A Tribute to Charles Munch 1891 - 1968

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Charles Munch 1891 - 1968

The great conductor Charles Munch was born and raised in Strasbourg. The son of a musician, the nephew of Albert Schweitzer, originally a violinist, he became a professor of the Strasbourg Conservatory. In 1926 he was appointed concert master under Wilhelm Furtwangler at Leipzig. After the accession to power of the Nazis, Munch left Germany and moved to Paris. He made his debut in Paris as a conductor, where he founded the Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris in 1935. In 1938 he was put in charge of the Societe des Concerts du Conservatorie, which he directed until 1946. He used that position during the war and throughout the German occupation to protect French musicians and turned his salary over to the French underground. After the War he was awarded the Legion of Honor. In 1946 his made his American debut with the Boston Symphony. After touring the United States and Canada with the Orchestra National in 1948, he was asked to replace the ailing Serge Koussevitzky as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra which remained one of the greatest orchestras in the world until he resigned in 1962. During his 13 years in Boston he won five new York Music Critics Circle awards, and many other for his outstanding recordings. When he left his post in Boston, President Kennedy wrote to thank him on behalf of the American people who: "wished to express their warmest admiration for his splendid work". When Charles Munch arrived in Paris to conduct two concerts of the RTF National Orchestra in 1963 after had just left the Boston Symphony where he had been the musical director since 1949. Munch said he totally approved of the American musical system. It was rather a very human desire to change his surroundings and a return to his native soil. Some thought he was going to begin a new life of a wandering conductor. In 1967 after five years of itinerant conducting he returned to France and was asked to set up the Orchestre de Paris for which he painstakingly selected each of the nearly 120 instrumentalists himself. He toured the world with his new orchestra and gave his last Paris concert in October, 1968 . During his North America tour he triumphed in Montreal, Boston, New York. Then came Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Richmond... but on the morning of November 6, 1968 Charles Munch died hours before he was to reach the Richmond podium.

Charles Munch belonged to that generation of conductors, who were born in the last decade of the 19th century and formed the group of grand old masters who had inherited the last breath of the romantic tradition of conducting. Munch was born in 1891 the same year as Hermann Scherchen, three years earlier than Karl Bohm and eight years earlier than Sir John Barbirolli. He shared with them their artistic traditions. Alsace has always been a divided country, so the Strasbourg- born Munch came under the prevailing influence of the two cultures (French and German). Munch developed his career as a violinist with Lucien Capel in Paris, he then studied under Carl Flesh in Berlin. Later, he joined the Strasbourg Orchestra but in 1926, he went back to the Leipzig Gewandhaus. While in Germany he was praised by Fritz Busch, Wilhelm Furtwanger and Bruno Walter. in Back to Paris in 1932 to win the praise of the Alfred Cortot Orchestra Symphonique. Back to Germany in 1937 to direct the I.S.C.M. Festival. during and after WW II he became a musician to the world... from the period of 1937 to the mid-1940's Munch spent time in London to conduct the BBC Symphony and London Philharmonic...after the War the glory years at Boston. Raised among two cultures he emerged as a conductor with a world class grasp on nearly every aspect of conducting styles. As was his conducting style, he preferred "taking off" at his concerts instead of nit-picking at rehearsals. Yet, according to H.C. Schonberg, his magnetism was extraordinary and the musicians loved him as much as the public. Although his interpretations of the great German classics were highly debated (an unfair judgment since he had inherited much of his approach from his youth under Furtwangler, Busch and Walter!). But he was considered the absolute master of French music, from Berlioz to his own contemporaries. He championed the reputation of composers like Honneger and Roussel. Charles Munch was always aware of the significance of his calling, the one who breathes vibrant life into the passive notes of the score. According to all accounts, Munch did not belong to that school of high tempered conductors such as Toscanini or Koussevitzky and was a man of extreme kindness both on and off the podium.

