On this day, June 22, 1859, in what is now Wroclaw, Poland, conductor and teacher, Frank Damrosch was born into a family of great musicians. He studied piano and composition as a child, and move to New York with his family in 1871.
According to the New York Times, when he was a child he met composer Richard Wagner. And the great violinist Joseph Joachim was a close friend of the family who was fond of Frank and his younger brother, Walter. Frank was also the godson of Franz Liszt.
As an adult, Damrosch started a business in Denver, but soon devoted his life to music, and founded the Denver Chorus Club in 1882. It didn't take long before he was appointed the supervisor of music for Denver public schools.
Damrosch became the chorus master at the Metropolitan Opera following the death of his father Leopold Damrosch in 1885. The elder Damrosch was the chief conductor at the Met.
And he remained with the Met until 1892. That year, he developed the People’s Singing Classes in New York to teach sight-reading and choral singing. That branched into the People’s Choral Union, which was 500-strong and made up of mostly working-class people. Damrosch directed both organizations until 1909.
In 1893, Frank Damrosch founded the Musical Art Society of New York, which was devoted to the performance of a cappella choral works and modern choral music by professional singers until it was dissolved in 1920.
Frank Damrosch supervised music in New York’s public schools between 1897-1905. He founded the Institute of Musical Art in 1905. Its mission was to set up a music conservatory in New York City to allow talented musicians to get advanced musical training in the United States, according to Juilliard.edu.
That school merged with the Juilliard Graduate School (founded with a major bequest from wealthy textile merchant Augustus Juilliard), to create the Juilliard School of Music, which is now known the world over. Damrosch served as its dean until 1933.
