Leopold Stokowski Biography

Fast Facts

• Graduated from Queen's College at Oxford with a degree in Music in 1903
• Learned to play violin, piano, and organ during his childhood and became the youngest person to be admitted to the Royal College of Music at the age of 13
• Made his conducting debut unexpectedly in 1908 when he filled in for a conductor in Paris who had fallen ill
• Frequently experimented with orchestral seating, grouping instruments together and once lining up the string basses along the rear of the stage
• Left his position at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to join the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912
• Best known as a conductor who led the Philadelphia Orchestra for several years and appeared in the film "Fantasia․"
• Was one of the first conductors to stop using a baton in favor of using graceful hand gestures
• For "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of "Fantasia," the animators at Disney copied his own conducting gestures for Mickey's directing of the forces of Nature