Karl Muck

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R.I.P
Karl

Conducting Solo performers praised his work with them. Artur Schnabel called Muck: "a very great master, whose reliability, maturity and selfless dedication are not equaled by any living artist." Paderewski called him "an ideal accompanist". In physical terms, his conducting style required minimal movement, only small gestures with the tip of his baton. In areas of interpretation he was one of the first modernists. Though old enough to be part of generation known for taking liberties with the score and indulging in flexible tempos, he was by contrast disciplined and direct, less concerned with placing his personal stamp on a score than on demonstrating fidelity to the score and ceding a certain interpretative anonymity. By contrast with his conducting style, orchestra players found him impatient, explosive, nervous, and impulsive. He showed no casual or relaxed side of himself at concerts, rather "he dominated the orchestra and the audience and the occasion." The Austrian conductor Karl Böhm said in a 1972 interview: "Karl Muck by chance heard me direct Lohengrin, and he invited me to study all Wagner's scores with him. He was the first and greatest influence on me ... Muck told me where the orchestra should be more prominent,…Citește mai mult

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Further reading Melissa D. Burrage, "Caught on the American Cultural Battleground: Dr. Karl Muck in World War I Boston." Ph.D. Dissertation. (University of East Anglia, 2015.) Melissa D. Burrage, The Karl Muck Scandal: Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War I America (New York: University of Rochester Press, 2019). online review Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sound Diplomacy: Music and Emotion in Transatlantic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, 2012). Peter Muck, ed., Karl Muck: ein Dirigentenleben in Briefen und Dokumenten. (Tutzing, 2003: Schneider), documentary biography compiled from letters and other documents Neil Swidey, "The Muck Affair", The Boston Globe, 5 November 2017 Egon Voss, Die Dirigenten der Bayreuther Festspiele, (Regensburg, 1976: Gustav Bosse Verlag)

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Recordings Muck's reputation rests largely on his recorded legacy. In October 1917 he made a series of sound recordings in the US with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the Victor Talking Machine Company in their Camden, New Jersey auditorium. Unusually for the time (when the pre-electric purely mechanical “acoustic” process was in use) the orchestra seems to have been recorded at full strength as the 1919 Victor catalogue refers to "approximately a hundred men". Eight short pieces spread over ten 78 r.p.m. sides were selected, including excerpts from Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and two items from Berlioz's Damnation of Faust. Muck's most important recordings were made at the 1927 Bayreuth Festival for the English Columbia Gramophone Company and in 1927 to 1929 in Berlin for the Gramophone Company (His Master's Voice). At Bayreuth sometime between late June and mid-August 1927, he conducted about 30 minutes of excerpts from Parsifal Acts 1 and 2. His control of phrasing in the Transformation and Grail scenes is regarded as unsurpassed to this day. In December 1927 he led the Berlin State Opera Orchestra in an account of the opera's Prelude, one of the slowest on record. A year later,…Citește mai mult

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R.I.P
Karl

Karl Muck was born in Darmstadt, which was then the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, in modern Germany. Muck's father, a senior court official and amateur musician, moved the family to Switzerland in 1867 and acquired Swiss citizenship. Karl Muck acquired Swiss citizenship when he was 21. Muck studied piano as a child and made his first public appearance at the age of 11 when he gave a piano solo at a chamber music recital. He also played the violin in a local symphony orchestra as a boy. He graduated from the gymnasium at Würzburg and entered the University of Heidelberg at 16. In May 1878 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he took his degree as Doctor of Philosophy in 1880. While there studied music at Leipzig Conservatory. He made his formal debut as a concert pianist on February 19, 1880, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in Xaver Scharwenka's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor with Arthur Nikisch conducting. He began his conducting career in comparatively minor provincial cities, starting in 1880 as Second Conductor (Zweiter Kapellmeister) in Zurich (Aktientheater), moving to Salzburg (k.k. Theater) in October 1881 as Principal Conductor (Erster Kapellmeister), where he served…Citește mai mult

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Boston, 1906–1918 Muck served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) from 1906 to 1908 and then again from 1912 to 1918 (with a yearly salary of 28,000 dollars as the New York Times reported on March 26, 1918). Initially he had to work to expand his repertoire from the operas and German music he concentrated on in Europe. Olin Downes later wrote that "his repertory was unequal to the demands of his audience" so he relied on members of the BSO for coaching in French works. Contemporary works were not his strong suit, though he dutifully programmed music that was not to his own taste, such as the American premiere of Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. He also introduced some Sibelius symphonies and many works of Debussy to Boston. Despite his restrained style, he occasionally revealed his romantic side in a work like Liszt's Faust Symphony. On his death the New York Times said that in Boston "he built a virtuoso orchestra." Why he chose to work in America is unknown. In Berlin he was on close personal terms with Kaiser Wilhelm, but American gossip held that he preferred his freedom and for that reason refused the…Citește mai mult

