"There Will Be Joy"

(See Cover)

The pleasantly dissonant tuning up and chatter stopped in mid-note as the grey-haired man in the tan sport coat walked briskly across the stage to the podium. For a few silent moments his glance flickered over the musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, his shale-blue eyes and handsome, melancholy face warm with affection. When his glance had embraced them all, Charles Munch picked up his baton, smiled and said: "Maintenant, relax." A moment later, Boston's 50-year-old Symphony Hall was rocking joyously with the rehearsal of Hector Berlioz' bounding overture, The Corsair.

Kindly, 58-year-old Alsatian-born Conductor Munch no longer really had to tell his musicians to relax. In eleven weeks as their first new conductor in 25 years, his musicians were freer of tension than they had been for years. In his first speech to them he had vowed, in his painful English, to do his best to maintain the high standards of the Boston. He also hoped "there will be joy." Forthwith, friendly "Charry" Munch (pronounced Moonsh) won their respect as a musician, and their love and obedience as a man. This week, as he rehearsed his 105 musicians for his eighth series of Boston concerts, he could work with confidence that most Bostonians had succumbed to him, man and music, just as his orchestra had.

A Genius in the Pot? To most U.S. musicians and music lovers, the ascension of Charles Munch to the nation's most prestigious musical throne had come with the jolting surprise of one of Hector Berlioz' sudden bursts of brass.

The name of Munch was not big in U.S. music. He had visited for the first time in the 1946-47 season, to be guest conductor in Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles; in 1948 he had conducted the French National (Radio) Orchestra on its U.S. tour. Although he had won respectful notices from critics, his name had seldom appeared in the calculations of the pundits and prophets who wanted to call the tune on Boston's new conductor. From the time 75-year-old Conductor Serge Koussevitzky announced that he would abdicate at the end of his 25 years of autocratic rule (TIME, April 19, 1948), they had been discussing heirs more apparent--31-year-old Koussevitzky Protege Leonard Bernstein, the New York Philharmonic-Symphony's part-time Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, Cleveland's George Szell.

But Boston Symphony President Henry B. Cabot and his 14 fellow trustees had been "keeping our eyes open for conductors for a long time." Boston proceeded "on the strange assumption," says blunt, silver-spectacled Harry Cabot, "that they were all available." The man they were seeking would be "the boss" in every sense of the word: in programing, choice of soloists and guest conductors. The Boston's trustees could promise this because they still follow the enviable first principles laid down by the orchestra's founder, Major Henry Lee Higginson: relationship of orchestra to conductor--absolute obedience; relationship of conductor to Higginson--absolute freedom. They also needed a man who could bear the burden of conducting at least 90 concerts.

The "old guard"--Bruno Walter, 73, Wilhelm Furtwangler, 63, Leopold Stokowski, 67--struck Boston trustees as a bit too old for the job. Another choice, says Cabot, "was to take a big gamble and pick a genius out of the pot. But we didn't see a genius among the younger men."

A Flat Stomach. When Bostonians heard Munch conduct their orchestra on his 1946 visit, his music had shocked some. It seemed more violent and more rushed, particularly in the allegro movements of Beethoven symphonies. But one man was not at all surprised when Munch was asked to succeed Koussy. The New York Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson had heard Munch conduct 15 years before in Paris and had prophesied that he would eventually lead the Boston. Why? Says Critic Thomson: "He was a natural Boston conductor, flat-stomached and grey-haired, and he created hysteria, particularly in the female over 50."

Pleasing the grey, matronly Friday matinee-goers was certainly part of the Boston tradition. Some of them would miss the little after-concert ceremony in the greenroom: kissing and being kissed by Koussy. Their new conductor was an affectionate man, but not quite the kissing type. Like many another native of Alsace, Charles Munch is a composite of the characteristics of both France and Germany. In him the French bon vivant shines only dimly through a fog of German Weltschmerz: he enjoys life but seldom seems basically happy.

Nevertheless, he gave his afternoon concerts to packed houses and almost all the oldtimers were there--Mrs. William Dana Orcutt, who has held the same second-row seat for more than 20 years, and a score of others, including Cabots, Coolidges and Saltonstalls who have held their favorite seats as long or longer.

