Symphony Hall is a concert hall located at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. Designed by McKim, Mead and White, it was built in 1900 for the
Boston Symphony OrchestraThe Boston Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays the majority of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the...
, which continues to make the hall its home. Admired for its lively acoustics from the time of its opening, the hall is often cited as one of the best sounding classical concert venues in the world.
It was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1999, and it was then noted "Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls in the world and is considered the finest in the United States." Symphony Hall also serves as home to the famed
Boston Pops OrchestraThe Boston Pops Orchestra was founded in 1885 as a subsection of the Boston Symphony Orchestra , founded four years earlier. Careful examination of the rosters of “pops" or “Festival" orchestras, which are associated with a co-resident symphony orchestra in the same community, shows that the...
and is located one block from the New England Conservatory.
Symphony Hall was inaugurated on October 15, 1900, after the Orchestra's original home (the Old Boston Music Hall) was threatened by road-building and subway construction.
Symphony Hall is a concert hall located at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. Designed by McKim, Mead and White, it was built in 1900 for the
Boston Symphony OrchestraThe Boston Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays the majority of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the...
, which continues to make the hall its home. Admired for its lively acoustics from the time of its opening, the hall is often cited as one of the best sounding classical concert venues in the world.
It was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1999, and it was then noted "Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls in the world and is considered the finest in the United States." Symphony Hall also serves as home to the famed
Boston Pops OrchestraThe Boston Pops Orchestra was founded in 1885 as a subsection of the Boston Symphony Orchestra , founded four years earlier. Careful examination of the rosters of “pops" or “Festival" orchestras, which are associated with a co-resident symphony orchestra in the same community, shows that the...
and is located one block from the New England Conservatory.
History and architecture
Symphony Hall was inaugurated on October 15, 1900, after the Orchestra's original home (the Old Boston Music Hall) was threatened by road-building and subway construction. Architects McKim, Mead and White engaged
Wallace Clement SabineWallace Clement Sabine was an American physicist who founded the field of architectural acoustics. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1886 at the age of 18 before joining Harvard University for graduate study and remaining as a faculty member...
, a young assistant professor of physics at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
, as their acoustical consultant, and Symphony Hall became one of the first auditoria designed in accordance with scientifically derived acoustical principles.
The hall is modeled on the second
GewandhausGewandhaus is a concert hall in Leipzig, Germany. Today's hall is the third to bear this name; like the second, it is noted for its fine acoustics....
concert hall in
LeipzigLeipzig is, with a population of 515,459, the largest city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany.-Origins:Leipzig's name is derived from the Slavic word Lipsk, which means "settlement where the lime trees stand"....
, which was later destroyed in
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The Hall is relatively long, narrow, and high, in a rectangular "shoebox" shape like
AmsterdamAmsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country...
's
ConcertgebouwThe Concertgebouw is a concert hall in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Dutch term "concertgebouw" literally translates into English as "concert building"...
and
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
's Musikverein. It is 61 feet high, 75 feet wide, and 125 long from the lower back wall to the front of the stage. Stage walls slope inward to help focus the sound. With the exception of its wooden floors, the Hall is built of brick, steel, and plaster, with modest decoration. Side balconies are very shallow to avoid trapping or muffling sound, and the coffered ceiling and statue-filled niches along three sides help provide excellent acoustics to essentially every seat. Conductor
Herbert von KarajanHerbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor and one of the most renowned conductors in music history. His obituary in The New York Times described him as "probably the world's best-known conductor and one of the most powerful figures in classical music." Karajan conducted...
, in comparing it to the Musikverein, stated that "for much music, it is even better... because of its slightly lower reverberation time."
In 2006, due to years of wear and tear, the original concert stage floor was replaced at a cost of $250,000. In order to avoid any change to the sound of the hall, the new floor was built using same methods and materials as the original. These included tongue-in-groove, three-quarter inch, hard maple boards, a compressed wool underlayment and hardened steel cut nails, hammered in by hand. The vertical grain fir subfloor from 1899 was in excellent shape and was left in place. The nails used in the new floor were hand cut using the same size and construction as the originals and the back chanelling on the original maple top boards was replicated as well.
BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, of the Electorate of Cologne and...
's name is inscribed over the stage. He was the only musician's name put in Symphony Hall, as he was the only composer that the original directors could fully agree upon. The hall's leather seats are still original from 1900. The hall seats 2,625 people during Symphony season, 2,371 during the Pops season, and up to 800 for dinner.
Statues
The 16 Greek and Roman statue replicas lining its walls were installed as an echo of the frequently quoted words, "Boston, the Athens of America," written by Bostonian
William TudorWilliam Tudor was a leading citizen of Boston, sometime literary man, and cofounder of the North American Review and the Boston Athenaeum. It was Tudor who christened Boston The Athens of America in an 1819 letter...
in the early 19th century. Ten are of mythical subjects, and six of historical figures; all are plaster reproductions cast by P. P. Caproni and Brother.
