Leopold Damrosch (1832-1855) was born in Posen, Poland. He gave in to pressure from his parents and earned a degree in medicine (1854) but immediately abandoned the field and devoted himself to his first love, music. He quickly became a leading violinist and conductor in his hometown and 1871 immigrated to the US, where he was a driving force in the cultural life the city. He founded the Oratorio Society (1873) and later established the New York Symphony Society (1877) as a competitor to the Philharmonic (the organizations merged in 1928). In the early 1880s he took his orchestra on tour to the American West, organized and conducted a mammoth musical festival in New York, and convinced the Metropolitan Opera to adopt a German repertory. His sons also became successful conductors and his daughter taught music. Leopold composed a number of works for orchestra (concertos, overture, symphony), choral compositions (cantatas, an oratorio), and songs.