{"id":3916,"date":"2026-04-14T13:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3916"},"modified":"2026-04-14T13:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:04:13","slug":"what-next-for-the-boston-symphony-lessons-from-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/04\/what-next-for-the-boston-symphony-lessons-from-the-past.html","title":{"rendered":"What Next for the Boston Symphony? — Lessons from the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Henry Higginson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The current Boston \u201cArts Fuse\u201d carries my thoughts about the pertinence today of Henry Higginson, who invented, owned, and operated the Boston Symphony until 1919. You can access the full article here<\/a>. Excerpts follow:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About a dozen years ago I was invited, impromptu, to address a gifted youth orchestra at Boston\u2019s Symphony Hall. I mounted the podium and asked how many people had heard of Henry Higginson. I was unsurprised to discover his name wholly unknown. He invented the Boston Symphony in 1881, I explained. He built this hall 19 years later. It could have been called Higginson Hall, but he vetoed that. The exposed wood, the absence of boxes, the thin upholstery, the spare New England ambience \u2013 all Higginson, I said. I added that he also decided to reserve 25-cent non-subscription seats for all concerts, and to offer public rehearsals for which all seats cost a quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With today\u2019s Boston Symphony in an uproar, lacking direction, some attention should be paid to Henry Higginson. He knew what he was doing. He knew how to scout and hire conductors. He knew what music he wanted played. He knew what the orchestra was for.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my books, I call Higginson and Theodore Thomas the two most \u201ccolossal\u201d figures in the history of American classical music. More than anyone else, they made the concert orchestra an American specialty, in contradistinction to the pit orchestras abroad. Thomas\u2019s very credo was: \u201cA symphony orchestra shows the culture of the community, not opera.\u201d His was the first world-class American orchestra. It was itinerant, plying the \u201cThomas Highway\u201d from coast to coast beginning in the 1860s. He was ultimately the founding music director of the Chicago Orchestra (now the Chicago Symphony) in 1891. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incredibly, there is no biography of Henry Higginson. The fullest treatment is my own: a 56-page chapter in Moral Fire:<\/a> Musical Portraits from America\u2019s Fin de Siecle<\/em> (2012). Here\u2019s an excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As an embodiment of what was best about Boston, Higginson\u2019s symphony was quicker to acquire a fully appropriate home than a fully appropriate conductor. . . . But Higginson did manage to place two great names on his Boston podium. These were Arthur Nikisch and Karl Muck . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Like the creation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, like the building of Symphony Hall, the process by which Higginson acquired Karl Muck \u2013 the conductor he ultimately favored above all others \u2013 illustrates the singular modus operandi of a useful citizen who knew what he wanted and how to obtain it. . . . Higginson instigated a conductor search. The orchestra\u2019s manager, Charles Ellis, and the composer George Chadwick were Higginson\u2019s agents abroad. He also conferred frequently with his Viennese friend Julius Epstein [an eminent pianist whom Higginson knew from the Vienna Conservatory], with the singer Milka Ternina, and with two key members of his orchestra who knew the European scene: Kneisel, the concertmaster . . .  and Charles Martin Loeffler, who also happened to be one of America\u2019s leading composers. A list of twenty-five candidates was assembled \u2013 a virtual who\u2019s who of Germanic podium talent. Higginson quickly weeded out Gustav Mahler and Willem Mengelberg, whose restless interpretive predilections and progressive repertoire choices he recognized. He had no compunction about considering the Jewish Bruno Walter but felt that at thirty Walter  was probably too young. He eventually narrowed the field to four reckonable names:  Niksich [again], Muck, Hans Richter, and Felix Mottl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The ensuing negotiations were direct and business like. The conductors had no agents. Higginson\u2019s assessments characteristically weighted personal integrity alongside artistic prowess. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Other than Theodore Thomas\u2019s itinerant band, Higginson\u2019s was the first American orchestra to acquire an international reputation. As early as 1902 Richard Strauss called it \u201cthe most marvelous in the world.\u201d . . .The city\u2019s prominent composers \u2013 Chadwick and Loeffler, Arthur Foote and Amy Beach \u2013 were regularly performed. Chadwick sometimes conducted; Loeffler, Foote, and Beach appeared as soloists. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Higginson seized the opportunities at hand with surgical precision. He replaced existing local orchestras with a single, exemplary band, fortified with imported talent and iron discipline. He replaced existing concert facilities with a single, exemplary hall, whose plainness of democratic d\u00e9cor supported a demonstrative communal exercise. He replaced existing musical leaders with a Berlin conductor not selected for his name or reputation or for any considerations expedient or financial, but because he fit specific Boston needs. His Symphony Orchestra both embodied and led the community of culture that it served.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first explored the genius of Henry Higginson in Classical Music in America:<\/a> A History of Its Rise<\/em> and<\/em> Fall<\/em> (2005). On that occasion, I was invited by the BSO to give a talk. I have a big mouth, and seized the occasion to suggest to the BSO\u2019s Managing Director, Mark Volpe (who would graciously furnish a jacket endorsement for Moral<\/em> Fire<\/em>), that a strong topic for a BSO festival would be \u201cStravinsky in Boston.\u201d I made the same suggestion at Harvard, which I also visited. Stravinsky had delivered his famous Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1939-40. Concurrently, the Boston Symphony\u2019s Serge Koussevitzky was by far his greatest champion among American orchestra leaders. A Harvard\/BSO collaboration around this topic, with participating scholars, seemed a nifty idea to me. It still seems a nifty idea to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In general, I have long believed that the Boston Symphony, with the most august history of any American musical institution, should celebrate and explore its own astonishing past. Bostonians today have no idea how distinguished Boston\u2019s composers once were. A piece like George Chadwick\u2019s Jubilee<\/em> (1895) deserves to be as well-known to American audiences as John Philip Sousa\u2019s contemporaneous The Stars and Stripes Forever<\/em>. Chadwick was also the director of the New England Conservatory. Chadwick cuts a bigger swath in Classical Music in America<\/em> than Aaron Copland. He\u2019s also the topic of one of my NPR \u201cMore than Music\u201d shows<\/a><\/strong>, about musical Boston. This season\u2019s BSO programs purport to celebrate \u201cAmerica 250.\u201d They barely go through the motions. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s happening now is anyone\u2019s guess. The administration and board have parted company with Andris Nelsons. The musicians are loudly calling for him to stay. Time is up: the orchestra needs to chart an explicit and considered new course. It needs to define a Boston mission and, within that, a Boston-based role for Nelsons\u2019 successor. It\u2019s nothing less than what Henry Higginson undertook, courageously, for four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S. \u2013 You can find on youtube<\/a><\/strong> a splendid performance of the New World<\/em> Symphony with a very young Andris Nelsons leading the Bavarian Radio Orchestra \u2013 a better performance, with a better orchestra, than the one I heard from Nelsons at Carnegie Hall last Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For additional blogs about the BSO, click here<\/a><\/strong> and here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current Boston \u201cArts Fuse\u201d carries my thoughts about the pertinence today of Henry Higginson, who invented, owned, and operated the Boston Symphony until 1919. You can access the full article here. Excerpts follow: About a dozen years ago I was invited, impromptu, to address a gifted youth orchestra at Boston\u2019s Symphony Hall. I mounted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-11a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3916"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3922,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916\/revisions\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}