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 Orchestra

Boston Symphony Orchestra

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an 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 most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...

, which continues to make the hall its home. The hall was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1999. It was then noted that "Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls in the world and is considered the finest in the United States." Symphony Hall, located one block from the New England Conservatory, also serves as home to the Boston Pops Orchestra

Boston Pops Orchestra

The Boston Pops Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts, that specializes in playing light classical and popular music....

 and the Handel and Haydn Society

Handel and Haydn Society

The Handel and Haydn Society is an American chorus and period instrument orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1815, it remains one of the oldest performing arts organizations in the United States.-Early history:...

.

History and architecture

Symphony Hall was inaugurated on October 15, 1900, after the Orchestra's original home (the Old Boston Music Hall

Boston Music Hall

The Boston Music Hall was a concert hall located on Winter Street in Boston, Massachusetts, with an additional entrance on Hamilton Place.One of oldest continuously operating theaters in the United States, it was built in 1852 and was the original home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The hall...

) was threatened by road-building and subway construction. Architects McKim, Mead and White engaged Wallace Clement Sabine

Wallace Clement Sabine

Wallace 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 University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, as their acoustical consultant, and Symphony Hall became one of the first auditoria designed in accordance with scientifically derived acoustical principles. 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.

The hall is modeled on the second Gewandhaus

Gewandhaus

Gewandhaus 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. The first Gewandhaus was built in 1781 by architect Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe. The second opened on 11 December 1884, and was destroyed in the...

 concert hall in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, which was later destroyed in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The Hall is relatively long, narrow, and high, in a rectangular "shoebox" shape like Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

's Concertgebouw

Concertgebouw

The Concertgebouw is a concert hall in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch term "concertgebouw" literally translates into English as "concert building"...

 and Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

'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 Karajan

Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...

, 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.

Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

's name is inscribed over the stage, the only musician's name that appears in the hall since the original directors could agree on no other name but his. The hall's leather seats are the original ones installed in 1900. The hall seats 2,625 people during Symphony season, 2,371 during the Pops season, and up to 800 for dinner.

Statues

Sixteen replicas of Greek and Roman statues line the upper level of the hall's walls. Ten are of mythical subjects, and six of historical figures. All are of plaster cast by P. P. Caproni and Brother.

The statues, as one faces the stage are: on the right, starting near the stage: Faun with Infant Bacchus

Dionysus

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

 (Naples); Apollo Citharoedus

Apollo Citharoedus

An 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 Herculaneum

Herculaneum

Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town destroyed by volcanic pyroclastic flows in AD 79, located in the territory of the current commune of Ercolano, in the Italian region of Campania in the shadow of Mt...

 (Dresden); Dancing Faun

Faun

The faun is a rustic forest god or place-spirit of Roman mythology often associated with Greek satyrs and the Greek god Pan.-Origins:...

 (Rome); Demosthenes

Demosthenes

Demosthenes 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 Anacreon

Anacreon

Anacreon 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 Versailles

Diana of Versailles

The 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. It is a Roman copy of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares, c...

 (Paris); on the left, starting near the stage: Resting Satyr

Satyr

In 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. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing....

 of Praxiteles

Praxiteles

Praxiteles 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); Amazon

Amazons

The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...

 (Berlin); Hermes Logios

Hermes Logios (sculpture)

Hermes 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 Athena

Lemnian Athena

The 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); Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

 (Rome); Standing Anacreon

Anacreon

Anacreon 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); Aeschines

Aeschines

Aeschines was a 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...

 (Naples); Apollo Belvedere

Apollo Belvedere

The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere—also called the Pythian Apollo— is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity. It was rediscovered in central Italy in the late 15th century, during the Renaissance...

 (Rome).

Organ

The Symphony Hall organ, a 4,800-pipe Aeolian-Skinner

Aeolian-Skinner

Æolian-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 , Arthur Hudson Marks ,...

 (Opus 1134) designed by G. Donald Harrison

G. Donald Harrison

George 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 Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of 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

E. Power Biggs

Edward George Power Biggs , more familiarly known as E. Power Biggs, was a British-born American concert organist and recording artist.-Biography:...

, 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.

Sources

• Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall: The First 100 Years, January 2000. ISBN 0-9671148-2-9
• Boston Symphony Orchestra, Program Notes, October 1, 2005, April 8, 2006
• Leo Beranek , Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music, Acoustics, and Architecture (2003), ISBN 978-0387955247