32 Facts About Karl Muck

Karl Muck was a German-born conductor of Classical music.

Karl Muck based his activities principally in Europe and mostly in opera.

Muck endured a trial by media in 1917, after The 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 interned as an enemy alien at Fort Ogelthorpe, a camp in Georgia from March 1918 until August 1919.

Karl Muck was born in Darmstadt, which was then the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, in modern Germany.

Karl 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.

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Karl Muck played the violin in a local symphony orchestra as a boy.

Karl Muck graduated from the gymnasium at Wurzburg and entered the University of Heidelberg at 16.

Karl Muck 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.

Karl Muck then held appointments in Brunn and Graz, where he married 21-year-old Anita Portugall on February 3,1887.

Karl Muck remained in Berlin until 1912, conducting 1,071 performances of 103 operas.

Karl Muck took other assignments during his tenure in Berlin.

Karl Muck was guest conductor at the Silesian music festivals in Goerlitz between 1894 and 1911.

Karl Muck devoted many summers to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth where he became principal conductor in 1903, after serving as a musical assistant since 1892.

Karl Muck succeeded Hermann Levi as the conductor of Parsifal there.

Karl Muck conducted Parsifal at all of the fourteen Bayreuth festivals held between 1901 and 1930, and conducted Lohengrin there in 1909 and Die Meistersinger in 1925, becoming a close friend of the Wagner family.

Karl Muck was offered the Metropolitan Opera House podium in New York at a reputed $27,000 a year, but declined.

Karl Muck told me where the orchestra should be more prominent, how to handle the Bayreuth acoustics, and so on.

Karl Muck served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1906 to 1908 and then again from 1912 to 1918.

Karl Muck introduced some Sibelius symphonies and many works of Debussy to Boston.

Karl Muck anticipated that his natural sympathies for Germany, where he was born and spent most of his career despite his Swiss citizenship, might give offense.

Karl Muck had fears for his own safety, but Higginson gave him assurances that as an artist he had nothing to fear.

Karl Muck only learned of the petition on the orchestra's train ride back to Boston that same night.

Karl Muck visited the Washington, DC headquarters of the Department of Justice where he received assurances that the government had no issue with any member of the orchestra.

Karl Muck tried to present the issue as one of artistic independence, saying he would rather disband the orchestra than allow anyone to dictate its programming.

Critics were not completely satisfied and criticized the arrangement Karl Muck used as "cheap" and "undignified" without realizing it was the work of Victor Herbert, who in addition to his popular Broadway operettas had written serious symphonic works and conducted both the New York Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

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Karl 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 Karl Muck had been preparing for months, had to be conducted by Ernst Schmidt.

Karl Muck 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.

Karl Muck expressed doubts that the BSO, then in a sorry state of organization, could recover from the internment of 29 of its German members.

Karl Muck eventually took the helm of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra in 1922 and made additional recordings.

Karl Muck returned to Bayreuth when the festival was revived there in 1924, the representative of the pre-war tradition.

Widower since 1921, whose only child, a son, had died young, Karl Muck spent his last years at the Stuttgart home of Baroness von Scholley, the daughter of one of his oldest friends and fellow internee, who had been German Consul General in New York.

Several radio recordings allegedly conducted by Karl Muck exist, including a Faust Overture and Trauermarsch with the Berlin Radio Orchestra and an excerpt from the Adagio of Bruckner's Symphony No 7 with the Hamburg Philharmonic.