Henry Lee Higginson Henry Lee Higginson ( November 18 , 1834 - November 14 , 1919 ) was a noted American businessman and philanthropist . He is best known as the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra . Family and Early Life . Higginson was born in New York City , the second child of George and Mary ( Cabot Lee ) Higginson , and a distant cousin of Thomas Wentworth Higginson . When he was four years old his family moved to Boston . George jointly founded a brokerage as a junior partner , was extremely patriotic , and never owned a house or a horse of his own until within a few years of his death . Henry ’ s mother died of tuberculosis , from which she suffered for some time , when Henry was 15 . Henry graduated from Boston Latin School in 1851 , only after withdrawing twice due to eye fatigue problems . He began studies at Harvard College , but withdrew after 4 months when he again experienced eye fatigue and he was sent to Europe . Upon returning to Boston in March 1855 , Henry ' s father secured a position for him in the office of Messrs . Samuel and Edward Austin , India merchants , a small shipping counting house on India Wharf where he worked as the sole company clerk and bookkeeper . Henry Lee Higginson entered the Union Army on May 11 , 1861 , as second lieutenant of Company D in Colonel George H . Gordon ' s 2nd Massachusetts Regiment . In the First Battle of Bull Run , his regiment was ordered to hold the nearby town of Harpers Ferry . Higginson was commissioned major in the cavalry on March 26 , 1862 . On June 17 , 1863 , the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry engaged the soldiers of General J . E . B . Stuart and General Fitzhugh Lee ' s cavalry at the Battle of Aldie . During this battle , Higginson crossed sabers with one of the enemy and was knocked out of his saddle with three saber cuts and two pistol wounds . As his wounds slowly healed in Boston , he married Ida Agassiz , daughter of Harvard professor Louis Agassiz , on December 5 , 1863 . Though he retired from the military with the title of " Colonel " , he was commonly addressed as " Major " for the rest of his life to avoid confusion with an older cousin known as Col . Higginson . Career . After the war , he worked as an agent for the Buckeye Oil Company in Ohio from January to July 1865 , purchasing equipment and contracting laborers to work in the oil fields . In October 1865 , he and friends paid $ 30 , 000 for five thousand acres ( 20 km² ) of cotton - farming land in Georgia . This failed philanthropic adventure left him more than $ 10 , 000 in debt . Reluctantly at first , out of desperation , he started on January 1 , 1868 , as a clerk and later became a junior partner in his father ’ s business , Lee , Higginson & Co . , which at the time was a modest brokerage . His father had been a junior partner until 1858 and worked until his death in 1889 at age 85 . This brokerage and banking company eventually became very profitable . Henry Lee Higginson was eventually a senior partner . In 1913 , he offered this assessment of changes in business over the course of his career : " There has been a steady improvement in the management of the Stock Exchange since I came down to the financial district . The methods in use to - day are very much better than they were many years ago . Men dealing with the Exchange are better protected . " He allowed that there were still " rascals " and " a good many men who still need watching , " but " not so many as there have been in years past . " Boston Symphony Orchestra . Higginson described his plans for a symphony orchestra two years after he launched the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881 : On March 30 , 1881 , Higginson published in Boston newspapers his plan for a " Boston Symphony Orchestra " that would perform as a " full and permanent orchestra , offering the best music at low prices , such as may be found in all the large European cities . " He advised his first music director , George Henschel , to hire only local musicians for the first year so as to avoid creating bad blood in local musical circles . For the first season ' s series of 20 concerts , prices were set at $ 10 or $ 5 for the whole series . Single ticket prices were set at 75 and 25 cents . For the weekly afternoon public rehearsal , seats were unreserved and all priced at 25 cents . The concert venue was the Boston Music Hall , and the orchestra would travel locally , offering concerts in such cities as Providence , Portland , and Worcester , as well as several in Cambridge at Harvard University ' s Sanders Theater . Soon , to address concerns about the availability of tickets , 505 tickets for the afternoon rehearsal concerts were sold for 25 cents to those who joined the queue outside the hall in advance of the performance . Tours to more distant cities followed , starting with Philadelphia and then New York . Casual summer concerts began in 1885 . For many years , the organization accepted support from no one other than Higginson , who made up the annual deficit himself . The annual deficit he had to make up never exceeded $ 52 , 000 . From the very beginning through at least the first 30 years of the BSO , through Julius Epstein , a Jewish friend in Vienna , Higginson had access to a continuous stream of the best conductors in the world , all European and German - speaking . In 1906 , he sent instructions to those hiring on his behalf that the person they choose should understand that Higginson cared neither for modern music nor " the extreme modern style of conducting . " He elaborated his tastes in another letter : As