PRELUDE: THE MAJOR

The wire from Rhode Island came on a day when Henry Lee Higginson had no time for it. In addition to being the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and pretty much its only benefactor, Higginson was an aristocrat in high demand. He was scrambling to attend to a dozen different matters before he and his orchestra boarded the afternoon train to Providence for their first out-of-state performance of the 1917-1918 season.

It was the day before Halloween, and although Higginson was just a few weeks shy of his 83d birthday, he was as busy as ever. In business, he was a partner in the successful brokerage firm that bore his family name. In philanthropy, he was one of Harvard’s most important donors — unusual for a college dropout — having given the university, among many other gifts, 31 acres that became Soldiers Field. Most of all, he was consumed by his work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the passion project that he had begun plotting decades before he managed to create it in 1881.