Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:52:52.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fact and Fiction in the Life Story of Luigi von Kunits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2014

Robin Elliott
Robin Elliott*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Luigi von Kunits (1870–1931) had a substantial impact on classical music in Toronto. Born and educated in Vienna, he emigrated to Chicago in 1893 and then moved to Pittsburgh in 1896 as the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Orchestra. After 17 years in the USA, he returned to Vienna for two years, before moving to Toronto to take up a teaching position at the Canadian Academy of Music. From the time of his arrival in Toronto in 1912 to his death in 1931 he was active on many fronts: teaching violin, composing, editing The Canadian Journal of Music (1914–1919), performing as a chamber musician and violin soloist, and serving as the conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1922–1931). To many he seemed the very embodiment of the great Central European musical tradition: a pupil of Bruckner and Hanslick, associated with Brahms and acquainted with celebrated European musicians and composers. Much of what we know about Kunits derives from statements issuing from the musician himself or his immediate circle, with little or no corroborating evidence to support his assertions. As a result, it is difficult at this remove to separate fact from fiction. This article takes stock of the sources of information that are available and attempts to construct as accurate an account of his life and activities as possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 239 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Material pertaining to Kunits is held in libraries and archives in Pittsburgh (the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh), Toronto, and Ottawa. The two main collections relating to his activities in Toronto are the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 329, Series 1561, File 3 (in the Toronto Symphony archival collection); and MUS 32 (The Luigi Paul Maria von Kunits Collection) in Library and Archives Canada. The former contains materials relating to Kunits's work from 1922 to 1931 as the conductor of the Toronto Symphony; the latter contains manuscripts of his compositions, programmes, photos, lecture notes, correspondence and posters. Smaller collections of Kunits materials are held in the University of Toronto Archives (press clippings and information about the honorary doctorate he was awarded in 1926), Toronto Reference Library (sheet music) and the Olnick Rare Book Room in the University of Toronto Music Library (photographs, correspondence). I wish to record here my sincere thanks to Kristina Bijelic for her work as a research assistant, and to Kathleen McMorrow for generously sharing with me the fruits of her own extensive research on Kunits.

2 Willis, Stephen, The Luigi Paul Maria von Kunits Collection, National Library of Canada Music Division Finding Aid No. 2 (Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1976)Google Scholar: 1. This is the only source I have found that gives Kunits the aristocratic title, ‘Edler von Varasdin’ (the town of Varaždin was in the kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time of Kunits's birth). The assertion that Kunits was born ‘within sight of the classic spire of St Stephen,’ sometimes considered a prerequisite for being considered a bona fide Viennese citizen, is made in Bridle, Augustus, ‘Luigi von Kunits: Master in Music, Culture and Energy’, Luigi von Kunits, memorial brochure (Toronto, 1931)Google Scholar: unpaginated. A letter from Kunits's father dating from 1892 is on letterhead with the address Sonnenfelsgasse 9, which is near St Stephen's; this may have been a business address (the father was a tailor) or a home address, or both if the family lived over the shop.

3 The story of the ennoblement of the Kunič (Kunits) family is told by Aglaia von Kunits Edwards in ‘Memories of a Musician's Daughter [Part Two]’, Toronto Symphony News (January/February 1973): 5. She cites as evidence a family tree preserved in an old Bible in her possession, and stories told to her by her Aunt Josephine, Luigi's sister.

4 C[harles].V[enn]. Pilcher relates that Kunits was ‘nominated as a boy to his school by the Emperor Francis Joseph’ in ‘Dr. Luigi von Kunits: A Tribute from the Orchestra’, Toronto Symphony Orchestra programme (27 October 1931): 3; this was the programme for a memorial concert given shortly after Kunits's death. The Schottengymnasium was a private school that was attended by children of the minor aristocracy and upper middle class. Documentary evidence that the Emperor chose this school for Kunits has not been found.

5 Aglaia von Kunits Edwards, in ‘Memories of a Musician's Daughter [Part One]’, Toronto Symphony News (December/January 1972–73): 9 opens her account: ‘My father, the late Luigi von Kunits, was once chosen by Johannes Brahms to play second violin in one of his quartets. This honour came when father, who was born in Vienna in 1870, was only eleven years old.’ This story has been retold many times since then, and with the frequent retellings, hearsay has come to be taken as fact. The Brahms scholar Styra Avins advises caution with respect to this story: ‘People claim spuriously that they knew Brahms or that they studied with him. This particular version of such a story has a new twist; the idea that Brahms asked a child performer to play in one of his works. One thing that is known about Brahms is that he deplored child prodigies, so the idea that Brahms would have urged an 11-year-old to perform in one of his works doesn't ring true, to say the very least’ (email to the author, 24 May 2013).

