For many years, American Civil War veteran, amateur musician and philanthropist Major Henry Lee Higginson dreamed of founding a great and permanent orchestra in his home town of Boston, Massachusetts. His vision became reality in the spring of 1881 and on 22 October in that year the inaugural concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra took place under the direction of Georg (later Sir George) Henschel. The succeeding century saw the Boston Symphony unerringly establish its present place among the supreme half dozen orchestras in the world. Major Higginson died in 1919 and one would be very hard put indeed to conceive of a more resplendent memorial to him.