Concerto for Faculty

One of Henry Lee Higginson's original purposes for founding the Boston Symphony Orchestra was to provide good music for the Harvard community. This is done through the Sanders Theatre concert series, but for the past few years faculty and regular Symphony Hall customers have made up almost the entire audience at these Cambridge concerts. Students find it impossible to get concert series subscriptions and very difficult to get single tickets.

In the past, the University could not sell enough tickets to fill Sanders, so Symphony Hall was given back about half the tickets. Now the local demand for tickets has greatly increased and exceeds Sanders' capacity, but Symphony Hall still distributes one third of the seats. The Symphony front office will not take subscriptions away from old customers, but does return subscriptions to the University when there is an occasional cancellation.

This is of no help to students, however, for the University gives all subscriptions to the faculty. The only thing it has done to meet the student demand for tickets was to offer 82 rush seats. Anyone who has seen the long lines for these tickets, and the great number of students turned away each time, knows the complete inadequacy of this small number. The bizarre attitude has now developed that the concerts are given for the faculty, and that there is no reason for the ticket distributors even to consider the students. But students are obviously a major part of the University community, and it is inconceivable that Mr. Higginson ever expected students virtually to be excluded from these concerts.

The ticket-selling bureaucracy will clearly not change its ways on its own initiative. The only group that can influence both the Harvard ticket distribution system and Symphony Hall to allow a fair number of students to hear these concerts is the Music department. This department should use its influence to have Symphony Hall request its Cambridge customers to subscribe to a regular Boston series--it should make little difference to most of them. Then, the department should insist on a redistribution of the tickets at the disposal of the University so that a reasonable number of students can get into concerts which were partially designed for their enjoyment and education.