Walter Kaufmann (1 April 1907 – 9 September 1984) was a composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, librettist and educator. Born in Karlsbad, Bohemia (at that time 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 USA as a professor of musicology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 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 played in Carlsbad, Berlin, Wroclaw, Prague and Vienna. He married Gerti (Gertrude) Hermann (d. 1972), a niece of Franz Kafka and the family fled Nazi Germany in 1934. His father died when the family reached the Czech border. He moved to India and worked as a director of music at the All India Radio in Bombay from 1937 to 1946. His contemporary John Foulds, known for banning the harmonium from Indian radio, worked in New Delhi. He founded the Bombay Chamber Music Society along with others like Mehli Mehta (Kaufmann also taught the Mehtas' son Zubin Mehta). He also researched Indian and Asian music, writing about them in journals. He composed the signature tune for All India Radio in 1936. Just before the war Kaufmann spent some time in America, unsuccessfully attempting to establish himself there, but ultimately returned to India. During World War II he served in the British Navy and after the war he tried to return to Prague but settled instead in London, arriving in August 1946, where he scored two documentary films for the Rank Organisation and (at the invitation of Adrian Boult) occasionally conducted the BBC Theatre Orchestra. A year later he left England, moving to Nova Scotia, Canada