Walter Kaufmann (composer)

Walter Kaufmann (1 April 1907 – 9 September 1984) was a Bohemian-born American composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, librettist and educator. Born in Karlsbad, Bohemia (then part of Austria-Hungary), he trained in Prague and Berlin before fleeing the Nazi persecution of Jews to work in Bombay until Indian independence. He then moved to London and Canada before settling in the U.S. as a professor of musicology at Indiana University Bloomington in 1957. In 1964, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Biography Kaufmann was born in Karlovy Vary to Julius and Josefine Antonia. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin training under Franz Schreker and Curt Sachs between 1927 and 1930. He then studied in Prague under Gustav Becking and Paul Nettl (father of the musicologist Bruno Nettl). While a student he met and became friends with Albert Einstein. He graduated in 1934 with a dissertation on Gustav Mahler but refused a degree in protest of his ordinarius (=professor) Gustav Becking who was a Nazi supporter. For a time he worked as an assistant to the conductor Bruno Walter at the Charlottenburg Opera in Berlin and for Radio Prague and saw some of his earliest compositions play