Frank Van der Stucken
1858-1929

Born in Fredericksburg, Texas, Frank Van der Stucken gained fame as a conductor of American music and as a composer. He was schooled in Europe, having studied with Peter Benoit at the Antwerp Conservatory and Carl Reinecke in Leipzig. In 1881 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Stadttheater in Breslau, for which he composed music to Shakespeare's The Tempest . In 1883 in Weimar he met Liszt, who sponsored a concert of his music. He returned to the United States in 1884 to succeed Leopold Damrosch as conductor of the Arion Society, a male chorus in New York. In 1889 he directed a concert of American works at the Paris Exposition, that included MacDowell's Piano Concerto in D minor (with MacDowell as soloist), and works by Chadwick, Foote, and Paine.

He was conductor of the North American Sängerbund in Newark (1891) and New York (1894) before becoming the first permanent conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a position he held from 1895 to 1907. He was dean of the Cincinnati College of Music from 1896 to 1901 and followed Theodore Thomas as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival from 1906 to 1912. After 1907 he lived mainly in Europe, but he returned to Cincinnati to conduct at the May Festival in 1923 and to be its music director from 1925 to 1927. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1898 and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1929. The Cincinnati College of Music awarded him an honorary doctorate of Music in 1926. When he began rehearsals for the May Festival in 1929, his strength failed, and he returned to Europe to be cured at one of the famous baths. He made it as far as Hamburg, where he died shortly after landing.

In 1982 the Frank Van der Stucken Society was formed as a support group for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Van der Stucken's compositions include orchestral works ( Pax Trimphans , the overture Louisiana , and Idylle ), choral music, piano pieces, and many songs.