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National Anthem controversy After American entry into World War I in the spring of 1917, Muck offered to resign his position as music director of the BSO. He anticipated that his natural sympathies for Germany, where he was born and spent most of his career despite his Swiss citizenship, might give offense. Henry Lee Higginson, the orchestra's founder and financer, declined it and instead signed Muck to another five-year contract. Muck had fears for his own safety, but Higginson gave him assurances that as an apolitical artist he had nothing to fear. Even so, Muck became very sensitive to avoid giving offense. The orchestra's publicity manager later wrote: "A good and patriotic German, he had become greatly attached to this country, and altogether he was a thoroughly unhappy man." Nevertheless, he continued his former practice and programmed concerts of Classical music only by German and Austro-Hungarian composers on his first tour of American cities following U.S. entry into the war, which some found not at all sensitive to the public's mood in wartime. In the fall of 1917, some orchestras like the New York Orchestra Society started performing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at all their concerts. Members of the BSO management…Citește mai mult

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Muck was arrested on March 25, 1918, just before midnight and therefore the BSO's performances of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion on March 26 and April 2, which Muck had been preparing for months, had to be conducted by Ernst Schmidt. Government officials were free to ignore the fact that he was a citizen of neutral Switzerland and the bearer of a Swiss passport, since the law sanctioned the arrest of those born in any of the German States before the 1871 founding of the German Empire without respect to citizenship. Boston police and federal agents also searched Muck's home at 50 Fenway and removed personal papers and scores. They suspected the conductor's markings in the score of the St. Matthew Passion were coded messages proving that Muck was a German spy. As part of German-American internment, he was imprisoned at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. The Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity that had elected him to national honorary membership in 1916 expelled Muck in 1919 for allegedly sympathizing with the Central Powers. Fellow internees had heard that Muck had decided in protest to never conduct in America again, but they persuaded him that the camp was more of a German village…Citește mai mult

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Later career, 1919–1933 Muck returned to a different Germany. The recent German Revolution of 1918–1919 made him "a man in marked disfavor with the republican government." The death of his beloved wife Anita on April 14, 1921, left him "infinitely lonesome". Muck eventually took the helm of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra in 1922 and made additional recordings. He returned to Bayreuth when the festival was revived there in 1924, the representative of the pre-war tradition. He expressed his devotion to the Festival and Wagner's music in a letter advising Fritz Busch that all he needed to succeed there was "the unassuming humility and the holy fanaticism of the Believer." He was also engaged in Munich, Amsterdam (Concertgebouw Orchestra) and Salzburg (Don Giovanni in 1925). In September 1930, he resigned his position at Bayreuth, much to the distress of Winifred Wagner, who had just succeeded her late husband Siegfried Wagner as the Festival's director. He never accommodated himself to being upstaged by Toscanini, but writing privately to Winifred Wagner, he said he had been committed to serving her husband, but the Festival now required someone other than "I, whose artistic standpoint and convictions, so far as Baireuth [sic] is concerned, stem…Citește mai mult

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R.I.P
Karl

Karl Muck (October 22, 1859 – March 3, 1940) was a Hessian-born conductor of classical music. He based his activities principally in Europe and mostly in opera. His American career comprised two stints at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). Muck endured a trial by media in 1917, after Providence Journal editor John R. Rathom falsely accused him of knowingly refusing a request to have the BSO play the Star Spangled Banner following American entry into World War I. Although Muck was a citizen of neutral Switzerland, he was arrested based on Rathom's accusation and incarcerated as an enemy alien at Fort Oglethorpe, a German-American internment camp in Georgia from March 1918 until August 1919. Karl Muck and his wife were then deported from the United States. His later career included notable engagements in Hamburg and at the Bayreuth Festival.

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Cultural depictions In Maria Peters' 2018 film De Dirigent (The Conductor), a biopic about Antonia Brico, Muck's student from 1927 to 1932 and the first internationally recognized female conductor of Classical music, Karl Muck was played by German actor Richard Sammel.