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"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.