6 Leo Smith, who knew Luigi von Kunits well, states that, ‘during his sojourn in Vienna he appeared in many notable chamber music performances with Johannes Brahms’; see Smith, Leo, ‘Von Kunits, Luigi’, A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians, ed. A. Eaglefield-Hull (London and Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1924)Google Scholar: 516. One obituary, ‘The Late Luigi von Kunits, Mus.Doc.,’ Saturday Night (17 October 1931), states that Kunits ‘had the run of the home of Brahms in Vienna’. Kathleen McMorrow notes more cautiously that ‘an acquaintance between his father, a tailor, and Johannes Brahms, had led to the young violinist's attendance and participation in home and concert performances of the older composer's music’; see McMorrow, , ‘The Writings of Luigi von Kunits in The Canadian Journal of Music ’, Institute for Canadian Music Newsletter 3/1 (2005)Google Scholar: 2. Kunits wrote about speaking with Brahms in an editorial, ‘Vacation’, The Canadian Journal of Music 5/3 (1918): 1. If the relationship between Brahms and the Kunits family was close, it is odd that no independent written traces of it have survived. No mention of the Kunits family is made in any of Brahms's letters, nor have I found any mention of Kunits in the extensive secondary literature on Brahms. Kunits may have moved in Brahmsian circles in Vienna, but it seems unlikely that he or his family enjoyed anything more than a passing acquaintance with the great composer.

7 Willis, , Kunits Collection, 1 Google Scholar.

8 Willis, , Kunits Collection, 1 Google Scholar.

9 ‘Symphony Director, Dr. Von Kunits, Dies: Distinguished Himself as Violinist and Greek Scholar’, Mail and Empire [Toronto] (9 October 1931) states that he was a ‘Greek scholar and philosopher of international fame’. Kathleen McMorrow has compiled a list of over a dozen ancient Greek authors from whose works Kunits quoted in his own articles for The Canadian Journal of Music.

10 Anonymous, ‘Luigi von Kunits’, The Canadian Journal of Music 2/12 (1916)Google Scholar: 226 (this article was written either by Kunits himself or with his detailed input). Jaksch (1851–1931) was also a violinist, conductor and organist; among his other pupils was the Russian composer Vladimir Rebikov.

11 Anonymous, ‘Luigi von Kunits’, 226 Google Scholar.

12 von Kunits Edwards, Aglaia, ‘Memories [Part One]’, 9 Google Scholar. I have been unable to find documentation to corroborate a performance with the Vienna Philharmonic. Kunits wrote a one-movement Violin Concerto in E minor (alternatively called Concertstück or Concertino) in Kaumberg, Austria in July and early August 1888. He wrote a second Violin Concerto in E minor (in three movements) in the summer of 1892, and dedicated it to his sister Josephine. One of the concertos was performed by Kunits with the Wiener Konzertverein Orchester, conducted by Franz Pawlikowsky, on 1 April 1911 in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein. The conductor may have been his brother-in-law; Kunits's sister Josephine is identified as Josephine Pawlikowsky in The Violin Times (May 1907): 75. Details of this concert are available online at http://www.wienersymphoniker.at/konzert/pid/000000e9h58h00010124 (accessed 26 August 2014). Kunits performed the three-movement Violin Concerto in E minor with the Toronto Symphony, conducted by Frank Welsman, on 7 May 1924. Manuscript materials for both concertos are in Library and Archives Canada.

13 The manuscript materials for the String Quartet are also in Library and Archives Canada. A modern edition, edited by Robin Elliott, with introduction and critical commentary, is in The Canadian Musical Heritage, Vol. 13, Chamber Music II: String Quartets (Ottawa: Canadian Musical Heritage Society, 1992).

14 Anonymous, ‘Luigi von Kunits’, 226 Google Scholar.

15 A picture of this orchestra with the handwritten notes ‘Ziehrer's Austrian Band / Madison Square Garden / Nov 1893 / New York’ and ‘Leader: Luigi von Kunits’ is in the City of Toronto Archives; Kunits is in the concertmaster's chair.

16 Willis, , Kunits Collection, 1 Google Scholar.

17 Willis, , Kunits Collection, 1 Google Scholar.

18 von Kunits, Luigi, Drei Etuden (Pittsburgh, 1900)Google Scholar; the set is dedicated to his former teacher, Johann Král. In 1912 copyright was assigned to Schirmer of New York, who issued the set with an English title; this edition is available online via the Petrucci Music Library at http://imslp.org.

