German Conductor Karl Muck

German Conductor Karl Muck --- ===

How BSO conductor Karl Muck landed in trouble ... - The Boston Globe
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2017/11/01/sex-spies-and-classical.../story.html18 hours ago - One hundred years ago, one of the world's top conductors was ... In the fall of 1917, theBoston Symphony Orchestra, under its German conductor, .... “American Anthem Entirely Ignored,” cried the front-page headline of the ...

Karl Muck - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Muck
Karl Muck (October 22, 1859 – March 3, 1940) was a German-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 .... It called for the BSO to perform the National Anthem that night "to put Professor ...

National Anthem controversy[edit]

When the United States entered 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 artist he had nothing to fear. Thereafter he 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."[24] Nevertheless, he programmed all-German concerts 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.[25] 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 do it, given Muck's close attachment to Germany and his personal relationship with the Kaiser.[24]

The BSO performed regularly at Infantry Hall in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Providence Journal had been attacking Muck for his ties to the 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 in case of serious trouble.[24]

On October 30, 1917, the day of the concert, the Providence Journal published an editorial that said "Professor Muck is a man of notoriously pro-German affiliations and the programme as announced is almost entirely German in character." It called for the BSO to perform the National Anthem that night "to put Professor Muck to the test."[26] About to leave Boston for Providence, Higginson and Ellis received two requests, one from a local patriotic organization and another from the heads of local music clubs, asking the BSO to play the anthem. Muck never saw the request, but Higginson and others viewed it as the work of John R. Rathom, editor and publisher of the Providence Journal, whose motto was "Raise hell and sell newspapers." They dismissed the request without much consideration and the concert went off without incident. Muck only learned of the petition on the orchestra's train ride back to Boston that same night. Shocked and somewhat fearful, he said he did not object to playing the anthem, that it was fitting for him as a guest to accommodate the wishes of his hosts.[24]

Now that the BSO had failed to play the anthem, Rathom created the false story that Muck had refused to perform it, accused Muck of treason and called him a spy and a hater of all things American.[27]

The story had a life of its own, however. As the orchestra publicity manager wrote years later of Muck, "his fate, so far as America was concerned, was settled that night in Providence because of the short-sighted stubbornness of Henry L. Higginson and Charles A. Ellis."[24] The American Defense Society called for Muck's internment. The Orchestra found its November Baltimore engagement canceled, with even Cardinal Gibbons adding his voice to denunciations of Muck.[28] Theodore Roosevelt denounced the maestro. A rival conductor, Walter Damrosch, Music Director of the New York Symphony Society (later the New York Philharmonic), said that Muck's "cynical disregard of the sanctity of our national air" showed disrespect for the emotions of his audience and led to a disrespect for the great heritage of German music.[25]

Major Higginson claimed responsibility for the BSO's initial failure to play the anthem, with little effect on outraged press coverage. He visited the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Department of Justice where he received assurances that the government had no issue with any member of the orchestra.[2] He tried to present the issue as one of artistic independence, saying he would rather disband the orchestra than allow anyone to dictate its programming. Muck took a similar tack with this statement: "Art is a thing by itself, and not related to any particular nation or group. Therefore, it would be a gross mistake, a violation of artistic taste and principles for such an organization as ours to play patriotic airs. Does the public think that the Symphony Orchestra is a military band or a ballroom orchestra?"[25]

Back in Boston, the BSO found curiosity and support. On November 2, 1917, the crowd that filled a Friday afternoon concert at Symphony Hall read a program insert announcing that the national anthem would follow every BSO concert and applauded when Higginson appeared. Higginson announced that Muck had once again tendered his resignation so that "no prejudice against him may prejudice the welfare of the orchestra" and Higginson had yet to accept it. The audience then greeted the entry of Muck with a standing ovation and rose to applaud again after he led the orchestra in a performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner".[25]

The New York Times pointed out that the entire affair could have been avoided if Higginson and Muck had had a better sense of the public sentiment. They should have anticipated the request for the anthem and should have programmed it in the first place. The paper blamed the entire affair on Muck and "the then obstinate management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra."[19]