An Essential Condition. If Boston was pleased with Munch, there were also reasons why Munch could be pleased with Boston. As U.S. cities go, it had a long tradition of serious music: it had celebrated the end of the War of 1812 with performances of portions of Haydn's Creation and Handel's Messiah. Boston also boasted a club unique in the U.S. Ten or twelve times a year, as their ancestors have done since 1837, members of the exclusive Harvard Musical Association go to their paneled clubrooms on Beacon Hill for a smoker of chamber music, beans, beer and Welsh rabbit.

The orchestra to which Charles Munch has fallen heir was not the U.S.'s oldest. It was founded in 1881, 39 years after the New York Philharmonic. But it was the second oldest symphonic organization, and Conductor Munch was a descendant of a distinguished line of "permanent" conductors. Founder Higginson believed that "the essential condition for a great orchestra is stability." Over 68 years, only nine men had shaped and polished the Boston Symphony until it was--except for Arturo Toscanini's virtuoso radio orchestra, the NBC Symphony, which is in a class by itself--the U.S.'s finest and one of the top four in the world.-

"Some Roughness Here." Each conductor, beginning with German Georg Henschel in 1881, had added something to the Boston's sheen. From 1884 to 1889 and from 1898 to 1906, the Vienna Opera's bearded Wilhelm Gericke, as Founder Higginson wrote, "gave to the orchestra its excellent habits and ideals." It was he, said Higginson, who "taught those violins to sing as violins sing in Vienna alone." Europe's greatest conductor, fiery Hungarian Artur Nikisch (1889-93) taught it how to "poetize," and perhaps he taught too well; at a rehearsal in 1904 Guest Conductor Richard Strauss growled: "You play that finely; but a little too finely. I want some roughness here." The Berlin Opera's Karl Muck (1906-08, 1912-18), wrote one critic, gave the orchestra "a living voice."

Muck's successor, Pierre Monteux (now the San Francisco Symphony's conductor) let it sing modern music--Stravinsky, Falla, Honegger, Milhaud. Then, in 1924, began the 25-year reign of Serge Koussevitzky, onetime bass-viol virtuoso and one of the great conductors of his time. Under his stern but benevolent rule, the Boston had come to a peak of polished perfection, and U.S. composers, subsidized and encouraged with commissions, had found a new home.

Wise Founder Higginson had taken other steps to insure stability. In 1903, he set up a musicians' pension plan, the first in any U.S. orchestra. That is one reason why Boston Symphony musicians stay around and learn how to play together. Eleven men have been in the orchestra 30 years or more, another 40 men more .than 20 years.

While the best many another U.S. symphony musician can hope for is a 20-week season, the Boston musicians, most of whom also play in the Boston "Pops" and at Tanglewood in the summer, get 49 paychecks a year from the symphony for 47 weeks of work. The size of the checks helps keep them happy too: first desk men make not less than $10,000, not including broadcasting and recording fees; no one gets less than $4,860 in salary, which is well above the A.F.M. scale.

A Helping Hand. Unlike most U.S. conductors, Conductor Munch will not have to worry about where the checks are coming from. Almost alone among U.S. orchestras, the Boston Symphony has never had a financial crisis and no public appeal for funds has ever been made. It sometimes matches its more than $1,000,000 of annual expenses with more than a million in income from ticket sales, broadcasting fees (last year, $117,000 from NBC) and record royalties (last year, $167,000 from RCA Victor). When expenses and income do not match, the hand that is held out to the "Friends of the Boston Symphony Orchestra" is always quickly and quietly filled. As white-haired Manager George E. Judd (34 years with the Boston) puts it: "We set our sights on what we want to do and then find a way to pay for it. If there are any deficits, we like to state them not in terms of dollars, but in terms of concerts not given. And we try not to have that kind of deficit."

Music & God. The new boss of the Boston likes to tell friends that he is a conductor "only because I am too stupid to be anything else." Actually, he had as little chance of escaping his career as the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The fifth child in a family of six children (two daughters, four sons), Charles Munch was born in 1891 in a plain brown apartment house which overlooked the fast-flowing river ILL in Strasbourg.

