Composer, conductor and violinist, born on the 22nd of October 1832, in Posen, Prussia. He took a degree in medicine at the University of Berlin, and practiced as a physician until 1854, not interrupting, however, his study of music. His career as a concert violinist began in 1855. He was successful from the beginning, the training which he had received from the masters Ries and Dehn, and great natural aptitude, uniting to make him one of the foremost exponents of the contemporary German school. In 1866 he became musical director of the theater of Breslau, and in 1871 leader of the Arion Society of New York City. Dr. Damrosch introduced German opera into the United States; its first appearance, in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, 1884, being a musical event of great moment. The great musical festival held under his management in 1881 was of scarcely less importance. The place of Dr. Damrosch as a conductor and as a concert violinist was doubtless in the front rank of his contemporaries. Up to the time of his death, which was sudden, he remained leader of the New York Oratorio and the Symphony societies, both of which he had founded. He died on the 15th of February 1885, in New York City.
