Concert life was already flourishing. Those organizations which, along with the New York orchestra, still dominate our music life, the Boston and the Philadelphia orchestras, were established, as was the Metropolitan Opera Company. They were, needless to say, initiated by groups of private individuals, of whom an appreciable number belonged to a public well provided with experience and curiosity, a public which loved music, possessed some knowledge of it, and demanded it in abundance. It is hardly necessary to point out that there were also those who cared less for music than for social esteem, prestige, and “glamor”--the reflected and artificial magic of something which they neither understood nor desired to understand, since it was the magic and not the substance that mattered; the more remote the substance, the more enticing the magic. Such contrasts always exist, and it was fashionable some years ago to throw this fact into high relief: in that way healthy and necessary self-criticism was evidenced. Among the personalities we have reference to was Major Henry L. Higginson who founded, and then throughout his life underwrote, the Boston Symphony; he belonged to the personalities of authentic culture and real stature who demanded music in the true sense of the word, and who knew how and where to find it. It is unnecessary to discuss the artistic levels these organizations achieved; that is general knowledge. If today we are aware of certain disquieting symptoms pointing to a decline in quality by comparison with that period, they are the result of later developments to be considered in the following pages, in connection with concrete problems of today.