page_title: Boston Pops Orchestra
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Boston Pops Orchestra / History
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops from the radio program Boston Pops Orchestra.
context_page_description: The Boston Pops Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts, that specializes in playing light classical and popular music.
  The Boston Pops was founded in 1885 as a second, popular identity of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, founded four years earlier. Consisting primarily of musicians from the BSO, although generally not all of the first-chair players, the orchestra performs a spring season of popular music and a holiday program in December, the BSO schedule on break at those times. For the Pops, the seating on the floor of Symphony Hall is reconfigured from auditorium seating to banquet/cafe seating. In addition, the Pops also plays an annual concert at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade every Fourth of July. Their performance of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" is famous for the unfurling of the American flag that occurs as the song enters its final moments. Identified with its long-time director Arthur Fiedler, in the past the orchestra has recorded extensively, made frequent tours, and appeared regularly on television.
context_section_description: In 1881, Henry Lee Higginson, the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, wrote of his wish to present in Boston "concerts of a lighter kind of music". The Boston Pops Orchestra was founded to present this kind of music to the public, with the first concert performed on July 11, 1885 under the leadership of Adolf Neuendorff. Called the "Promenade Concerts" until 1900, these performances combined light classical music, tunes from the current hits of the musical theater, and an occasional novelty number. Allowing for some changes of taste over the course of a century, the early programs were remarkably similar to the Boston Pops programs of today.
  The Boston Pops Orchestra had seventeen conductors before 1930, when Arthur Fiedler began a fifty-year tenure as the first American-born conductor to lead the orchestra. Under Fiedler's direction, the orchestra's popularity spread far beyond Boston through recordings, radio and television. Unhappy with the reputation of classical music as being solely for affluent concertgoers, Fiedler made efforts to bring classical music to a wider audience. He instituted a series of free concerts at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade, a public park beside the Charles River. Fiedler insisted that the Pops Orchestra play popular music as well as well-known classical pieces, opening up a new niche of popular symphonic music. Of the many musical pieces created for the orchestra, the Pops' most identifiable works were the colorful novelty numbers composed by Fiedler's close friend Leroy Anderson, including "Sleigh Ride", "The Typewriter", "The Syncopated Clock" and several others. Fiedler also initiated what has become a Boston tradition, and keeps growing as the years go by, which is the annual "Holiday Pops" concerts the Boston Pops give every December.
  Under Fiedler's direction, the Boston Pops sold more commercial recordings than any other orchestra in the world, with total sales of albums, singles, tapes, and cassettes exceeding $50 million. The orchestra's first recordings were made in July 1935 for RCA Victor, including the first complete recording of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The Pops made their first high-fidelity recording on June 20, 1947, of Gaîté Parisienne (based on the music of Jacques Offenbach), and recorded the same music seven years later in stereophonic sound, their first venture in multitrack recording.
  Fiedler is also credited with having begun the annual tradition of the Fourth of July Pops concert and fireworks display on the Esplanade, one of the best-attended Independence Day celebrations in the country with estimated crowds of 200,000–500,000 people. Also during Fiedler's tenure, the Pops and local public television station WGBH developed a series of weekly televised broadcasts recorded during the Pops' regular season in Symphony Hall, Evening at Pops.
  Some shows have holiday–oriented themes, such as Christmas shows featuring performers such as Jonathan Meath, who appeared as Santa with the Boston Pops for ten shows during 2008–2009.
  After Fiedler's death in 1979, he was succeeded as conductor of the Boston Pops by the noted film composer John Williams. Williams continued the Pops' tradition of bringing classical music to a wide audience, initiating the annual "Pops-on-the-Heights" concerts at Boston College and adding his own library of well-known film scores (including Star Wars and Indiana Jones) to the orchestra's repertoire. During his time with the Pops, Williams  performed with Sammy Davis, Jr. as one of the artists for one of the Evening at Pops specials that aired on 1988. In 1991, the orchestra played Bill Monroe's Uncle Pen and other bluegrass classics with Ricky Skaggs and the Kentucky Thunder.
  Keith Lockhart assumed the post of principal Pops conductor in 1995. Lockhart continues to conduct the Boston Pops today.  Williams remains the Laureate Conductor of the Pops and conducts a week of Pops concerts every year, two nights at Symphony Hall each spring and two nights at the Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood each summer.
caption: Fiedler conducting for the NBC Radio program Boston Pops Orchestra.
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