Pops

Bostonians, hundreds of them, heaved sighs of relief last week. The winter's heavy symphonic season was over. "Pop" (popular) concerts had begun and they were concerts faithful to their name once more. For a new conductor was at the helm -- handsome Arthur Fiedler, a native Bostonian, son of a Symphony fiddler, who last year scored a success at the outdoor concerts on the Charles River Basin Esplanade (TIME, July 29). Young Fiedler knows better than his predecessor, Alfredo Casella, what Bostonians want. He would give them, he had promised, no second session of unmixed serious fare. There would be generous quantities of light, easy music and the opening program, in Symphony Hall refurbished, was as good as his word. It included favorites like Whispering Flowers, Pomp and Circumstance. An encore was George Gershwin's Strike Up the Band.

By refusing to become just another symphonic series, Boston's Pops have once more proved themselves unique, once more established their resistance to changing fashions. The Pops Were started 45 years ago, patterned after the Bilse Concerts in Berlin where people ate, drank and smoked while listening to music. Such a scheme was highly adventuresome for Boston in the '80s but the musicians imported for the Symphony by the late Major Henry Lee Higginson needed more than their winter engagements to support their families. They were tired, too, of ponderous scores and strangely enough they found Society in the same mood. The Popular Concerts, soon shortened to Pops, caught on. It was considered Bohemian and ever so smart to roll up to Music Hall on one's bicycle, to sit without gloves, sip a lemonade just flavored with claret and tap one's foot in time to a mazurka. Such goings-on had even the sanction of the late Mrs. Jack Gardner, Boston's leading lioness. Mrs. Gardner was for years ruler of the Pops. Even the conductor, it was said, awaited her nod before he raised his baton.

Society gave the Pops their start but the public seized upon them, gave them their real prosperity. With Prohibition came the question of whether they could survive, but a single Dry season showed they could. The music had become the thing, not the beer or the brightened punches. Under Conductor Agide Jacchia (1917-27) the concerts flourished as never before. Conductor Casella, who followed him, tried to dignify the programs but the people rebelled. As it did a half-century ago, Spring seems the time for occasional waltzes and mazurkas.

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