conductors, including Richard Strauss, Eugen d'Albert, Walter Damrosch, and Edward Elgar. IV Perhaps the most striking feature of recent musical history in the United States is the remarkable growth of musical culture in the West. So rapid has been this growth, so widely has it spread, so numerous and varied are the activities it has brought in its train that it would be impossible to follow it in any detail. The number of musical clubs and organizations which have sprung up in recent years in the vast territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific is too great even to be catalogued in a general sketch of this nature. In many of the large cities, however, some of these organizations have reached a position of national importance and rival the best products of the older cities of the East. Notable among those is the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, which is generally conceded to rank with the Boston Symphony, the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. It owes its inception entirely to Emil Oberhoffer, who started it as a support for the chorus of the Philharmonic Society of Minneapolis, of which he was conductor. He succeeded in obtaining a guarantee of $30,000 for three years, then one of $90,000 for three years, and finally one of $65,000 annually for three years. With that backing he was able to organize and perfect an orchestral body which has few equals in America and of which he still remains conductor. During its first season the orchestra gave six concerts. Since then the number has increased to forty annually. After its regular season the orchestra makes a spring tour extending from Winnipeg in the North to Birmingham, Ala., in the South, and from Akron in the East to Wichita in the West. St. Paul also has an excellent orchestra, organized in 1905, which gives a season of ten concerts, seventeen popular Sunday afternoon concerts, and three children's concerts--so that, on the whole, the twin cities are very generously supplied with orchestral music.