The statues are as follows, as one faces the stage. At the right, starting near the stage: Faun with Infant
BacchusIn classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos is the god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, amongst whom Greek mythology treated him as a late arrival...
(Naples);
Apollo CitharoedusAn Apollo Citharoedus, or Apollo Citharede, designates a statue or other image of Apollo with cithara . Among the best-known realizations of this aspect of Apollo is the Apollo Citharoedus of the Vatican Museums, a 2nd century AD colossal marble statue of by an unknown Roman sculptor...
(Rome); Girl of
Herculaneumthumb|240px|The towns and villages under the likely pyroclastic cloud of the [[Mt Vesuvius]] 79 AD eruption. Herculaneum is visible along the northwestern edge of the shadowed area...
(Dresden); Dancing
FaunIn Roman mythology, fauns are place-spirits of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with the Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Bacchus . However, fauns and satyrs were originally quite different creatures...
(Rome);
DemosthenesDemosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...
(Rome); Seated
AnacreonAnacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.- Life :...
(Copenhagen); Euripedes (Rome);
Diana of VersaillesThe Diana of Versailles is a slightly over lifesize marble statue of the Greek goddess Artemis , with a deer, located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris...
(Paris). At the left, again starting near the stage: Resting
SatyrIn Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus — "satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains...
of
PraxitelesPraxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue...
(Rome);
AmazonThe Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Classical and Greek mythology. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...
(Berlin);
Hermes LogiosHermes Logos is a statue of Hermes of the Hermes Logios type in the Ludovisi Collection of the Palazzo Altemps , Rome, Italy. It is a marble Roman copy after a Greek original of the 5th century BC, perhaps by Phidias...
(Paris);
Lemnian AthenaThe Lemnian Athena or Athena Lemnia, was a classical Greek statue of the goddess Athena. According to Pausanias , the original bronze was created by Phidias circa 450-440 BCE, for Athenians living on Lemnos to dedicate on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.It is unclear whether any copies remain...
(Dresden, with head in Bologna);
SophoclesSophocles was the second of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides...
(Rome); Standing
AnacreonAnacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.- Life :...
(Copenhagen);
AeschinesAeschines , Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators.-Life:Although it is known he was born in Athens, the records regarding his parentage and early life are conflicting; but it seems probable that his parents, though poor, were respectable. Aeschines' father was Atrometus, an elementary...
(Naples);
Apollo BelvedereThe Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere — also called the Pythian Apollo — is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity. It was rediscovered in the late 15th century, during the Renaissance...
(Rome).
Organ
The Symphony Hall organ, a 4,800-pipe
Aeolian-SkinnerÆolian-Skinner Organ Company, Inc. — Æolian-Skinner of Boston, Massachusetts was an important American builder of a large number of notable pipe organs from its inception as the Skinner Organ Company in 1901 until its closure in 1972. Key figures were Ernest M. Skinner , Joseph Whiteford, and G....
(Opus 1134) designed by
G. Donald HarrisonG. Donald Harrison crafted some of the finest and largest pipe organs in the United States. He started out in 1914 as a patent attorney but after military service he began to pursue an interest in pipe organ building working with Henry Willis & Sons of London.After immigrating to America,...
, installed in 1949, and autographed by
Albert SchweitzerAlbert Schweitzer was a German-French theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Elsass-Lothringen , at the time in the German Empire...
, is considered one of the finest concert hall organs in the world. It replaced the hall's first organ, built in 1900 by George S. Hutchings of Boston, which was electrically keyed, with 62 ranks of nearly 4,000 pipes set in a chamber 12 feet deep and 40 feet high. The Hutchings organ had fallen out of fashion by the 1940s when lighter, clearer tones became preferred.
E. Power Biggs{Infobox Person| name = E. Power Biggs| image = EPowerBiggs.gif| image_size = 200px| caption = From Biggs's CD,
Bach — The Four Great Toccatas and Fugues.{Infobox Person| name = E...
, often a featured organist for the orchestra, lobbied hard for a thinner bass sound and accentuated treble.
The 1949 Aeolian-Skinner reused and modified more than 60% of the existing Hutchings pipes and added 600 new pipes in a Positiv division. The original diapason pipes, 32 feet in length, were reportedly sawed into manageable pieces for disposal in 1948.
In 2003 the organ was thoroughly overhauled by Foley-Baker Inc., reusing its chassis and many pipes, but enclosing the Bombarde and adding to it the long-desired Principal (diapason) pipes, adding a new Solo division, and reworking its chamber for better sound projection.