Frederick Stock

Frederick Stock studied at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. Training under Engelbert Humperdinck and Franz Wüllner is recorded. The recorded working language is German. Places of work recorded in the authority are Chicago. Employment is recorded with Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Distinctions recorded are star on Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Born in Jülich, Rhine Province, Germany, Stock was given his early musical education by his army bandmaster father. At the age of 14, he was admitted to the Cologne Conservatory as a student of violin and composition, where he counted composer Engelbert Humperdinck as one of his teachers and conductor Willem Mengelberg among his classmates. After graduating from the conservatory in 1890, Stock joined the Municipal Orchestra of Cologne as a violinist.

In 1895, Stock met with Theodore Thomas, founder and first music director of the then fledgling Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who was to have a decisive impact on his future. Thomas, who was then visiting Germany in search of recruits for his new Chicago orchestra, auditioned Stock and hired him as a violist. Thomas soon realized, however, that his new violist was also a very talented conductor and, in 1899, Stock was promoted to assistant conductor. After Thomas' death on January 4, 1905, Stock succeeded him as music director. That year, he wrote a symphonic poem Eines Menschenlebens Morgen, Mittag und Abend, dedicated to "Theodore Thomas and the Members of the Chicago Orchestra." The work was first performed on April 7 and 8, 1905. The orchestra's board of trustees had first approached Hans Richter, Felix Weingartner and Felix Mottl to succeed Thomas. But the board's executive committee met on April 11, 1905, and resolved: "Frederick Stock unanimously elected Conductor. Trustees voted that the Orchestra should now be known as 'The Theodore Thomas Orchestra.'" (The ensemble's name was ultimately changed to Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1913.) Under Stock's direction, the Chicago Symphony became one of America's top orchestras, developing a distinctive brass sound already heard in its first recordings. An enthusiast of modern music, Stock championed the works of many then modern composers including Gustav Mahler; Richard Strauss (who, at Theodore Thomas's invitation, had been the CSO's first-ever guest conductor on subscription concerts in April 1904); Igor Stravinsky, whose Symphony in C was commissioned for the orchestra's 50th anniversary; Sergei Prokofiev, who was soloist in the world premiere of his Third Piano Concerto in Chicago (although he recorded it in 1932 with the London Symphony); Gustav Holst; Zoltán Kodály, whose Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by Stock; Nikolai Myaskovsky, whose Symphony No. 21 was commissioned for the orchestra's 50th anniversary; Josef Suk; William Walton; Arthur Benjamin; George Enescu; Leo Sowerby; and many others. Stock and the Chicago Symphony debuted the Symphony in E minor by Florence Price on June 15, 1933, Price's first symphony and the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra. Stock's most memorable recordings were of Romantic repertory by Schubert, Schumann, Weber, Goldmark and Glazunov. In 1936, when Stock was less and less able to conduct himself, Hans Lange, formerly Arturo Toscanini's assistant with the New York Philharmonic, was hired to conduct those CSO concerts Stock could no longer conduct. He remained at the CSO during Désiré Defauw's tenure, and was a mentor of Chicago composer Leon Stein. Stock died in Chicago on 20 October 1942.

Several of Frederick Stock's compositions were performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during his tenure as conductor including: • Eines Menschenlebens Morgen, Mittag und Abend (1905) • Symphonic Variations (1906) • Improvisation (1907) • Symphonic Waltz Op. 8 (1907) • A Summer Evening, symphonic sketch (1908) • Symphony No. 1 in C minor (1909) • Festival March (1910) • Festival March and Hymn to Liberty (1913) • Life's Spring Tide, overture (1914) • Festival Prologue (1915) • Concerto for Violin in D minor (1916) • Overture to a Romantic Comedy (1918) • March and Hymn to Democracy (1919) • Symphonic Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 7 (1915) • Elegy (1923) • Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in D minor (1929) • A Musical Self-Portrait (1932) • Festival Fanfare (1940)