Like Bach, father Ernst Munch, professor of music at the Strasbourg Conservatory, was an organist. He was also an austere Protestant--a man whose stern gaze was firmly riveted on his family, music and God. Even so, the first ambition of his shy and unassuming son Charry was to be a locomotive engineer. By six, Charry knew by heart the exact hour when the fast trains would roll into the Strasbourg station, and was often on hand to watch them with ecstasy and envy. Afterward, he would trudge home to study violin with his father, or to prepare his lessons for the Protestant gymnase.

In the Munch household, life was harmonious but not gay. Sundays they all trooped to church. After a big dinner came an afternoon and evening feast of chamber music. Sometimes young Albert Schweitzer, later to be world famous as organist, religious philosopher, and medical missionary, dropped in (his brother married Gharry's sister). Summers, the Munches moved out to maternal Grandfather Frederic Simon's rectory at Niederbronn-les-Bains in the Vosges Mountains. There they played chamber music so much that the neighbors nicknamed the house "the music box." At 21, Charry went off to Paris to study violin under Lucien Capet, founder of the Capet Quartet.

Gas at Peronne. In Paris, life was both gay and harmonious. Charry lived in a modest apartment on the Quai des Orfevres, Ile de la Cite, soaked up French culture and the French way of living. Handsome, with a boyish warmth, he charmed all the women he met, including young Genevieve Aubry, granddaughter of one of the founders of the Nestle chocolate concern. When summer came, Charry went home to Strasbourg, "the most French of the family."

The harmony was soon disrupted. It was 1914; Alsace belonged to Germany. Within a few months, Charry and his brothers were conscripted into the German army. Four years later, after being gassed before Peronne and wounded at Verdun as a sergeant of artillery, he was demobilized at Cologne. He is not embarrassed by his onetime service for the Kaiser, asks, "Did not [Foreign Minister] Robert Schuman [who was conscripted to work in the arsenal at Metz] do the same? Did this prevent him later from becoming a French cabinet minister?" Like Schuman, Munch was able to pick his side in World War II. He conducted in Paris, scrupulously and often ingeniously avoiding conducting offers from the Nazis, and turned over every franc of his proceeds from concerts to the French underground.

"Because of Her." Charles Munch did not conduct his first concert until 1932, when he was 41 years old. Why did he wait so long? "It is very simple: it was so much easier for me to make a living as a violinist. I just could not afford to direct an orchestra earlier; when I was able to, it was because of her." He meant Madame Munch, nee Aubry, with whom he had corresponded during World War I through the International Red Cross and later married (1933); she hired both the hall and the first orchestra Munch conducted.

After the success of his first concert, conducting offers poured in from other

Paris orchestras, and fans gathered around. Among the musicians, the women and girls who jammed the front rows to admire "Le Beau Charles" were called Les Munchettes.*

Even so, one day in 1934 Conductor Munch put down his baton and picked up his fiddle. He slipped into the Champs-Elysees Theater, sat himself down at the last desk of the first violins. The score of Debussy's Iberia on his rack was of a different edition, and so Violinist Munch found his bowing frequently out of step. From the podium the great Arturo Toscanini noticed it too. First he chided, then he roared. Munch felt as hundreds of other musicians have felt before and since: "I wished that the floor would open and swallow me." Two years ago, he reminded the Maestro of that first meeting. Toscanini shook his head and asked sadly, "How can I do such things?"

Some Consolation. Conductor Munch is not known as a man of temper, but he can be fired. Once, after he had ascended to the conductorship of Paris' fine Conservatory orchestra--a post he held from 1938 to 1946--a drunken trombonist disrupted the calm of a Beethoven adagio with a terrific blast. Everyone, audience and musicians alike, was outraged and Munch gave the man a fortissimo furioso piece of his mind. Next evening, at the second performance, a smiling Charles Munch walked onstage with a big bottle of potent framboise (raspberry brandy) in his hand. Before audience and orchestra, he handed it to the flabbergasted trombonist with the explanation: "I treated you pretty roughly last night; here's some consolation."

