Clara Damrosch Mannes was an American pianist and music educator.
Background
Clara Damrosch Mannes was born on December 12, 1869 in Breslau, Silesia, the third child and first daughter of Leopold Damrosch and Helene (von Heimburg) Damrosch. Her brothers Frank and Walter were also born in Breslau. Her one sister, Elizabeth, was born after the family's removal to the United States in 1871. The family was Lutheran, Leopold Damrosch having converted from Judaism. The Damrosch family settled in New York.
Education
After a brief, unhappy experience in the New York public school system Clara's education was entrusted to tutors. In 1884 she began studies at Mme Mears' private French school on Madison Avenue. Clara began the study of piano at the age of six, taking lessons with Clara Gross, who was in turn studying with Leopold Damrosch and playing the repertory of violin and piano sonatas with him. Later Clara studied with Jessie Pinney, who had been a student of Daniel Gregory Mason and Clara Schumann. In the fall of 1888 Damrosch and her sister traveled to Europe to pursue musical and artistic studies. They settled in Dresden, where Clara studied piano with Herrmann Scholtz, theory with Johannes Schreyer, and painting with a Herr Schenker, whom she later described as "a landscape painter the chromo kind. "
Career
When the sisters returned to New York in 1889, Clara began a career as teacher of piano, giving private lessons and doing some teaching at the settlement schools. Since her future husband's experiences in teaching at the Music School Settlement were to have a profound influence on the philosophy of the music school she and her husband later founded, it is interesting to note that Clara confesses in her autobiography that she disliked her early experiences as a settlement teacher. In 1897 Damrosch returned to Europe to study with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin. During this stay she became engaged to David Mannes, at that time a first violinist with the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter Damrosch and soon to be its concertmaster. David and Clara Mannes had agreed not to play together in public, and after their marriage Clara went back to teaching piano. In the summer of 1901, however, they began a series of summer concerts at Seal Island, Maine, then an important summer retreat for New York musicians. In the summer of 1903 they went to Belgium to enable David to study with the violinist Eugene Ysaÿe: Clara took this opportunity to study the interpretation of violin and piano works with Ysaÿe. On their return to New York in the fall of 1903 the Manneses agreed to give a series of sonata recitals to help the Music School Settlement, at which David Mannes was then teaching. This was the beginning of a concert career that was to involve tours through most of the United States and a set of concerts in London in the summer of 1913; a proposed European tour was canceled because of the outbreak of World War 1. Clara also appeared as pianist with such artists as the Kneisel Quartet, the Barrère Ensemble, and Pablo Casals. In 1916 David and Clara Mannes founded the David Mannes School of Music in New York City. Clara Mannes remained co-director with her husband of the school until her death. The Manneses continued their joint recitals for one year after the founding of the school, but thereafter appeared together as performers only occasionally. David Mannes was to find another performing career as a conductor, but for Clara the end of the joint recitals marks a virtual end to her performing career. In 1928 the Manneses (with Louis Untermeyer) published New Songs for New Voices, a collection of songs for children, most of them newly composed and many commissioned for the volume. Mannes died suddenly of a heart ailment in New York. She was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Achievements
Views
The approach of the Mannes School to the teaching of music was based mainly on David Mannes' experience at the Music School Settlement. The school was first planned primarily as a school for the young; however, so many applicants of the age to enter traditional music schools appeared that the Mannes School opened itself to students of all ages. The Manneses' ideal was to provide a musical education for all who were interested rather than for the virtuoso only, "embracing under the same roof not only the intense development of the potential professional, but the efforts of those who merely wanted to enrich themselves through a better understanding of playing of music without the responsibility of a career. "
Personality
As a performer Clara Mannes belongs to the first generation of American musicians to devote its major efforts to the performance of the classics of the chamber music repertory. The Manneses were the American violin-piano team that first showed itself to be the peers of the great European chamber ensembles. Critics praised their intelligence, flexibility, and give-and-take. David Mannes himself believed that when he and Clara first met she was the better musician. As a music educator Clara Mannes is important largely for her work in the Mannes School of Music. Her contribution was partly administrative she was the business expert among the directors but more important was her understanding of the proper nature of music education, particularly the education of children. She believed in the essential wholeness of musical experience and therefore of the necessity of its being taught as a whole, that music study in the classroom should be complemented by musical surroundings in the home.
Connections
On June 4, 1898 Clara Damrosch Mannes married David Mannes in Middle Granville, N. Y. They had two children, both of whom were to have important careers: Leopold Damrosch, pianist, composer, and inventor, and Marya, author.