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DAMROSCH
has never gone to college
WALTER DAMROSCH is the possessor of three honorary degrees as Doctor of Music from three great American universities — yet he has never been to college.
It so happens ....
He was born in Breslau, Germany. When his parents brought him to America in 1870 he was nine years old . . . and already a student of Greek and Latin. He learned to speak the new American version of English in fourteen days.
His father was one of the great music masters of his day. Young Walter’s musical education being the im¬ portant thing in life, no expense was spared to give him the best. Tutors were thick around the place. He studied pianoforte and conducting. When he found a bit of spare time he went down to the Cooper Union high school and put in the hours with a brush and a box of paints.
His father died when Walter was just twenty-three. And then the son justified all the labor and work and education that had been crammed into him by a half26
dozen great instructors. He stepped into his father’s shoes as conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra — and he has held the job ever since. For, when the New York Symphony and the Philharmonic Orchestra merged three seasons ago, Damrosch took the many superlative musicians who were left jobless and welded them into the new New York Symphony which you hear over the air.
A conductor at twenty-three. The event was only sig¬ nificant in that it showed how far this brilliant young mu¬ sician might go.
Since becoming Musical Counsel for the National Broad¬ casting Company, he has done as much, probably, as any one man to give the American masses a clear understand¬ ing and liking for fine music.
Nine months of the year he directs the RCA Educa¬ tional Hour through a coast-to-coast hook-up. It is a program designed for students, and in it Damrosch dem¬ onstrates and explains the works of all the world’s music masters. His Sunday symphony concerts are usually one of the brightest spots of the whole day.