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David Mannes was an American educator, conductor, violinist.
Background
David Mannes was born on February 16, 1866 in New York City, the son of Henry Mannes and Natalia Wittkowsky, German-Polish immigrants. Owing to a serious accident at age five that left him frail and to his early fascination with both musical and nonmusical sounds, his parents decided that he should become a violinist.
Education
Mannes' formal education consisted of four rather underprivileged years at a public school in New York, but his musical education was broad. Local theater and dance-hall musicians, Hermann Brody and Theodore Moses, were his earliest violin teachers, but he also studied with George Matska at the New York College of Music and with August Zeiss and Carl Richter Nicolai, pupils of Ludwig Spohr. Further study was done in Berlin with Heinrich de Ahna and Karol Halí01, and in Brussels with Eugène Ysaÿe. As a boy Mannes was also a friend and informal student of the violinist John Douglas, a black man whose sympathetic and apparently selfless interest was a contributing factor to Mannes' later commitment to the welfare of blacks in American life and education.
Career
From the age of fifteen, Mannes worked as a free-lance violinist in New York City, his engagements being mainly in theater and dance-hall orchestras of varying quality, with occasional opportunities to play under such noted conductors as Frank Damrosch and Anton Seidl. In 1891, Walter Damrosch, then in the process of forming the orchestra of the Symphony Society, which had been founded by his father, Leopold Damrosch, heard Mannes play and hired him for the forty-week season. Mannes remained with the New York Symphony Orchestra until 1911, and was its concertmaster from 1902. He accompanied some of the most famous virtuosi of the day, such as Ysaÿe and the pianist Ignace Paderewski, and worked under the conductors Gustav Mahler and Felix Weingartner, as well as Damrosch. Mannes' activities as a violinist were not limited to orchestral playing. He was the founder and first violinist of the Mannes Quartet (1902 - 1904) and appeared as violin soloist in recital in the United States and Europe with his wife. In connection with his activities at the Music School Settlement, Mannes founded and conducted the Settlement Symphony. In 1904 he incorporated this group of young string players into the orchestra of the Symphony Club of New York, which he also conducted. These experiences proved valuable when, in February 1919, Mannes inaugurated a series of free concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, conducting an orchestra of fifty-four musicians paid by the trustees of the museum. That year, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , attended one of these concerts and began financing a part of the series. Other backers were Mrs. Clarence Mackay, John A. Roebling, and the Juilliard School of Music. Mannes conducted this series until 1949 and often appeared as a performer, using one of the Stradivarius violins owned by the Metropolitan Museum. It was as an educator that Mannes made his most significant contributions to the musical life of his time. In 1960 Mannes College merged with Chatham Square Music School and, on account of the increased net worth and endowment, was granted an "absolute, " or degree-granting, charter by the state of New York. Mannes retired in 1949 but continued to be involved in the affairs of the college. In the end of his life Mannes still made his daily rounds of the classrooms. He died on April 25, 1959 in New York City.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Views
Evincing Mannes' belief that a musical education should promote "not only the intense development of the potential professional, but also the efforts of those who want merely to enrich themselves through a better understanding or playing of music without the responsibilities of a career, " the Mannes School flourished. It offered courses in harmony and counterpoint with Ernest Bloch, Rosario Scalero, and Hans Weisse, and master classes in piano with Alfred Cortot. This broad concept of musical education was reflected in the organization of the school, which included an extension division, preparatory and intermediate departments for the young, and, from 1953, a degree-granting college.
Personality
Mannes was admired and loved not for his virtuosity or bravura, but for the enthusiasm that he brought to the study of music and for his exceptional gift of imparting it to others.
Connections
On June 4, 1898 David Mannes married pianist Clara Damrosch, a student of Busoni and daughter of Leopold Damrosch. They had two children, writer Marya Mannes and pianist-educator Leopold Damrosch Mannes, who was also coinventor of the Kodachrome process of color photography.