sole administrator of the BSO during its early years , Higginson ensured the success of his new organization by tightly controlling the professional musicians . In 1882 , he forged a new contract requiring his musicians to make themselves available from Wednesday to Saturday during the season and on those days to " neither play in any other orchestra nor under any other conductor . . . except if wanted in your leisure hours by the Handel and Haydn Society , " a collegial gesture to a much older organization . After the fourth season , he authorized the BSO ' s conductor Wilhelm Gericke to recruit twenty musicians while summering in Europe to replace some who were " old and overworked . " For example , Higginson aggregated control by " threatening to break any strike with the importation of European players . " Furthermore , over time he dropped musicians with ties to Boston and imported men from Europe of " high technical accomplishment , upon whose loyalty he could count . " During World War I , Higginson and the BSO ' s music director Karl Muck were the focus of public controversy when the orchestra failed to add the " Star - Spangled Banner " to its concerts as other orchestras did . Muck ' s ties to the German Kaiser made for exaggerated press coverage , but Higginson was the particular focus of criticism . The " New York Times " called him " obstinate " for his refusal to allow public sentiment to affect programming . The orchestra ' s publicity agent , writing years later , blamed Muck ' s eventual internment as an enemy alien on the " short - sighted stubbornness " of Higginson and the orchestra ' s manager Charles A . Ellis on the anthem issue . In February 1918 , with his finances so depleted by the war that he could no longer finance the orchestra ' s deficits alone , and anticipating the departure of Dr . Muck , which came with his arrest in March , Higginson determined to hand the management of the orchestra over to a new institutional structure . The announcement of a board of trustees to manage an incorporated Boston Symphony Orchestra came on April 27 , 1918 . Other activities . In 1882 , he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Harvard University and served as the first president of the new Harvard Club of Boston during a period when he helped raise a lot of money to send needy students to Harvard . He was awarded an honorary LL . D . from Yale University in 1901 . He served as president of the Boston Music Hall and as a trustee of the New England Conservatory of Music from 1892 - 1919 . He was also the president of the Tavern Club from more than 20 years , a " literary social club . " On June 5 , 1890 , Higginson presented Harvard College a gift of of land , which he called Soldiers Field , given in honor of his friends who died in the Civil War : James Savage , Jr . , Charles Russell Lowell , Edward Barry Dalton , Stephen George Perkins , James Jackson Lowell , and Robert Gould Shaw . On June 10 of that year , at the dedication of Soldiers Field , he said : His devotion to education was both enthusiastic and patrician . Once , when advising a cousin to make a large contribution to Harvard he wrote : Sometime before 1913 , he lent his name as an officer to the efforts of the Immigration Restriction League , which campaigned on behalf of literacy tests to limit immigration . Their avoidance of more straightforward racial categories and quotas only masked their fundamental bias against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe . Other gifts to Harvard included $ 150 , 000 contributed in 1899 for the construction of the Harvard Union , a " house of fellowship " for all students of Harvard and Radcliffe , where they could dine , study , meet , and listen to lectures . A few years later , he raised $ 10 , 000 to defray the costs of tuition and living expenses for students from China , a program somewhat at odds with America ' s exclusion of Chinese immigrants at the time . Higginson was very active in promoting quality education to citizens from all walks of life . In 1891 , Higginson established the Morristown School for young men , now the Morristown - Beard School , declining to be named as the school ' s founder . He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Middlesex School , and the school ' s Higginson House dormitory is named for him . He was generally impatient with politicians . He objected to Theodore Roosevelt ' s attacks on big business . He wrote him : " Cease all harsh words about corporations and capitalists . " He did not hesitate to provide President Wilson with unsolicited advice on his conduct of World War I . On January 25 , 1915 , Higginson was a participant in the first transcontinental telephone call along with Thomas Watson , Alexander Graham Bell , Theodore Vail and Woodrow Wilson . The telephone Higginson used is now located at the American Museum of Radio and Electricity In 1916 , he accepted election to honorary membership in Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity . He died in 1919 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge , Massachusetts following funeral services that were later described as " gala obsequies . " One cousin ' s tribute described him : " He always seemed to me like the old knight of the castle – a part he played in some theatricals – giving sympathetic , spirited advice and inspiration of high example to the apprentice squires . " Quotations . I always like the severe in architecture , music , men and women , books . Higginson to architect Charles Follen McKim Any well - trained businessman is wiser than the Congress and the Executive .