In rehearsals, Boston's new conductor coaches and coaxes his men in a mixture of French, English and German. One passage in a Roussel symphony, he told them, undulating his hand through the air, should "glisse--glisse like the snake." One phrase in Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe should float into the air "like smoke"; in another, he whispered, "La nuit . . . you sleep, a tiny bit of sun comes through." Sometimes in rehearsal he will go on bended knee before the cellos to woo more tone from them. His most frequent admonitions are "Accent, more accent!" and "Respirez la musique." He believes that if music is a living thing, it should breathe.

"Less Fat." To the musicians, he is "the most economical rehearser we ever had." Unlike Koussevitzky, Munch does not believe in making the orchestra repeat passages until they play them by rote. As one musician explains the difference: "Performances of a given piece under Koussy were always exactly the same. Munch's may vary from concert to concert. After all, if you were repeating a speech, you wouldn't always try to repeat it in exactly the same way . . . Your inflections might be different."

Where many musicians felt that Koussevitzky had no confidence in them (snaps Koussy: "I never trust an orchestra until it has given me what I expect"), Munch has won them because he respects them both as men and musicians. He has the same respect ("One must be most faithful") for the composer whose work he is performing.

To many Bostonians, after a fortnight of Munch their orchestra was already beginning to sound a trifle different, more relaxed and spontaneous. Expert ears, such as those of Harvard's Composer Walter Piston, found it "less fat." Composer Aaron Copland thought that "Munch probably looks for sonority more than Koussevitzky. And the orchestra didn't have quite the violence that it has now."

Bostonians would hear pretty much the same kind of programs: Munch's devotion to the moderns is second only to Koussevitzky's. But they would find it a little harder to know the man than his music. Munch's easy assurance on the podium is matched by an often moody shyness away from it.

After concerts he usually hurries out of the greenroom, nods to the waiting knot of well-wishers, then pops into his black Oldsmobile sedan for a dash home to Brush Hill Road in suburban Milton (the former home of the late Bishop William Lawrence). Only when he reaches the sanctuary of his second-story study, with Roger, his chauffeur-valet of 20 years' service hovering around him, does he seem to draw a relaxed breath.

He likes Americans but he is slightly afraid of tackling large groups of them, partly because of language difficulties. So far he has been to only two Boston parties; once there, he charmed everyone he met. He likes to take short walks around the neighborhood with his Welsh terrier

Pompey, once stopped to help a neighbor rake the leaves off his lawn.

Summers in Paris. But most of the time, Charles Munch likes to work over scores at his small kidney-shaped desk or at the spinet piano in his study. On mornings when there is a rehearsal, he gets up at 8, eats an unusually hearty breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and tea (says Madame Munch: "In Boston we have not yet found good bread"). After rehearsals, if he has no engagement in town, he scoots back to the quiet of Brush Hill Road for luncheon.

He has already developed a taste for a Boston specialty, New England clam chowder, but his favorite dishes are still pot-au-feu and kidneys cooked with Chablis. "You see," says Madame Munch, "he has a modest taste." He likes a good nip of Scotch, is amazed that he has been unable to find good Alsatian vintages in the U.S.

Once a year, however, as long as he keeps the Boston conductorship, Munch expects to go back where they know about such things. His two-year contract (with an optional third) allows him plenty of free time in the summers, and he and Madame Munch plan to spend their vacations in Paris.

There are many things to draw him there. He is an enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist; his 14-room apartment near the Bois de Boulogne is cluttered with Egyptian statuettes and old Dutch etchings. He also likes to take an occasional lesson in "harmonious coordination of mind and body" at Madame Codreano's "Center for Psycho-Motor Education" (see cut). But he is fascinated with the U.S. and pleased with the thought of staying a while. Moreover, if Conductor Munch grows on Boston, as last week seemed very likely, it was quite possible that Frenchman Munch might develop a taste for the beer, the bread and the beans.

*The others: Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic.

*In a poll taken last June by the French magazine Elle, 10,000 Parisiennes were asked: "What man would you like to have dinner with tonight if you could make your choice?" Munch ran second to Winston Churchill, just ahead of current French Cinema Idol Jean Marais (Beauty and the Beast), far ahead of President Auriol, Gary Cooper and Joseph Stalin.

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