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The Making of Symphony Hall, Boston: A History with Documents. By Richard Poate Stebbins. (Boston: Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. 2000. Pp. vii, 231. $24.95.)
For a century, one of the chief cultural icons of Boston has been a concert hall that, in the authoritative judgment of Dr. Leo L. Beranek (in his book Concert and Opera Halls: How They Sound), ranks as one of the top three halls in the world, along with the Great Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna and Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. Now the founding and early history of Symphony Hall have found a worthy chronicler in Richard Poate Stebbins, whose handsomely produced book will be welcomed by music-loving laypersons, architects, and scholars. About one hundred richly illustrated pages, describing the tortuous path from the hall's conception in the 188os to its opening in 1900, are followed by over a hundred pages more of documents and other scholarly apparatus.
This is a quintessentially American story, one that Tocqueville might have predicted: not a government-sponsored project but the result of the persistent, hard work of a self-appointed group of civicminded citizens. First among them was the socially prominent Henry Lee Higginson, an enthusiastic amateur musician, self-made businessman, son-in-law of Louis Agassiz, and a founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1881), for which he dreamt of establishing a beautiful home. When the BSO was born, not even New York had such an orchestra; but under Higginson's guidance, it fairly quickly became more than competent and earned the public's admiration. Soon there was talk of moving the orchestra from its original venue, the old Boston Music Hall, which had many shortcomings.
Although it was in a still poorly developed area and distant from the center of city...