19 Leta E. Miller states that Rosenbecker established the Chicago Festival Orchestra in 1896; see Miller, , Music and Politics in San Francisco: From the 1906 Quake to the Second World War (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012)Google Scholar: 42. But Anonymous, ‘Luigi von Kunits’, 226 states that Kunits was the assistant conductor of the Chicago Festival Orchestra from 1894 to 1896.

20 McMorrow, ‘The Writings of Luigi von Kunits’, 3 states that Archer did not renew Kunits's contract, citing the need for his ‘exclusive services’, but speculates that he was probably also annoyed that Kunits had sided with a visiting soloist, Teresa Carreño, who had criticized Archer's musicianship.

21 Gould, Neil, Victor Herbert: A Theatrical Life (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008): 127–128 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Harriet Jane Gittings (born Pittsburgh, 3 January 1876; died Toronto, 29 September 1940) was also a musician and taught piano and violin in Pittsburgh; after Kunits's death she opened the Von Kunits Academy of Music and Art on Selby Street in Toronto to support herself. Her name appears in sources variously as Harriet or Harriette, and the surname of both Harriet and Luigi appears variously as von Kunits and von Kunitz. The names of their three children reflect Kunits's love of ancient Greek literature. Nausicaa von Kunits (born c. 1900, died before 1994) married the German-born violinmaker Frederick E. Haenel and later moved to the United States. Aglaia (born Pittsburgh, 1 March 1901, died Toronto, 25 February 1996) married Wilfrid Campbell (died 1931) and then Allan Edwards (who predeceased her) and lived in the Toronto area all her adult life. Astyanax Paul von Kunits (born Pittsburgh, 5 June 1908, died Ellenton, Florida 20 October 1994) worked as a radio engineer in New York City.

23 The Kunits Quartet of Pittsburgh was active from 1898 to 1901; volumes 7 to 10 of the Charles N. Boyd Scrapbooks in the William R. Oliver Special Collections Room of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh contain extensive materials about its activities (Boyd was the quartet's manager).

24 Barstow (1887–1962) began her studies with Luigi von Kunits in Pittsburgh and continued her lessons with him in Vienna from 1910 to 1912; she then returned to the United States and began her professional career there in 1913. She premiered violin sonatas by Leo Ornstein (Op. 26, 1915) and Charles Wakefield Cadman (1930).

25 I suspect that Josephine von Kunits Pawlikowsky was married to the conductor Franz Pawlikowsky, a musician associated with the University of Vienna (see n. 12), but I have been unable to find proof of this.

26 von Kunits Edwards, Aglaia, ‘Memories [Part One]’, 9–10 Google Scholar. A description of the apartment is given in an ad placed by Harriet von Kunits in The Canadian Journal of Music 1/1 (1914): 19, offering it for rent.

27 The story of the command performance for nobility is from an undated review in the Viennese journal Der Salon, quoted in the obituary ‘Death Takes L. Von Kunits Noted Musician’, Evening Telegram [Toronto] (8 October 1931).

28 von Kunits Edwards, Aglaia, ‘Memories [Part Two]’, 4 Google Scholar states that ‘at the same time an offer came from the Philadelphia Orchestra requesting Father to be their conductor for one year with the option of renewal’. It is implied that by turning the offer down, Kunits opened the way for Leopold Stokowski, the second choice, to take the job. This assertion has been repeated in numerous other sources, including the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. No mention is made of Kunits in any of the various carefully documented histories of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Carl Pohlig resigned from the Philadelphia conductorship in June 1912. Stokowski had resigned as conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra in April 1912, possibly with advance knowledge that the position in Philadelphia was likely to become vacant soon because of tensions between Pohlig and the orchestra and its directors. An approach to Stokowski was made very soon after June 1912, leaving little time for any supposed negotiations with Kunits to have taken place. In addition, Kunits had already accepted the Toronto position by February 1912.

29 Petrovich, Michael M., ‘Luigi von Kunits: The Man Who Made Pittsburgh and Toronto Musical’, Serbs in Ontario: A Socio-Cultural Description, ed. Sofija Škorič and George Vid Tomashevich (Toronto: Serbian Heritage Academy, 1987): 183–190 Google Scholar, here 185. The article first appeared in the Toronto newspaper The Voice of Canadian Serbs on 27 November 1986.

30 ‘Symphony Director, Dr. Von Kunits, Dies’, Mail and Empire [Toronto] (9 October 1931) states, ‘of Austrian-Serbian ancestry, he was born and educated in Vienna’.

