Music
Van de Kamp was a talented musician, playing piano, viola, and violin, only forgoing a musical career in his youth because he considered this more difficult to achieve than a career in astronomy. He helped to organize an orchestra in Charlottesville, which he conducted and included fellow astronomer Alexander Vyssotsky. He also composed music for orchestra as well as for piano. From 1944 to 1954 he was conductor of the Swarthmore College Symphony Orchestra. He combined his musical gifts with another hobby, movies, by playing silent films on Swarthmore campus and accompanying them on the piano. At Swarthmore Van de Kamp performed with Peter Schickele, a.k.a. P. D. Q. Bach, and made several films of Schickele's student performance, while on the occasion of his 70th birthday Schickele wrote a piano piece for him called The Easy Goin' P. v. d. K. Ever Lovin' Rag. Van de Kamp's said that his fondest musical memory was playing chamber music with Albert Einstein, on the evening before the latter's commencement address at Swarthmore College in 1938.
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