Victor Hammer (1882-1967) was an Austrian-born artist, active mainly in Florence and Vienna and later in the United States. His output consists largely of portraits and religious scenes—paintings, sculpture, drawings, woodcuts, engravings, and mezzotints. He is widely known for his contribution to the book arts as a designer of uncial typefaces and a printer on hand presses. An avid amateur musician, Hammer played the clavichord, lute, and clarinet. A number of his friends were musicians, among them Heinrich Schenker and Hans Weisse, who dedicated several of his compositions to Hammer. Hammer completed a mezzotint portrait of Schenker in 1925, and a portrait drawing of Weisse in 1923. His exchange of letters with Schenker (available through the Web portal, Schenker Documents Online) record their discussion of the existence in both music and pictures of the Urlinie, a concept from Schenkerian analysis that represents a reduction of a composition to a single descending line. The influence of Schenker’s ideas can be seen in Hammer’s essays on the philosophy of art, most of which he published after his immigration to the United States in 1939. He taught at Wells College in Aurora, New York, and later at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he continued his work in the book arts with his second wife, the printer Carolyn Reading Hammer.

Hans Weisse (1892-1940) was an Austrian (later naturalized American) teacher, theorist and composer, who studied with Schenker between 1908 and 1919, taught for ten years in Vienna and, after contemplating prospects in Germany, opted to immigrate to the United States, teaching in New York until his premature death. He, more than anyone else, deserves credit for initiating the wide dissemination of Schenker's theory that took place in the U.S. in the mid-20th century. Weisse communicated Schenker's ideas not through publications but through teaching, his pupils including Oswald Jonas, Adele T. Katz, William J. Mitchell, and Felix Salzer. Arriving in New York in late September 1931, Weisse introduced himself to his new colleagues at Mannes School of Music with a successful half-hour talk on "the relationship of a music theory teacher to the other teachers in a school of music," and he soon confirmed his reputation as a gifted educator. Many of the letters he wrote to Schenker during this period (also available through Schenker Documents Online) describe the success he had connecting theory to practice, specifically the ways in which music should be listened to and, especially, performed.

Biographical note adapted from legacy finding aid data.