31 Gibbon, John Murray, Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1938): 338 Google Scholar.

32 As verified in the Canadian Naturalization Database 1915–1951, available online through Library and Archives Canada at http://http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/citizenship-naturalization-records/naturalized-records-1915-1951/Pages/introduction.aspx.

33 Lawrence Mason, ‘In Memoriam,’ Globe [Toronto] (14 November 1931): 18.

34 E.R. Parkhurst, ‘Manny Roth's Recital: Boy Violinist Plays Solos and Conducts Orchestra’, Globe [Toronto] (13 March 1922): 13.

35 A comprehensive list of the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians over the years is available online at http://www.stokowski.org/Philadelphia_Orchestra_Musicians_List.htm (accessed 26 August 2014).

36 Arthur Kaptainis, ‘Recalling the Way it Was: Violinist Was Just 16 When He Joined Forces with Infant Orchestra’, Globe and Mail [Toronto] (8 September 1982): T25.

37 Weinstein collected fine violins; in 1961 he purchased the 1717 Windsor Strad. Now known as the Windsor-Weinstein Strad, the violin is currently part of the Canada Council Musical Instrument Bank.

38 Solway, Maurice, Recollections of a Violinist (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1984)Google Scholar: 27. Solway provides a list of 25 former Kunits pupils on page 23. Czaplinski had also studied with Ševčík (one of Kunits's teachers) and with Leopold Auer, according to E.R. Parkhurst, ‘Personalia’, Globe [Toronto] (17 September 1921): 19.

39 Adaskin, Harry, A Fiddler's World: Memoirs to 1938 (Vancouver: November House, 1977): 98 Google Scholar.

40 Schabas, Ezra, There's Music in These Walls: A History of the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto: Dundurn, 2005), 43 Google Scholar. Kunits was on friendly terms with many Jewish musicians, and on at least one occasion played the violin at Friday evening services in Holy Blossom Synagogue on Bond Street, as reported in the Canadian Jewish Review (11 February 1927): 14. When Kunits founded the New Symphony Orchestra in Toronto in 1922, 20 of the 75 musicians in the orchestra were Jewish, as Kunits's (Jewish) pupil Milton Blackstone reported in ‘Many Jews in New Symphony Orchestra’, Canadian Jewish Review (5 October 1923): 12.

41 Adaskin, , A Fiddler's World, 99 Google Scholar.

42 Scales and Arpeggios for Violin (Oakville, Ontario and London: Frederick Harris, 1928).

43 Introductory Violin Examination: Technical Work (Oakville, Ontario and London: Frederick Harris, 1928).

44 The two men played Mozart's Divertimento in E-flat major for string trio, K563, with the cellist Boris Hambourg in the Arts and Letters Club (Toronto) on 18 April 1923; see ‘Toronto Chamber Music Society’, Globe [Toronto] (14 April 1923): 25. This seems to have been Czaplinski's last public appearance in Toronto.

45 Gould, Victor Herbert, 101 states ‘at exactly 8:13, the concertmaster, Luigi von Kunitz, appeared, carrying his beloved Amati’.

46 Willis, , Kunits Collection, 1 Google Scholar. Willis adds that the Guarneri was a gift from the Pittsburgh millionaire Alexander Peacock, a partner in Carnegie Steel.

47 Aglaia von Kunits Edwards, ‘Memories [Part One]’, 11 says ‘many outstanding musicians and friends came to hear him play his beloved Stradivari’. E.R. Parkhurst, ‘Music and the Drama’, Globe [Toronto] (14 March 1914): 13 notes that Kunits performed a concert on a borrowed instrument, as ‘his own violin, a “Strad,” had met with a slight mishap earlier in the week’.

48 With his pupil Vera Barstow on violin, Kunits played the Nocturne for violin and viola d'amore by his former teacher Johann Král (1823–1912) on 18 February 1914 in a ‘musicale’ sponsored by Albert Gooderham's wife; see ‘Social Events’, Globe [Toronto] (17 February 1914): 5. The two had played this work two years earlier in Vienna in the presence of Král, shortly before his death. Britten, Clarence, ‘Renaissance of the Viola D'Amore’, The Canadian Journal of Music 1/3 (1914)Google Scholar, 49 states: ‘the original viola d'amore on which Johann Král first performed … is probably the most beautiful specimen extant. He later presented it to his favorite pupil, Luigi von Kunits’.

49 The Trios are listed in Lawrence Mason, ‘Musical Bibliographies of Canadian Composers: No. 5’, Globe [Toronto] (1 August 1936): 16 and in Willis, , Kunits Collection, 12 Google Scholar.

