Department. A better choice could hardly have been made. For more than
two decades Mr. Levison, an able amateur in music, and a business man of
high standing, had been identified with all of San Francisco's larger
efforts in its musical life. But Mr. Levison's grasp of the importance
of such a post was more comprehensive than President Moore's, for he
refused the position. Fortunately, however, he had his attention
directed to George W. Stewart, of Boston, a former artist of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, a man technically equipped, who had made a great
success of the music at the St. Louis Exposition. Stewart was engaged,
and to him is due the credit for the remarkable record music has already
made at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.

Aside from the construction of the $50,000 pipe organ, which, after the
Exposition, will be placed permanently in the Civic Auditorium, the two
most important musical items found on the schedule of Exposition
enterprises are the engagements of Camille Saint-Saens and the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. The former, who maintained that "Beethoven is the
greatest, the only real, artist, because he upheld the idea of universal
brotherhood," is perhaps better fitted than any living composer to write
special music for the Exposition. This he has done,--writing two
compositions in fact; and their presentation has been an outstanding
feature. "Hail, California," was dedicated to the Exposition. Scored for
an orchestra of eighty, a military band of sixty, a chorus of 300
voices, pipe organ and piano, its first presentation was an event. The
Saint-Saens Symphony in C minor (No. 3) Opus 78, composed many years
ago, has become a classic during the life-time of its creator. It was
one of the wonders of the Boston Symphony programmes played in Festival
Hall. Its yield of immediate pleasure and its reassurance for the works
of Saint-Saens to be heard later, grew from the fact that it was scored
for orchestra and pipe organ, and in this massive tonal web the genius