Word: munched
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...