The Curtis Institute
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) with Maggie Smith
Foundation
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The Curtis Institute of Music was founded in 1924 by Mary Louise Curtis Bok in three elegant mansions on the east side of Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia; the formal address is 1726 Locust Street. Bok sought advice from Leopold Stokowski, who joined the faculty and would lead the institute’s orchestra. She acquired several first-chair players from the Philadelphia orchestra as faculty members, and named Johann Grolle the school’s first director.
Stokowski predicted that Curtis would “become the most important musical institution of our country, perhaps of the world.”
1924
Classes began in October for the institute’s first students -- 203 musicians, including cellist Orlando Cole, who would go on to teach at Curtis for 75 years. The next year Johann Grolle was replaced by William E. Walter, who in turn was replaced in 1927 by Josef Hofmann, eminent pianist and the first head of the piano department.
1928
Josef Hofmann and Mary Louise Curtis Bok agree to drop the $500 tuition fee; henceforth, all students will be admitted on full scholarships. Mrs. Bok adds $12 million to the $500,000 endowment to support the policy.
1929
The Curtis Orchestra makes its Carnegie Hall debut. Countless Curtis-trained musicians will follow. And two legendary violinists from St. Petersburg, Russia, join the Curtis faculty: Leopold Auer and Efrem Zimbalist, his former student. Auer had also taught Nathan Milstein and Jascha Heifetz, who said of his teacher in 1918: “Auer is a wonderful and an incomparable teacher; I do not believe there is one in the world who can possibly approach him. Do not ask me just how he does it, for I would not know how to tell you.”
Auer was Hungarian (Auer Lipót, 1845 – 1930). When asked to comment on his most outstanding students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, this renowned violin teacher did not name Jascha Heifetz. When asked why, Auer replied, “He’s not my student. He’s a student of God.”
 Mary Louise Curtis BokÂ
Edward Bok was delighted with the project and the fact that it was to be entirely Mary’s creation; he encouraged his wife in planning such a music school, and helped in small ways, advising her about financial and administrative matters.
The two of them discussed possible candidates for the conservatory’s staff. There is little question that they had Josef Hofmann in mind for the job of Director, for Edward Bok wrote the pianist in the summer of 1924: “I don’t like to think of you in Pullmans for the rest of your life, or touring Russia or anything else but making yourself very desirable by playing only a few times, and then filling in your time with composing...and at the head of a great piano conservatory...”
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Gregor Benko
Josef Hofmann
Josef Casimir Hofmann (originally Józef Kazimierz Hofmann; 1876 – 1957, born in Podgórze [a district of Kraków], in Austro-Hungarian Galicia [present-day Poland]), was one of the greatest pianists and possessed of a phenomenal musical memory. He began giving concerts in Europe at age 5 and later became the only private pupil of the great Anton Rubinstein.
Regarded by many of his contemporaries, including Sergei Rachmaninov and Josef Lhevinne, as the finest pianist of their generation, he was the first head of Curtis’ piano department, and the teachers he recruited immediately established the school as a destination for serious keyboard students. He became the school’s third director in 1927 and served until 1938.
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In dedicating his third piano concerto to Hofmann, Rachmaninov is said to have remarked: 'Some pianists in New York are said to be the greatest pianists in America, some are claimed to be the greatest pianists in the world. You are the greatest pianist in New York.'
At Curtis
Hofmann was involved at that moment in the bizarre twists and turns of a secret love affair with a very much younger woman, and had little time to spare to run the Curtis Institute, but still wanted to be very much a part of the planned school. He helped to convince Mrs. Bok to design the school for all music students, not just pianists, and when The Curtis Institute of Music opened in October, 1924, Hofmann was installed as head of the piano department. The Director of the school was John Grolle.
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Except for a few lessons given to society ladies in Russia and some summer classes he had taught for local girls on the Aiken, South Carolina estate belonging to his first wife, Hofmann had no experience in teaching.
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The first year’s functions were limited, but operations began in full force the following year. Grolle was replaced as Director in the 1925/26 term by William Walter, formerly the manager of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. To the faculty were added Wilhelm Backhaus, Louis Bailly, Emilio de Gogorza, Felix Salmond, and Wanda Landowska who taught a special series of courses in 17th and 18th century music.
A year later Benno Moiseiwitsch and Moriz Rosenthal were engaged, both great pianists whose artistry Hofmann admired very much.
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The fantastic difficulties engendered by Hofmann’s illicit love affair were somewhat resolved when his first wife finally agreed to a divorce and he was free to marry Elizabeth Short, and to join Mary Bok in building a great conservatory. Hofmann had been acting unofficially in the Director’s capacity since late 1925, making important decisions after consulting with Mary Bok. His position of influence over her had evolved and solidified to an unassailable stature. She told her intimates that he was “Beethoven walking the earth.”
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Although Walter had proved to be a competent administrator, Hofmann officially replaced him as the Institute’s Director in 1927. Hofmann found it necessary to make Philadelphia his home and he lived in the Bok mansion in Merion with Mary and Edward until 1928, when his own luxe Merion house, “East and West,” was ready.
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Few were surprised when Hofmann was named Director, but the astonishing announcement of the twelve-million dollar donation, an unheard of act of generosity by a single individual, was received with both wonder and gratitude. Hofmann had urged her to fully fund the endowment, rather than continue to make large contributions each year to meet operating expenses. Income from the enlarged endowment, they both felt, would always be sufficient to cover all of the Institute’s yearly operating expenses.
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Hofmann had curtailed his very active and far-ranging concert career and limited his appearances to the United States when he agreed to become the Institute’s Director. In the first years of his tenure he was regularly on hand at the school, but as the years progressed he taught less and less. In 1933 he resumed his annual tours abroad, after which he began to attend to the business of the Institute while traveling, and was seen only infrequently in his studio and office at Curtis. His personal life was deteriorating because of his relationship with his unstable wife and his progressive addiction to alcohol. Mary Bok was beginning to change her attitude toward him, for despite the fact that she was now free, Hofmann’s marriage to Elizabeth Short was showing no signs of ending, and had produced three children.
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Gregor Benko, for Marston Records