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather. Alfred A. Knopf. 295 pages. $2.50. Who Dwell With Wonder by Kathleen Coyle. E. P. Dutton and Company. 279 pp. $2.50. GENERAL: Approach to Music by Lawrence Abbott. Introduction by Walter Damrosch. Illustrated. Farrar and Rinehart. 358 pages. $2.50. Broadway in Review by John Mason Brown. W. W. Norton Company. 295 pages. $2.75. Poems by Eileen Duggan. Introduction by Walter de la Mare. The Macmillan Company. 65 pp. $1.50. Thinking on Your Feet by Louis Ni-zar. With an Introduction by Bruce Barton. Liveright Publishing Corporation. 301 pp. $2.50. PSYCHOLOGY: Behind the Scenes of Murder by Joseph Catton, M.D. W. W. Norton Company. 355 pages. $3.00. SOCIAL STUDIES, INCLUDING HISTORY: Freedom American Style by Alan F. Griffin. Henry Holt & Co. 184 pages. Here's Death Valley by C. B. Glass-cock. Illustrated. Bobbs-Merrill & Company. 329 pages. $3.00. Historian and Scientist by Gaetano Sal-vemini. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass. Pp. viii, 203. $2.50. In the Wake of the Raiders and the Merchant Navy Fights by A. D. Divine. E. P. Dutton and Company. 1940. $2.50. The Trojan Horse in America by Martin Dies. Dodd, Mead & Company. 366 pages. $2.50. The Ancient Greeks by William Kelly Prentice. Princeton University Press. 254 pages. $3.00. TRAVEL: Hawkeyes, A Biography of the State of Iowa by Phil Stong. Dodd, Mead and Company. 300 pp. $3.00. Hurricane's Wake by Roy Kauffman. The Macmillan Company. 319 pp. $3.00.

WALTER DAMROSCH

Journal Article WALTER DAMROSCH Get access W. J. HENDERSON W. J. HENDERSON Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Musical Quarterly, Volume XVIII, Issue 1, January 1932, Pages 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/XVIII.1.1 Published: 01 January 1932

Mr. Walter Damrosch and 'Grovelling in Ugliness'

Mr. Walter Damrosch and 'Grovelling in Ugliness'