“Conducting. It’s not at all what you think it is.
No—it’s not about waving your arm. It is a black art.
To learn the magic, you need a Sorcerer, and you
must become that Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

Great conductors are like wizards with magic
wands, wielding enormous power and perfect
control, seemingly at will. Silently, apparently with
baton alone, they “play” the one hundred musicians
of a symphony orchestra with the same ease others
handle a single instrument, while the greatest of
them can make the experience of listening so
profound, they bring whole audiences to tears.

How do great conductors do it?
What dark powers become theirs to command?

The answers are to be found in David Katz’s
acclaimed new one-man play, MUSE of FIRE.
Performed to critical raves and standing ovations in
Maine, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and soon to
be seen in Chicago, New York, and on tour,
MUSE of FIRE lifts the veil on the conductor’s secret
life to reveal that masters of the baton are not born:
they are forged—in fury.

MUSE of FIRE is the story of a modern-day sorcerer and apprentice. Based on true events, it dramatizes the playwright’s experiences studying the art of conducting with Charles Bruck (1911-1995), the notorious Master Teacher of the Pierre Monteux Conducting School, who ruled godlike over that world-renowned institution for more than twenty-five years.

Bruck was a maestro from the “old school,” tyrannical, demonic in his fury. He intimidated students, insulted them, screamed at them, even hit them—going to any lengths to forge them in the flames of his passion for the art. Even as his rages became legendary, so too his acerbic wit, and his uncompromising belief in the power and importance of music. Undeniably one of the 20th century’s greatest teachers of conducting, Charles Bruck was also one of the most feared.

With awesome intensity, MUSE of FIRE brings to the stage an extraordinary teacher molding great artists. It is a play at once absorbing, frightening, funny, and ultimately deeply moving.

Playwright David Katz is a professional conductor and author, award-winning composer and gifted actor. In MUSE of FIRE he has created that most unusual of theatrical events: a one-man play that is a true tour-de-force, “a searing and unforgettable portrait of a man who forged a generation of conductors.”

Although there is only one actor onstage, MUSE of FIRE is actually a two-character drama, so deftly and swiftly is Katz able to shift from teacher to student and back again. From the moment the young apprentice first experiences the wrath of the man who would become his sorcerer, until he last visits him on his deathbed, years later, MUSE of FIRE forms perfect arcs: from hatred to love, failure to triumph, life to death. Along the way, Katz plays a host of other characters, including teachers, conducting students and observers, helping to complete a complex portrait of a brilliant and difficult maestro at the height of his powers.

Integral to the drama of MUSE of FIRE is magnificent orchestral music. Beautifully recorded excerpts by more than a dozen composers are featured, including compositions by Wagner, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Schoenberg and Ravel. At some performances, the music is reproduced in spectacular six-track stereo surroundsound. Sound design for MUSE of FIRE was created by Audio Engineering Services, LLC of Roxbury, CT.

MUSE of FIRE was expertly directed by Tony Award-winner Charles Nelson Reilly, who died in May 2007. Mr. Reilly brought to his work on MUSE of FIRE an exquisite sense of detail and realism, cultivated over a nearly fifty-year career as actor, director and teacher. Far more than simply the zany television personality with which he was most readily identified, Reilly’s career encompassed virtually every theatrical genre. A Tony-nominated stage director and beloved acting teacher, and a revered opera director and coach, he worked closely with such musical artists as Renee Fleming and Roberta Peters, and helped mold the careers of many actors, including Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler, Peter Boyle, Christine Lahti and Lily Tomlin. Mr. Reilly also nurtured the creation of a whole series of unique one-person stage plays. Most famously, he directed Julie Harris’s Tony Award-winning star turn in the THE BELLE OF AMHERST, based on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. MUSE of FIRE was his last play.

With a gripping story and glorious music, and featuring an exceptionally gifted actor-playwright brilliantly directed, it is no wonder MUSE of FIRE has been hailed as—

*In MUSE of FIRE, the word “melodrama” refers only to its original meaning: an ancient musical form in which spoken lines are accompanied by music.

In the play, David Katz plays many characters:

The Apprentice—Someone quite like himself
The Sorcerer—Maestro Charles Bruck, Master of the Pierre Monteux School
Conducting Students—Mr. Albatross, Miss Winterhazel, Mr. Stein
A Former Teacher—Maestro Vytautas Marijosius
Madame Bruck (Gaby)
A Young Conductor

After the overture, the silence of anticipation: tonight, secrets are revealed. So much music—a lifetime of music. So many composers—which pieces hold the beauty we need to know?

The Apprentice is alone in his studio, remembering his Sorcerer, the man who would become his Muse: How, at first, he hated him and didn’t want to be his student. How he was captured by him, and then freed. How he learned to love him—and what happened on the last day. The Apprentice conjures the ghost of his muse, but the Sorcerer expresses little interest, except to berate his ambitions and scold him for supposedly attending the wrong school.

How did the Apprentice change from horrified observer to unwilling participant to eager disciple?

Years ago, in Maine, while the orchestra played Wagner, the Apprentice watched in terror as the Sorcerer turned a lesson into a student’s funeral. Back in the present, the Sorcerer appears again, as if from the dead. He is angry. Some facts the Apprentice got wrong. Now, the Muse insists, he will watch everything that happens, and correct his student, just as he did years before.

The scenes shift quickly to events in the past: Backstage at the opera, the Apprentice rejects an invitation. At the Sorcerer’s apartment, the Apprentice receives three words of advice. At dinner, the Apprentice fails a test. But the invitations continue. Finally, drawn to Maine by its beauty, the Apprentice is introduced to the moon that lies.

At the school, the Sorcerer makes a grand entrance. Hapless conducting students suffer his wrath. Soon the Apprentice himself is the victim on the podium, punished for his superficiality. The notes and rhythms are not enough. Music demands more. The cymbals crash. There must be a day of reckoning. When it comes, the Sorcerer proves so powerful that he takes control of everything, even wresting control of the play itself.

The Sorcerer is alone, remembering a special performance from long ago. Soon, the Apprentice returns, and with the help of his Muse, reveals the musical experience that forever changed him. Epiphany. After a great composer arrives to help heal every loss, the Apprentice’s future is revealed.

The scene shifts. Did the Sorcerer know his students imitated him? And what about the composers who were his friends (or his enemies)? Lessons. An encounter with music from the Holocaust is a harrowing experience for both men, one that illuminates the Sorcerer’s character and the Apprentice’s love.

Now old and sick, the Sorcerer can no longer leave his house; the orchestra goes to him. On his deathbed, a fantastic symphony of orchestral music overwhelms the scene. At the climax of the Fireworks Music, one conductor stands for all.

The Apprentice reflects on the awesome power of music. How does it transcend ages and oceans? But the Muse of Fire does not answer questions. The answers are to be found only in the music itself.

MUSE of FIRE
Scenes & Melodramas*

Overture
Sorcerer & Apprentice
The Thirty Bs
Colloquy/Anxiety
Melodrama: The Wagner & the Shouting
“I have a Thschool”
Maine Idyll
Melodrama: Three Conductors and No Answers
Surgery

Intermission

Bastille Day
Melodrama: The Schumann & the Sorrow
Imitations—but all of them
Melodrama: A Survivor from Hancock
DeGaulle’s Tempo
Melodrama: Fireworks Music
Coda

MUSE of FIRE is produced by Hat City Music Theater, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Danbury, Connecticut. Stageplay and contents of this website are copyright 2005-2007 by David Katz Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.