David Mannes
David Mannes was an American violinist, conductor, and music educator, born in New York City on February 16, 1866. He came from a very poor family of Polish immigrants and received no systematic musical education. He taught himself and played at skating rinks, on the street, and in wax museums. The violinist John Douglas, who had studied at the Paris Conservatoire, gave him free lessons; Douglas could not perform in the United States because of his race. Mannes later studied in Berlin with Heinrich de Ahna and Karl Halir.
In 1891, Walter Damrosch, chief conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, heard Mannes playing during an intermission in a New York theater and invited him to join the orchestra. Mannes served as its concertmaster from 1898 to 1912. In 1898 he married Damrosch’s younger sister, pianist and singer Clara Damrosch.
Mannes and his wife helped organize music education in New York. He became director of the New York Music School in 1900. Unable to admit Black students there because of public opinion, he founded a music school for Black students in Harlem in 1912. In 1916, he and Clara established the Mannes School of Music, a small private conservatory that later developed into Mannes College.
In 1938, Mannes published his autobiography, Music Is My Faith. He died in New York City on April 25 or April 24, 1959.