50 On the Academy String Quartet, see Elliott, Robin The String Quartet in Canada (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 1990)Google Scholar, online at http://www.utoronto.ca/icm/thindex.html. The Schoenberg performance was in emulation of the Flonzaley Quartet, which had given the work its first North American hearing in New York in January 1914. ‘Schönberg to be Heard in Toronto’, The Canadian Journal of Music 1/4 (1914): 81 states: ‘the Academy String Quartet … proposes to play the much discussed Quartet by Schönberg with which the Flonzaleys set New York by the ears last season.’ Feisst, Sabine, Schoenberg's New World: The American Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 80 notes that the Flonzaley performance was ‘not only this work's American premiere, but also New York's first hearing of a substantial (though early) Schoenberg piece’. Keillor, Elaine, ‘Critical Reception, Performance, and Impact of Schoenberg's Music and Thought in Canada Prior to 1960’, Schoenberg's Chamber Music, Schoenberg's World, ed. James K. Wright and Alan M. Gillmor (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2009): 208–211 Google Scholar discusses Kunits's few writings about and single performance of the music of Schoenberg.

51 The manuscript of the Viola Sonata is in the Kunits Collection in Library and Archives Canada. A modern edition, edited by Robin Elliott, with introduction and critical commentary, is in The Canadian Musical Heritage, Vol. 23, Chamber Music III: Duos (Ottawa: Canadian Musical Heritage Society, 1998).

52 See Kathleen McMorrow's introduction and comprehensive index to the journal for RIPM: The Canadian Journal of Music, 1914–1919 (Baltimore: NISC, 2005). The complete journal is available via the RIPM Online Archive.

53 McMorrow, , ‘The Writings of Luigi von Kunits’, 3 Google Scholar.

54 McMorrow, , ‘The Writings of Luigi von Kunits’, 4 Google Scholar.

55 Petrovich, , ‘Luigi von Kunits’, p. 188 Google Scholar says, ‘he wrote a book on Beethoven, The Hero as Musician, in 1913 which remained unpublished’.

56 von Kunits, Luigi, The Hero as Musician – Beethoven (Toronto, 1913)Google Scholar. The pamphlet is available online at http://sites.utoronto.ca/icm/kunitshero.pdf.

57 McMorrow, , ‘The Writings of Luigi von Kunits’, 7 Google Scholar. Other musicians who attended the First Unitarian Church in Toronto at the same time as Kunits were the cellists Boris Hambourg and Paul Hahn.

58 Kunits, , The Hero as Musician, 14 Google Scholar.

59 Kunits, , The Hero as Musician, 15 Google Scholar.

60 Augustus Bridle, ‘Luigi von Kunits’, unpaginated (the quotation is on the fifth page of the article).

61 Ham and MacMillan conducted their own works. Crawford was a Scottish-born organist and composer, trained in Leipzig, who moved to Toronto in 1922. Programmes for all of these works are in the City of Toronto Archives.

62 ‘Luigi von Kunits, Musician, Is Dead’, The New York Times (9 October 1931): 23.

63 Arthur Kaptainis, ‘Recalling the Way It Was’, T25.

64 It has been suggested that Ornstein and Barstow were lovers during the period from 1916 to 1918; see von Glahn, Denise and Broyles, Michael, ‘Leo Ornstein and American Modernism’, Quintette for Piano and Strings, Op. 92 / Leo Ornstein (Middleton, Wis.: A-R Editions for the American Musicological Society, 2005)Google Scholar: xvi.

65 Luigi von Kunits, ‘Bolshevism in Music: Another “Hymn of Hate”’, Globe [Toronto] (25 October 1930): 21. All subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from this same article. The ‘Hymn of Hate’ to which Kunits refers in the title is a German poem by Ernest Lissauer that was written in 1914 to stir up ill feelings against the English during the First World War.

66 ‘The world wishes to be deceived, so let it be deceived’, a saying attributed to the Roman satirist Petronius.

67 E.R. Parkhurst, ‘Music and Drama: 17th Twilight Concert – Two Works by Resident Composers Create a Great Impression’, Globe [Toronto] (8 May 1924): 15.

68 Schabas, , There's Music, 65 Google Scholar.

69 Adaskin, , A Fiddler's World, 98 Google Scholar.

70 Smith, Leo, ‘Editorial Comments’, The Conservatory Quarterly Review 14/1 (1931)Google Scholar: 4. Kunits became Dr von Kunits with the awarding of an honorary Mus.Doc. degree from the University of Toronto in 1926.

71 Mar, Norman Del, Richard Strauss: A Critical Commentary on his Life and Works, vol. 1 (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1962)Google Scholar: xii.