Scope and Content Note
The Damrosch - Tee Van Collection consists of the papers of Leopold Damrosch, his son Frank, and their families. Materials in the collection span from 1856-1969, with the bulk of them dating from the 1870s to the 1930s. These include biographical materials, correspondence, writings, manuscript and printed music, financial and legal papers, programs, scrapbooks, artwork, and photographs.
The first series, Biographical Materials, comprises items that relate to various Damrosch family members, chiefly Leopold and Frank Damrosch, namely printed articles, manuscript notes, and interview transcripts. One item of interest is an autobiographical essay written by Leopold Damrosch as a graduation thesis from his high school at Posen.
The Papers of Leopold Damrosch consist of the following: correspondence, including a copy of a letter from Liszt; several examples of writings; four scores, including Leopold Damrosch's piano-vocal arrangement of Hector Berlioz's Requiem; programs for concerts Damrosch conducted and attended; a scrapbook of clippings; and a few other miscellaneous items. This series of the collection is quite small, due in part to a fire in 1887 that destroyed many of Leopold's papers, including much of his correspondence with Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hans von Bülow, and others.
The Papers of Frank Damrosch and Other Damrosch Family Members constitutes a far larger portion of the collection. The correspondence comprises several hundred letters. Many of the Frank Damrosch's letters to his family were destroyed in the 1887 fire; there are, however, a great many letters to his wife Hetty from Europe in 1891. Other Damrosch family correspondence includes letters to and from miscellaneous family members.
The remainder of the papers include: manuscript and typescript copies of Frank Damrosch's book, Some Essentials in the Teaching of Music; a copy of the libretto for Walter Damrosch's The Scarlet Letter; several printed editions of Frank Damrosch's choral music; programs for concerts the Damrosch family attended or that Frank conducted; photographs and original artwork by Frank Damrosch; and other family memorabilia. Also included are papers of the Institute of Musical Art, the music school that Frank Damrosch founded in 1905.