In November, the BSO performed in New York City, where Higginson and Ellis reluctantly gave in to Muck's insistence on playing the anthem. Critics were not completely satisfied and criticized the arrangement Muck used as "cheap" and "undignified" without realizing it was the work of Victor Herbert, who in addition to his popular Broadway operettas had also written serious symphonic works and conducted both the New York Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony. When the orchestra returned to New York in December, Muck used a new arrangement that proved a critical success. It was the work of BSO concertmaster Anton Witek, "the most pro-German of all the Germans in the orchestra."[24]
Internment[edit]

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.[2] Government officials were free to ignore the fact that he was a Swiss citizen and bearer of a Swiss passport,[29] since the law sanctioned the arrest of those born anywhere in Germany before the founding of the German Empire without respect to citizenship.[2] 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 code indicative of pro-German activity.[30] He was imprisoned at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia until on August 21, 1919, an agent of the Department of Justice put him and his wife on a ship to Copenhagen.[31] The Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity that had elected him to national honorary membership in 1916 expelled Muck in 1919 for sympathizing with the Central powers.[32]

Fellow internees had heard that Muck had vowed not to conduct in America again, but they persuaded him that the camp was more of a German village — some of them even called it "Orglesdorf." A memoir of the event written in 1940 recalled the mess hall packed with 2000 internees, with honored guests like their doctors and government censors on the front benches, facing 100 musicians. Under Muck's baton, he wrote, "the Eroica rushed at us and carried us far away and above war and worry and barbed wire."[33]

When sailing from New York on August 21, 1919, Muck told reporters: "I am not a German, although they said I was. I considered myself an American." He said he had "bitter feelings" toward the newspapers for their unfair treatment of him. He expressed doubts that the BSO, then in a sorry state of organization, could recover from the internment of 29 of its German members.[34][35] After his deportation from the United States, he declined all offers to bring him back to the United States after the war.[36]

Later that year the Boston Post disclosed that Muck had been having an affair with a 20-year-old in Boston's Back Bay and had written her a letter reading in part: "I am on my way to the concert hall to entertain the crowds of dogs and swine who think that because they pay the entrance fee they have the right to dictate to me my selections. I hate to play for this rabble ... [In] a very short time our gracious Kaiser will smile on my request and recall me to Berlin ... Our Kaiser will be prevailed upon to see the benefit to the Fatherland of my obtaining a divorce and making you my own."[37]
Later career, 1919–1933[edit]

Muck returned to a different Germany

Karl Muck Departs the Boston Symphony Orchestra in World War I Era ...
www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com › Massachusetts
Oct 6, 2014 - Boston Symphony conductor Karl Muck drew the symphony into a scandal in ... Muck, then 57, was born in Germany and had connections in government circles. ... Muck was accused of refusing to play the National Anthem.

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Higginson built the BSO upon German musical traditions he learned to love ... The German conductorMax Fiedler led the BSO between Karl Muck's two terms.

More context about the incarceration of Conductor Karl Muck ...
https://reconciliationpoetry.com/prison-camp-music-world-war-i/
1914-1918: A Bad Time to be from Germany & in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In March 1918Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) conductor Karl Muck was ... (Muck did play the U.S. national anthemin subsequent performances, but by ...

My World War I novel, The End of Innocence, is set at Harvard during the “forgotten years” of free speech.

This essay is about the novel’s inciting incident: the forced interning of the Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor and 29 members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in World War I. (In the novel, the real life incident is fictionalized as occurring in 1914, not 1918.) This essay is about Karl Muck playing Eroica at the camp just north of Atlanta. Note this performance is considered one of the best in U.S. music history up until that time.

1914-1918: A Bad Time to be from Germany & in the Boston Symphony Orchestra

In March 1918 Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) conductor Karl Muck was interned in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia alongside 29 members of the BSO. They were suspected of being German sympathizers.

Why would citizens target symphony members? It went beyond artistic personal vendettas that we read in the press today. (For instance, recently one member of the Bolshoi ballet attacked an executive with acid.) The interning of Muck and a large portion of the BSO was intensified by individuals, but the act was aligned with popular sentiment (with notable, vocal exceptions).

During this era (early 20th century) in the U.S., community symphonies were an important part of the public entertainment. (Radio and television were not available to the public in 1914.) Musicians and conductors were important public figures who were to help cultivate the character and intellect of our populations in large and small towns across America. (Thanks to Ryan Ellefsen, East Chapel Hill High School director for this insight.)
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