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.
Early life and career
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 officialProtokollisten und späteren Sekretärs am Bezirksgericht in Würzburg (MGG) and amateur musician, moved the family to Switzerland in 1867 and acquired Swiss citizenship. Karl Muck acquired Swiss citizenship when he was 21.New York Times: "Arrest Karl Muck as an Enemy Alien," March 26, 1918, accessed January 13, 2010 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.Current Biography (New York) 1940, 605-6 He graduated from the gymnasium at WürzburgNew York Times: "Karl Muck Dies; Noted Wagnerian," March 5, 1940, accessed January 13, 2010 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,For details see Peter Muck's 2003 documentary biography and Current Biography (New York, 1940), 604-6 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 until April 1882. He then held appointments in Brünn (Stadttheater: October 1882 to June 1883) and Graz (1884–1886), where he married 21-year-old Anita Portugall on February 3, 1887. His first position in a major musical center came in Prague as Principal Conductor at Angelo Neumann's Deutsches Landestheater, starting with a performance of Die Meistersinger on August 15, 1886, and ending in June 1892. He also conducted Neumann's traveling opera company, appearing at Berlin and in 1888–1889 conducting Wagner's Ring cycle in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He left Prague to become principal conductor in October 1892 of the Berlin Court Opera (Kgl. Oper — today the Berlin State Opera, where he was appointed Chief Musical Director (Kgl. preußischer Generalmusikdirektor) on August 26, 1908. He remained in Berlin until 1912, conducting 1,071 performances of 103 operas. He also conducted the Royal Orchestra in concerts there.Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Conductors (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1967), , 222
He took other assignments during his tenure in Berlin. He was guest conductor at the Silesian music festivals in Goerlitz between 1894 and 1911. In May and June 1899 at London's Royal Opera House Covent Garden, he conducted Beethoven's Fidelio and several of Wagner's operas (Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, Die Meistersinger, Der fliegende Höllander and Tristan und Isolde).Advertisements & reviews in The Times, London He devoted many summers to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth where he became principal conductor in 1903, after serving as a musical assistant since 1892. He succeeded Hermann Levi as the conductor of Parsifal there.Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 20, 115-6 As war approached in the summer of 1914, Muck insisted on performing Parsifal on August 1, 1914, to close the Festival, which was not revived until 1924.Spotts, 135 Muck conducted Parsifal at all of the fourteen Bayreuth festivals held between 1901 and 1930, and also conducted Lohengrin there in 1909 and Die Meistersinger in 1925, becoming a close friend of the Wagner family. The American music critic Herbert Peyser (1886-1953) thought Muck's interpretation of Parsifal the greatest he had ever heard: "the only and ultimate Parsifal; the Parsifal in which every phrase was charged with infinities; the Parsifal which was neither of this age nor that age but of all time."Schonberg, 221 He led the Vienna Philharmonic from 1903 to 1906 and the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1906 to 1918, and took visiting assignments in other cities, including Paris, Madrid, Copenhagen, Brussels.Schonberg, 216-7
Muck was offered the Metropolitan Opera House podium in New York at a reputed $27,000 a year, but declined. From 1903 to 1906 he alternated with Felix Mottl as conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. At the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition held in San Francisco May 14–26, 1915, Muck conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 13 concerts of music of all nations.Muck 2003, pp. 104-5 lists programmes of these concerts.
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."Schonberg, 216 Paderewski called him "an ideal accompanist".Schonberg 222 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.Schonberg, 217-8 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."New York Times: Olin Downes, "Dr. Karl Muck: His Death Recalls Problems of the Artist in Time of War," March 10, 1940, accessed January 13, 2010 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, how to handle the Bayreuth acoustics, and so on."The Gramophone magazine, December 1972, 1107
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).New York Times "Karl Much to return", October 2, 1910 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."New York Times: "Karl Muck," March 5, 1940, January 13, 2010
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 post of director of the royal opera in Munich in 1911. His life in Boston appeared unremarkable and he guest conducted at the Bayreuth Festival as the conductor of the BSO. Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity made him an honorary member in 1916Sinfonia: Musical Cat, March 1916, 7 , accessed January 19, 2010 and he judged a piano competition in the spring of 1917.Sinfonia: Musical Cat, July 1917, 25 , accessed January 19, 2010 On October 2–5, 1917, he led the BSO in historic recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey. The sessions included works by Tchaikovsky, Wolf-Ferrari, Berlioz, Beethoven, and Wagner.Association for Recorded Sound Collections: "The Recordings of Karl Muck" , accessed January 18, 2010
Philip Hale, music critic of the Boston Herald during Muck's years there, wrote: "He stands there calm, undemonstrative, graceful, elegant, aristocratic; a man of singularly commanding and magnetic personality even in repose. The orchestra is his speech, the expression of the composer's music as it appeals to the conductor's brain, heart and soul."
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."New York Times: William E. Walter, "Dr. Muck and the First War," March 10, 1940, accessed January 13, 2010 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.New York Times: "Dr. Muck Resigns, Then Plays Anthem," November 3, 1917, accessed January 19, 2010 Members of the BSO management team discussed programming the anthem for weeks, but without any sense of the issue's importance. Moreover, the orchestra's manager, Charles A. Ellis, did not want to embarrass Muck by asking him to conduct the anthem, particularly given Muck's close attachment to his birthplace and his past personal friendship with the last Kaiser.
The BSO performed regularly at Infantry Hall in Providence, Rhode Island, where John R. Rathom, the unscrupulous and openly Pro-British editor of the Providence Journal had been attacking Muck for his past ties to the last Kaiser. The BSO's managers anticipated there might be trouble during their October 1917 visit. One member of the management team later said that Major Higginson, the BSO's chairman, was "pugnacious" while Ellis, the manager, was "rather nervous" as they joined the orchestra on the trip. Higginson took measures to protect Muck's safety in the case of serious trouble.