The French word for conductor, chef d'ovchestre, 'orchestra chief', connotes command, but the conductor's problem is not so much the command itself as its communication. His medium is not speech but gesture, posture, telepathy, and an irresistibly keen radiation. Standing on the podium, at the instant when his hand marks the first beat of a symphony by Beethoven or Schumann, the conductor is the cynosure of all eyes, the hearth to which thousands have come for warmth and light. He can only live, let his heart beat, his soul vibrate, and his emotions sing. The conductor must breathe life into the score. It is you and you alone who must expose it to the understanding, reveal the hidden jewel to the sun at the most flattering angles. Your task is one of setting and is as delicate as the film director's, measuring our light and dark, sharp images and blurred, groping toward the projection of an ideal that does not exist in real life. It is not easy.Your thought, your communication must radiate with such force that your orchestra feel simultaneously the same wishes and desires as you and cannot refrain from expressing them.You must substitute your will for theirs. The collective conscience of a hundred musicians is no light burden. Think for a moment of what it would mean to a pianist if by some miracle every key of his instrument should suddenly become a living thing. A friend of mine, a musician in the Orchestue de la Suisse Romande, once said to me,'When every member of the orchestra feels that you are conducting for him alone, you are conducting well.' He gave me food for thought. I believe that every human being endowed with intelligence, memory, and strength of character bears within him a little of thc supernatural as well. The highest purpose of the conductor is to release this superhuman potential in every one of his musicians.

Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious. Man's right to speak this language is for me the most precious gift that has been bestowed upon us. And we have no right to misuse it. Whenever I am about to conduct a concert, at the moment when the musicians are holding their breath and the bows are held a fraction of an inch in the air above the strings, at that moment of infinite silence before the first note is heard, all these thoughts run through my mind-just as all your life is said to pass in a flash before your eyes ar the moment of death. Let no one be astonished then that I consider my work a priesthood, not a profession. It is not too strong a word.

 

Is it paradoxical to assert that my duties and disappointments rather than my successes are the basis of my infinite love for my work? This unremitting toil to which I have bound myself for so long, all the manuscripts I have sat bent over until dawn, all the orchestras whose enthusiasm I have had to arouse even during wartime rehearsals in halls invaded by freezing cold morning fogs, all these have taught me a lesson in compassion. My profession gives me opportunity for intense self-expression and freedom for any flight of the imagination. To a reserved, withdrawn, and timid person it offers the chance to realize his dreams in sound. Those who listen may find different things in these sounds-expression of their own desires, their own emotions, their own thoughts. A conductor, in giving a faithful reproduction and exact translation of the written notes, can re-create the thought and emotion of an unknown person-the composer-which can sometimes be a transfiguring experience.

 

(From "I am a Conductor" by Charles Munch, translated by Leonard Burkat. Copyright 1955 by Charles Munch. Oxford University Press, Inc.)

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"When he had freed the musicians from the restrictions of rehearsing down to the minute detail, Munch let himself be swept away: while completely in control of his reflexes, he gave the impression of improvising, all the while giving a solid structure to the works he was interpreting. He played the orchestra as only a virtuoso can with bow or keyboard...Charles Munch seemed to burn with music... His mastery of the players was direct and total...It was almost like a sort of wizardry..."

Harold C Schoenberg of the New York Times wrote: "It was universally conceded that in French music, he was all but unapproachable.... he had elegance, a subtle rhythm and a fine ear for color".

From a Portrait of Munch by Pierre Hiegel

"Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious. Man's right to speak this language is for me the most precious gift that has been bestowed upon us and we have no right to misuse it. Let no one be astonished that I consider my work a priesthood, not a profession. It is not too strong a word." From "I Am a Conductor" by Charles Munch.

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Among the many CD labels that have released recorded performances by Charles Munch are:   Erato A Classical Record FNAC Accord Disques Montaine Dutton Music and Arts London/Decca EMI RCA/BMG