al pets. But when, at the opening of the new season, they heard
a brilliant, completely rejuvenated orchestra, they forgave the new
conductor. Since then, he has restored the Symphony to its old-time
glory. Today Beacon Hill has no greater favorite than Serge
Alexandrovitch Koussevitzky.

The orchestra men, too, learned to like him. They discovered that,
with all his public histrionics, he was on the level as a musician.
He is a merciless task master, but in rehearsals he gives himself no
airs. Dressed in an old pair of pants and a disreputable brown woolen
sweater, which he has worn in private since the day he landed in
Boston, he works like a stevedore. When he, the pants and the sweater
had been with the Symphony ten years, the men gave him a testimonial
dinner.

Next to Mr. Toscanini he's the world's most temperamental conductor,
but he has the ability to keep himself in check--when he wants to.
"Koussevitzky," says Ernest Newman, the eminent English music critic,
"has a volcanic temperament, yet never have I known it to run away
with him. It is precisely when his temperament is at the boiling point
that his hand on the regulator is steadiest."

At a concert in Carnegie Hall four years ago he gave a dramatic
demonstration of self-control. He was conducting Debussy's "Prelude
to the Afternoon of a Faun," when smoke from an incinerator fire in a
neighboring building penetrated the hall. The smoke grew dense. People
rose, rushed for the exits in near-panic. Women screamed.

He stopped the orchestra, turned to the audience, held up his hand and
shouted:

"Come back! Sit down! Sit down--all of you! Everything is all right!"

The customers meekly resumed their seats. Mr. Koussevitzky swung
'round and continued playing Debussy's brooding, sensuous dreampiece
as if nothing had happened.

Because he has done so much, both as conductor and publisher, for
living composers (he is the high priest of the Sibelius cult), he has
been called a modernist. The label infuriates him.

"Nonsense!" he snarls. "I'm not a modernist and I'm not a classicist.
I'm a musician! The first movement of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven
is the greatest music ever written and George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in
Blue' is a masterpiece."

"There you are! Make the best of it!"

[Transcriber's Notes:
a. The spelling of names and places are noted as having changed
between the publication of this book and the year 2004:
Chapter I (Palestrina):
'Mic